This Ain't A Fairytale- Lando Norris

35. Baby, all at once, this is enough

"Do you think maybe we should do something?" Hannah asked, watching nervously out of the window as Lando and Carlos continued to try and piece together the treehouse.

They'd been at it all day, the instructions had long since been discarded after Carlos had declared them even more useless than Lando himself and set about his own plan that he claimed would work perfectly.

Rebecca and Hannah had retreated back inside to cook some dinner, watching on as the two boys tried and failed at their various attempts at construction.

"I think if they were going to lose a limb they'd have done it by now." Rebecca shrugged, going back to chopping vegetables.

"Can you cut them a little bit smaller than that?" Hannah asked apologetically. "Like tiny little pieces that you wouldn't know were there."

"Of course." Rebecca nodded. "Isla going through a fussy eating stage?"

Hannah shook her head, chuckling. "Lando is actually worse than she is."

Rebecca laughed. "You've got your work cut out here, haven't you? And you thought adding another baby into the mix was a good idea?"

"The second baby wasn't necessarily in the plans." Hannah admitted, causing Rebecca to raise an eyebrow in surprise. "I uh... the start of this year I was pretty sure we were going to end up getting divorced."

"I had no idea." Rebecca looked at her in disbelief. "Everything with you two has always seemed so perfect... it was like some kind of fairytale the way the two of you met and just clicked."

Hannah shook her head with a wry smile. "Trust me, it might've looked like that from the outside but it's been anything but a fairytale. Marriage, having a family and trying to keep both of our careers going... it's been so, so hard."

"You guys are doing better now though?" Rebecca asked, hesitating as though she wasn't sure if she was about to open a can of worms.

Hannah nodded. "He's trying, that's all I ever really wanted him to do. I know he's not going to be here every night, he loves driving and I'd never want to take that away from him. It just took us a while to find the middle ground I guess."

"And what about you?" Rebecca asked, turning around to lean on the counter. The vegetables she'd been chopping now long since forgotten.

"What about me?" Hannah asked.

"Well, a second baby on the way... Lando still racing. I know you wanted to go back on tour, record some new music... are you still going to be able to do that?" Rebecca raised an eyebrow.

Hannah was quiet for a moment, considering her answer. "I mean the tour, logistically no. Not at the minute. Even if it weren't for all the travel there's no way I could put on the kind of shows the fans would expect in my current state." She patted her small bump as if to prove a point.

"But?" Rebecca prompted, because she could hear in Hannah's voice that there was something else.

"I uh... I did write a song."

"But?" Rebecca repeated, waiting for the rest of the story.

"I wrote it when Lando and I were in a really bad place and I don't know if I want to put it out there and do that to Lando." Hannah sighed. "Can you imagine the kind of scrutiny it would cause?"

"Can I hear it?" Rebecca asked curiously.

Hannah hesitated then pulled out her phone, pulling up the recording she'd made under duress from Alice who'd also wanted to hear it. She handed it to Rebecca, who pressed play and held the phone up to her ear, Hannah turning back to finish chopping the vegetables so she could make dinner.