‘I’m rooming,’ Luca had shrugged. ‘Didier might want to rest. Ben will come back in an hour because then I must rest. But hey! I did well, no?’

‘You,’ Cat had responded, walking alongside Luca down the corridor to the doctor’s room, ‘are a star. It was a great ride – I’d say this is going to be a really fabulous first Tour for you.’

‘You’re a babe, Cat McCabe,’ Luca had said as they entered Ben’s room. ‘Hey! I’m a poet! Let me be your boyfriend,’ he had continued, ‘we can make beautiful babies. Or we can practise anyway.’

‘Work first,’ Ben had cautioned the rider whilst glancing at Cat, ‘play later. No sex during the Tour.’

‘Fuck you,’ Luca had protested.

‘Fuck you,’ Ben had responded, staring at Cat. With a sly smile he had left the room, informing them he would return in an hour. Luca took to Ben’s bed. Cat set her dictaphone on the bedside table and coiled herself into the armchair.

‘So, Luca,’ she had said, ‘let’s talk about you.’

‘Love and sex, Luca?’ Cat asks, glancing at her watch and seeing that the hour is almost up.

‘Sure,’ Luca shrugs, ‘both – sometimes separately, occasionally together. This is off the record, right?’

Cat nods, regards the dictaphone but does not switch it off.

‘I’m a young guy,’ the rider shrugs, ‘and I’m horny. I do a job where you can be superhero to many women. They don’t know you – but they think they do. It’s flattering, you know? If they offer, I’ll take it – but only if I can make it the next day. So, even if there was a chick yesterday with tits out and legs open, I would have refused because the Time Trial was today. Yes? But tonight – tonight is different.’

‘So you’re going on the prowl?’ Cat jests.

‘If I can stay awake,’ Luca responds ruefully, ‘cos you know something? Soon the only humping for me will be going up and down those fucking mountains.’

‘Are you nervous?’

‘That is not a question for me to answer.’

‘Are you?’ Cat asks tenderly, as a friend. Luca regards her. Cat thinks how young he suddenly seems, how his body so lithe and virile in front of her is also one that could be destroyed without notice; a body, a spirit, whose strength is supreme and yet continually on the brink.

‘Are you scared, Luca?’ Cat repeats.

Luca observes her again. She has come to the edge of the bed and laid a hand over his wrist.

He nods, knowing it won’t come out on dictaphone. She strokes his forehead and smiles down on him. He nods again.

Darling boy. Please be careful.

‘Time’s up,’ says Ben. ‘Luca, how’s your pulse?’

‘It’s good,’ the rider replies, unfurling himself from the bed. ‘I’ll go rest and bring it down further.’

‘Thanks, Luca,’ Cat says, her hand on his shoulder.

‘Cat-the-Babe-McCabe,’ says Luca, standing up, suddenly clad in the colourful public persona everybody loves and expects, ‘my pleasure.’ He kisses her three times and then leaves.