‘Who’ve you got?’

‘Um – not a problem.’

‘Sure, but who?’

‘It’s no problem – honestly. Who do you want?’

‘Cat,’ Andy cautioned.

‘Any news on my job?’ she continued, thinking her idea for a Rest Day vignette very good and wondering to whom else she could pitch it.

‘Not as yet,’ said Andy.

Frustrated but not discouraged, Cat plugged an earpiece into her dictaphone and set Luca’s interview running. Alex and Josh arrived when she was half-way through it. Ben rang her at much the same time as the boys beeped their laptops into life.

‘Hurry up,’ was how he greeted her, ‘I’m horny.’

It gave her the impetus to decline a coffee break, to concentrate hard on Luca’s gems and hardly touch the pause or rewind buttons.

‘The only humping for me will be going up and down those fucking mountains.’

Darling Luca.

‘Are you nervous?’ Cat murmured out loud, in sync with her final question to the rider.

‘That is not a question for me to answer,’ she replied, alongside Luca in her ear. And then she remembered asking him if he was scared and he’d nodded and it wouldn’t have come out on tape and she’d never impart his answer anyway. Finished. Done. She set her dictaphone to rewind, saved her work, flexed her over-exerted fingers, raised her eyebrow at Alex who looked ghastly but self-satisfied and raised her eyebrow at Josh, hoping he’d read it as a request for a moment’s privacy.

‘Finished?’ he asked.

‘Yup,’ said Cat, her eyebrow still at work. Her phone rang. It was Ben.

‘Get your gorgeous ass over here, McCabe. I have wheels, wine and wanton wishes. Come on!’

My slate is clear – it’s Fate! thought Cat, gathering her things enthusiastically.

‘Did you want to nip out?’ Josh asked, seeing that Alex was staring gormlessly into the middle distance. ‘For a quick chat?’

‘Oh,’ said Cat, suddenly flummoxed, ‘later – would that be OK? I mean, I wouldn’t want to prolong your work – it is the Repos.’

‘Sure,’ said Josh, ‘can I borrow your Luca tape?’

‘Sure,’ said Cat, handing over her dictaphone, a swarm of butterflies making her all but float out of the salle de pressé with huge anticipation, much lust, a sizeable smile and a veritable gleam in her eyes.

If the salle de pressé was like the university library at the end of term, airy, fresh-smelling, laid back and less than half full; the town of Le Cap D’Arp was like a cycling holiday camp. Cat was passed by Tour de France riders in little posses twiddling through town on their way out for a few hours to keep their legs turning. On the beach, Cat noted those who’d trained early and who were now sunbathing in a futile bid to neutralize the demarcation of their bronzed legs, necks and arms from their lily-white T-shirt chests and pale feet and hands. Elsewhere, others were with their families, being treated like royalty by the local cafés and those not in view were obviously indulging in time and space with their wives and girlfriends. Or being massaged. Or playing computer games. Or sleeping. Vasily Jawlensky had become the Pied Piper of cycling; when he left his hotel with Fugallo to ride, scores of kids, teenagers, amateurs and fans pedalled alongside, behind, some even taking their chance in front; everyone smiling. A little way out of town, Vasily glanced at Gianni and the two of them streamed onwards, giving the impression that their followers had come to a complete standstill though they all continued to pedal their hearts out.