The Surrogate

The phone call

Tuesday June 7th, Switzerland.

Holly licks the side of her thumb, she's been feeling so anxious that she's picked at it until she's made it sore and bleeding.

During the journey back to Switzerland, Seb has watched her closing in on herself more and more the nearer they've got to his home, she's gone from being quite talkative to near full on silence, biting her nails and picking at her thumb that she's now made bleed. Her level of anxiety worries him because he knows that stress won't be any good for her or the baby but until she's spoken to Matthew there's little he can do to help her.

In an effort to distract her he puts the radio on, a song he knows well is playing he begins to hum along to it, tapping a finger on the steering wheel to the beat.

It does nothing to break Holly out of her thoughts and from the corner of his eye he's aware of her rifling through the glove compartment, looking for something for her bleeding thumb no doubt.

It's no use telling her not to worry, she'll worry until this has all been dealt with.

"Can we stop somewhere?" she suddenly asks, wrapping her thumb up in a paper serviette that she's found.

He glances her way, they're only another fifteen minutes or so from home, "we'll soon be home."

"Try telling your daughter that," she pats her bump, "she's squashed my bladder to the size of a thimble."

"There's not another service station we can stop at, if you can hang on another fifteen minutes we'll be home."

She wriggles in her seat, the urge to pee has gone from nothing to everything in the space of a few seconds, "I'm really not sure I can hang on."

He sighs, he just wants to get home and get this phone call out of the way, to find out what Matthew wants so that he can deal with it and get it over with. Relenting, he spies a right hand turning coming up and takes it. It's a narrower, country lane and as soon as he spies a little lay-by he stops.

Holly jumps out of the car as quick as she can and disappears behind it to relieve herself, leaving Seb contemplating various scenarios that her ex might present them with. He's decided that if Matthew wants money then he's going to let him have it, together with a contract stating that he never contacts Holly again. If that bastard is still on drugs then he can take the money and snort it all up his nose as far as Seb is concerned, as long as he never bothers her again.

Then it dawns on him that if he's leaves F1 Holly will be a lot harder to get hold of because Matthew wouldn't have that avenue. He'd be able to protect her a lot more and give her complete privacy if he leaves the sport, together they'd be able to live quietly and happily with few interruptions. Matthew wouldn't even know where in Switzerland Holly was.

Where he'd been seriously considering staying on for another season, now leaving Aston Martin seems like the right decision once more. Last year he'd said he'd leave to become a father, that bringing up his child was far more important to him than trophies and wins, her ex has made him realise that changing his mind was wrong. Retirement from F1 is back on.

Seconds later she comes back and gives him a grateful smile, leaning over to kiss his cheek in gratitude. "That's better, thank you."

He uses the lay-by to make a three point turn and get them back on the right road again, accelerating a little harder than usual. The sooner this phone call has been made, the better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seb is beyond grateful to have Britta with them this afternoon and as she sits on a stool at the kitchen island, he paces up and down, waiting for Holly to come down from upstairs, occasionally eyeing the cheap, thirty euro, Nokia phone that sits there. It's a small device that reminds him of a an old phone that he used to have some years ago, one that did little more than calls, texts and a couple of basic games with a display that was basically greyscale but the battery lasted for ages before it needed charging - nothing like the phones that people have today.