<ENDS>

‘I need something,’ Cat wails, ‘can I have a quote?’ she asks Alex.

He rifles through his notepad and shrugs, ‘Can’t help you – I’m having enough trouble making mine fit.’

‘You owe me one,’ Josh says, moving his chair nearer to her. ‘I got Lomers at the media scrum. He said, “Good for Tyler. Strength is a system of will and fitness – he has the maillot jaune because he deserves it.” I’m using it, but you can too – there were quite a few people around him.’

‘Josh,’ said Cat whilst typing in the quote at the end of her report, ‘I love you.’

Josh looked rather pleased with himself. Alex looked somewhat taken aback and, after a surreptitious flick through his notebook, a little deflated too.

I need something, Fabian Ducasse thought to himself. I was down on the ground tasting dirt – that’s no place for me to be.

His body was sore and his psyche felt bruised. Sure, his soigneur could tend to the former, Jules Le Grand the latter, but Fabian knew his requirements better than anyone. He had to feel on top, in control; that he was a man who could dominate anything he wished. He needed to reassert his strength, his supremacy. He regarded himself in the mirror in his hotel bathroom. He needed a shave. More importantly, he needed to rid himself of the hint of unease he alone could detect in his eyes. Easy. It would take one thing. He pulled a baseball cap on low, donned sunglasses and a non-branded sweatshirt. He regarded his reflection again and nodded. He still needed a shave but he liked what he saw. He phoned one of the Système Vipère mechanics and demanded to be driven across Nantes to an insalubrious area he had discovered on a race some years ago, and had subsequently revisited on a few occasions since.

‘Wait around there,’ he ordered, watching until the mechanic was out of sight before opening a front door without knocking. Of course it was open. It was a brothel.

Fabian was out less than quarter of an hour later, the swagger in his step reflected in the burning glow of his steady eyes. He licked his lips and than spat in the gutter. He felt much better. Restored. And look! Only 8.45 p.m. He’d be asleep in an hour.

Cat was in her hotel room, doing as Ben had requested. She’d finished her work, wolfed down steak frites with Alex and Josh at a small brasserie just near their hotel, she had just had a shower and was contemplating what to wear and quite when to sneak out to the Hôtel Ibis when her mobile phone rang.

‘Darling?’

‘Django!’

‘Cat, my girl,’ Django said, ‘you sound quite awful.’

Cat was taken aback. ‘I feel,’ she told him, ‘fine. More than fine.’

‘Well,’ Django said, ‘you sound lousy. How is it all going? It was fantastically exciting today – all those bodies all over the place – and then that Yankee bloke winning.’