‘This is the life!’ Cat echoed and meant it. With eyes closed, her sense of scent was highly attuned. France. Definitely not England. Specifically, midway between Biarritz and Perpignan, close to Spain, far from Camden Town. Behind closed eyes, she replayed her coupling with Ben and projected imagery of future liaisons with him. She turned on her side, propped herself on an elbow and regarded Rachel. The soigneur looked at her, but was obviously seeing something quite else. Cat knew that look.

‘Vasily,’ Cat prompted, with what she hoped was a conspiratorial tone of camaraderie.

Rachel said nothing but nodded very slowly, rolled on to her back and remarked that the publicity caravan of floats and music preceding the race by an hour would soon be approaching.

I’ll let it lie, Cat decided thoughtfully. There’s a time and a place – it isn’t here but hopefully she might let me take her there sometime soon. She lay on her back and her mind streamed off to the tangents that sky-gazing generates.

‘We,’ said Rachel breezily, before closing her eyes to forestall the tongue-loosening effects of the troposphere, ‘oh. Nothing. I was. I was just.’

Cat knew very well what incomplete sentences were all about. She also knew that silence was not the best medium for revelation. The gaiety of the caravan, however, could well provide the perfect ambience. She awaited the raucous, garish publicity snake; daydreaming and sky-gazing until she could detect the distant toots of the approaching carnival.

‘Tell me,’ she prompted gently while the floats came upon them in a wave of colour, lousy music and grinning personnel scattering freebies like modern-day winnowers. Bolstered by a panini, Rachel spoke. Sustained by a ham roll, Cat listened attentively.

‘We kissed,’ Rachel began, with the hint of a grin she then saw wise to curtail. ‘I don’t know why,’ she shrugged, ‘but we kissed. Just before the Time Trial. I mean, really kissed.’

Cat’s jaw dropped.

You and Vasily – wow! Hearts will be breaking amongst the female fans world-wide.

Cat regarded Rachel. ‘Lucky you, I’d say. Just the once?’

Rachel shook her head. Then she shrugged. She did not look as ecstatic as Cat felt that someone kissed regularly by Vasily Jawlensky really ought.

‘Well,’ Rachel declared, standing, ‘it was probably nothing. Anyway, they’ll be along soon – come on, Shadow Girl, action stations.’

‘You liked it?’ Cat encouraged, following Rachel to the trunk of the car, thrilled to be given a Zucca MV jacket to wear to assist the riders looking for their lunch. ‘Or you didn’t? You want more – or you don’t?’ Cat observed a blush, barely perceptible but emphatically there, bloom across Rachel’s cheek.

Isn’t it funny what a man can do even to the most seemingly sussed and self-contained, self-content woman. Strong, sassy Rachel who keeps Zucca MV in order, shipshape, is here beside me churned up by a kiss.

‘It’s odd,’ Rachel elaborated, handing Cat a clutch of musettes like a bunch of balloons upside-down, ‘in all the time I’ve been involved in pro cycling, I’ve never even had to keep my professional and private lives separate – the one has never infringed on the other. I’ve not really been tempted. To be honest, apart from a wee dalliance last year with a journalist – a Dutch one, in case you’re wondering – I haven’t really had a private life at all and it’s not something I’ve minded. I’m a soigneur – I’m at the beck and call of the team. I don’t resent it.’