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"Nobody can hear us, can they? I don't want to be overheard."
As the opening gambit of a telephone conversation, this was one of the most absurd. I held the receiver away from my ear and heard him repeat the question – or was it a demand - louder this time, as if he thought I was deaf. I might have retired, but I wasn't old and doddering just yet.
I sighed and brought the receiver back to me. "No, Kimi. Nobody can overhear us. Although why anyone would want to listen to my 'phone lines is beyond me…"
"You're still someone. A star. A hero." Kimi sounded sulky now, the way I remembered him to be. "People still care about what you say and do. I wouldn't be surprised if 7 Päivää had a wire-tap on you, just to see if the rumours are true."
"What rumours?" I gripped the 'phone hard, already irritated by his call.
"The ones about you and Erja having problems," Kimi said, far too nonchalantly for my liking. "You know, the rumours about you having an affair."
"That's not true," I said. "And if that's the reason you've called me, then our little chat is over. I expected better of you, Kimi."
His voice crackled. "Expect. Yes, you always expected so much of me. Just like Ron. He expected me to become you – not just your replacement, but to mould myself into your image. Oh, and I had to win races from the start, too. I didn't have the luxury of four years' grace -"
I'd heard enough. "Goodbye, Kimi."
As soon as I put down the 'phone, it started to ring again. I kept my back to it, wondering why the hell I should bother with him. Kimi had made it abundantly clear that he didn't need me, didn't want me in his life – not in any capacity. And that suited me fine. If I'd wanted continual drama, then I'd have stayed at McLaren; because, in a way, what he'd said was true. Ron would have done – probably still would do – anything for me. But that's not how it works.
The shrilling of the 'phone became insistent. I lifted the receiver, but warily this time. There was a moment of silence on the line, as if he was surprised at my capitulation.
"Are you there?" he asked, and there was a note of uncertainty amidst the aggression.
"Just tell me what you want," I said.
A pause. "Your advice," he said, and I nearly dropped the 'phone.
"You want my advice? Me? Why not your good friend Salo?" – because yes, it still hurt that he took all my well-meaning help and my portfolio of useful contacts and then just whored himself out to Salo – "What can I possibly give you advice for, Kimi, that you can't get from anybody else?"
My voice had risen during this speech, so I was almost shouting down the 'phone. I could hear him wince, and then, faintly, he said: "I don't want anybody to overhear us!"
"My God! What are you afraid of?" I snapped. "Is it something that Jenni wouldn't approve of, is that it?"
Another silence. We Finns are good at silences. They can say so much: intimate friends or lovers can have an entire conversation in silence. Kimi and I were neither, but I know him and I know how F1 can twist the mind, so I could read a wealth of information into his silence.
Guilt. Anger. Frustration. A desperate plea for understanding.
I caved in again. "Just tell me. Maybe I can help, maybe I can't."
"You can." He sounded so confident, although I sensed that it was the kind of confidence that, if you knocked it, would prove to be hollow. "It's… personal."
"Not about McLaren, then."
"No!" Now he sounded surprised. "The problems at McLaren are not my fault. The engine, the chassis… these are things the team must fix if they want me to be champion. I know already I can be a champion. There is no problem there."
"Mmm," I said, vaguely. "That's right. You were pretty close last year. Just a few more points and you'd have had it -"
"I would have had those points earlier in the year," Kimi said. "In Brazil."
"A stupid race," I said. "That was the last time we talked, if I remember right."
He went quiet, and then said softly, "Yes. I asked for your advice then, too."
"And you didn't take it."
I could hear him bristle. "You wanted me to leave him alone, to let him walk all over me! You said I was being a child about it, that I would learn to take what life gave me with more grace!"
"But you couldn't." I leaned against the wall and started to pick at the dado rail. Erja hated it when I did that: there were scratch-marks along a five-inch section of the plaster, previous casualties of difficult 'phone-calls I'd had to make.
"It was my decision," Kimi said, with more emphasis than he needed.
"Sure," I said. "My problem was, that Carlo is a genuinely nice guy. It was hardly his fault that he won the race last year. It's a miracle anybody managed to finish at all."
I remembered the race – of course I did. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Everything went wrong, from the weather to the tyres to the use of the Safety Car. Only a handful of drivers finished, and even then the race was cut short, and decided – as most of the more lunatic GPs seem to be – in the pitlane, not on the track.
"Actually," I added, "I think David should have won."
Kimi made a disgusted noise. "I won," he said, stridently. "I won, and then they took it from me and gave it to him."
I remembered that, too: the touching little ceremony filmed later the following week, when the FIA had determined that Giancarlo Fisichella was the actual winner of the Brazilian Grand Prix. Carlo had thought on the day that he'd been the winner, and there had been smiles and tears of joy at Jordan. For Carlo, it had been the crowning moment of a career that, for one reason or another, had failed to deliver him the package he needed.
I'd been happy for him. A genuinely nice guy, as I'd told Kimi. One of the few drivers on the grid I had any respect for in terms of sheer innate talent. He was smart, but not smart enough; he had a huge heart, but not the head for politicking. And that was where the problem lay.
"Can you imagine," I asked Kimi back then, "being cast up onto the highest pinnacle by a huge wave; and then, just while you catch your breath and look around you, the same wave rolls back out again, taking you with it. Can you imagine that?"
And back then, Kimi had said, "No. I would not let the wave take me."
Now I said, "History doesn't just remember winners."
"It does." His voice was flatter than it usually sounded. "Last year could have been so different. I could have won the Championship. If only I had those few extra points from Brazil -"
"But you didn't," I said, breaking into his complaint before it could spiral out of control the way it had done before. "Kimi, it wasn't the right time for you to win."
He sneered. "You can say that. You've won two titles. Maybe you'd have won a third, if you hadn't been so… nice to Michael."
"Maybe," I said, bored with the discussion. "But you know what? It didn't happen. Just like last year wasn't your year. Just as every year isn't David's year. Let it go, Kimi."
"I can't," he said, and his voice broke again. Even in Finnish he's abrupt, racing through his words. The contrast between us couldn't be greater than in the way we use language; or in the way we use silence.
Eventually I asked, "Are you still seeing him?"
Kimi made a hissing sound, and then he said, "Yes. And that is why I need your advice."
Last year, in anger, Kimi had called me to ask my opinion on a certain matter. At the time I'd thought he just needed to rant to a fellow countryman, someone who'd understand the vagaries of F1, someone who'd reassure him. But instead, he'd wanted me to sanction an act of vengeance. Carlo had been the one to rob him of points, and so Carlo had to pay – and the easiest way Kimi could see of doing this was to make Carlo his lover.
I'd had enough of sexual games and power-play. I'd tried to leave that behind when I left. So it was with a great sense of disappointment that I listened to Kimi's plans to lure in Carlo and to make him an emotional wreck. Worse still, when I asked Kimi why he'd bothered to ask my advice about the matter in the first place, he said, "Because you've been there. You know how long it takes until a man breaks. How long, do you think, will Fisichella take?"
I couldn't give him an answer then, and I doubted I could add much more now. I was surprised that Carlo was still with Kimi; but then, I'd been surprised when Carlo had fallen headlong into Kimi's little snare. Looking back on it, I suppose they fulfilled the criteria of 'opposites attract': Carlo, dark and beautiful, and Kimi, fair and sharp-featured. The flamboyant, warm-hearted Italian and the icy-cold, reserved Finn. And people thought Michael and I were mismatched!
I had no idea what sort of relationship they had. I prayed for both their sakes that it was not the same as Michael's and mine. Nobody should have to live through such pain, no matter how pleasurable the high points. And besides, I knew that Kimi had started it from the desire to wound, not from any feeling of affection or love.
But I knew Carlo somewhat, and so I wondered…
"What's happened?" I asked. "What do you need to know?"
Kimi sighed, and it was such a mournful sound that I stopped peeling at the plasterwork and concentrated on listening to him instead.
"He has more points than me," Kimi began; and I nearly hung up again. I didn't want to hear about the points' difference in the Championship: that was an issue for the team.
"I know," I said, hoping to hurry him along. "You have one and he has, what, five? That's an indictment on McLaren, not on you – as you've already said."
"I thought he'd be pleased," he said, and he sounded puzzled.
"Why should he be? Five points is nothing compared to Michael's sixty. The only other man he needs to think of besting is his team-mate, and if memory serves me right, then Massa is exactly equal with him. So your one point, or David's four points, will mean nothing to him."
There was a silence as Kimi tried to process this. "But he should at least be pleased that I have less points than him."
"Would it make you feel better if he gloated?" I asked, incredulous.
"Maybe." Kimi sounded moody again. "But as you said, he's a nice guy. He probably thinks it's bad form to laugh at your lover's attempts to best you."
"Or maybe he can detach the competitive aspect of your jobs away from your relationship," I said. "That's the only way you can do it – to keep the two lives separate. You already do it with Jenni – she doesn't know about Carlo, does she?"
"That's different. I actually care about her."
I stabbed at the dado rail again and dislodged a small chunk of plaster. "And yet you're talking to me about a man you don't care for? Strange priorities, Kimi."
He huffed, irritated. "I told him, all right? I told him what I was doing, why I'd chosen him, why we were fucking in the first place. And yet still he doesn't gloat! I don't understand. If I were him, I would laugh and laugh; I would think it was payback for all the times I'd been fucked. But he doesn't gloat."
I remained quiet and waited.
"He – he says he is sorry for me. That he wishes he could give me his points." Kimi laughed, a horrid sound. "As if I would want points from a Sauber! But, Mika – he doesn't laugh. He doesn't gloat or lord it over me, when I would do that to him if our positions were reversed. He doesn't do it, even though he knows now that everything we have is false. And that's what I don't understand. How can he be like that? How can he be so – so -"
"Forgiving?" I asked, and I had a small smile at the thought that at least Carlo had not, in the end, disappointed me. "There's a difference between the two of you: a huge difference, Kimi. You look upon yourself as someone cheated of a prize that may – or may not – have been rightfully yours. You've placed yourself in the position of the loser. But Carlo… For as long as I've known him, he's always been grateful and excited about being given the opportunity to race. No matter what happens – even when victory is snatched away from him – he's always the winner."
There was a long, tense silence at the other end of the line. And then, without saying another word, Kimi hung up on me.
I stood there listening to the hiss of static and surveying the damaged dado rail, and then I placed the receiver back into its cradle. I doubted that I'd have to give Kimi any advice ever again. That thought pleased me, and so I went into the kitchen, whistling.