This Ain't A Fairytale- Lando Norris

9. How can you say you love someone you can't tell is dying?

Encouraged by Cisca's insistence that Lando would understand why she wanted to go back to work, Hannah had decided to bring it up with him later that night. With both sets of grandparents hanging around to take over bedtime duties for Isla, it seemed like as good of a time as any.

"You want to do what?" Lando asked, his voice laced with disbelief.

The two of them had been sat out by the pool, unwinding after a long day at the track. Hannah was starting to wish she'd never said anything. This felt like it more than had the potential to ruin the tiny sliver of bliss they'd established this week.

"I want to go back on tour." She repeated. "A shorter one than last time, probably about six months. Alice hasn't finalised the plans yet."

"Where is this coming from?" Lando asked, still reeling from the announcement that he really hadn't seen coming.

"What do you mean where is this coming from?" She asked. "I love performing, Lando. You know that. Did you really think having Isla changed any of that? That I was just going to be a stay at home Mum forever?"

"You've done nothing but tell me for months that all the travel isn't working. And now you want to add even more travel into the mix?" He asked. "When am I ever going to see you?"

"Don't make me out to be the bad guy in this." Hannah shook her head. "I put my career on hold, I stayed at home with our newborn baby when you had to go straight back to racing, I've followed you around the world so you can have your cake and eat it too... I want to do this one thing for me, which quite frankly doesn't even require you to do anything, and you're going to try and make me feel bad about it?"

"I just don't see how it's going to work." He shook his head. "It's not that I don't want you to do it Hannah, but it just doesn't seem possible. You've never once even mentioned wanting to do this until now."

"It wouldn't be until the end of the year, maybe even early next year." She told him. "It'll take a while to plan."

"You sound like you've already made your decision to me." He retorted.

"I thought you'd be happy for me." She said quietly, looking at the floor as she willed herself not to cry. "I need this Lando, I love you and I love our daughter, I do. But I need to feel like me again. I don't just want to be your wife and her mother for the rest of my life."

"I just... I don't get it." He shook his head. "You have never once mentioned that you wanted to go back to performing, and now all of a sudden you and Alice have a whole tour planned and you never even mentioned you were thinking about it."

"Because you're never here!" Hannah shot back before she could help herself. "How am I supposed to talk to you when you're never home for more than five minutes at a time? And then when you do come home all you want to talk about is going back to racing."

"Come on Hannah, that's not fair." He sighed.

"You're right, it's not fair." She answered bitterly. "Because I don't know if you've noticed Lando, but the whole fucking world does not revolve around you and your career."

"I never said that!" He shot back, voice becoming raised.

"But yet when you want to abandon me and Isla for weeks on end to go racing, play golf and whatever else it is you do all the time, that's fine?" Hannah asked. "I ask you for this one thing and you get to make me feel like a bad mother?"

"I have never said you're a bad mother." He shook his head.

"Well you're fucking making me feel like it." The tears she'd been holding back finally spilling down her cheeks. "I don't know why you don't think I can be her Mum and do my job at the same time, maybe it's because you're doing a shitty job of doing both things, but I can and I will."