So she switches on her mobile phone. There are six messages. Rachel wants to know if she’d like to have tea and a window shop. Ben says hasn’t she finished her work yet, he thought she was just going to the salle de pressé to retrieve her stuff. Josh says Cat, where are you, please call, he’s worried. Alex says you’re cool, McCabe, don’t worry about it, your street cred has just rocketed. Ben tells her he’s just spoken to Josh, asks her to call, call now. Josh implores her to call, please Cat, just call.

It is because Cat can feel their affection and detect no ridicule that she decides she won’t be flying home from Toulouse. She knows she will be able to enter the salle de pressé tomorrow, even if she won’t quite be able to hold her head high. Who to phone? Who else.

‘Josh?’

‘Cat,’ Josh sighs, relieved, delighted, ‘where the fuck are you?’

‘Oh,’ Cat says, a wavering voice coming through more clearly than her breezy tone, ‘just sitting. Having a think.’

‘Do you want company?’ Josh asks.

‘Can we just chat on the phone?’ Cat replies, dipping her fingertips into a rock pool.

‘Sure,’ Josh says.

‘Josh, I’m so sorry,’ Cat says, hugging her knees and wishing she was hugging him.

‘You don’t need to be,’ Josh assures her.

‘No, I do,’ Cat confirms, her voice breaking, ‘I lied to you and I don’t feel good about that and I should have set records straight ages ago.’

‘About the non-existent boyfriend?’

‘Yes,’ Cat gasps, ‘how do you know about him?’

Josh wasn’t about to tell her that he was in Rachel’s room, eating cereal, with the Zucca MV soigneur and the Megapac doctor trying to hear both sides of the conversation. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ Cat was continuing, ‘when I, um, fibbed.’

‘Fibbed!’ Josh laughs. ‘It was a fucking whopper!’

‘I know,’ Cat concedes, trying to lean back against a rock but finding it singularly uncomfortable, ‘I know. But I did it for many reasons, many of them daft but mainly for my own security.’

‘I understand,’ says Josh honestly because, after lengthy conversations with both Ben and Rachel, he does.

‘I adore you, Josh,’ Cat says from the heart, clutching hers for unseen emphasis, ‘I truly value our friendship and I hope I haven’t hurt you.’

Josh smiles. He’s glad Ben and Rachel didn’t hear that. He wants to keep it for himself. He’s touched.

‘So,’ Cat says, ‘I’m not an immoral slapper.’

‘Good God no!’ Josh replies with great affection. ‘You’re just a sex-crazed compulsive liar.’

To be teased in such a way but with such affection at such a time is a true tonic for Cat and she is further soothed by Josh imploring her to come to the Zucca MV hotel to raid Rachel’s veritable grocery store.

‘Have you been with Rachel, then,’ Cat asks, ‘this whole time?’

‘Yes,’ says Josh, ‘and Ben’s here too.’

Cat poked her head around Rachel’s door with her eyes trained firmly on the carpet. She noted Rachel was wearing pretty sandals, Ben was in his lovely Docksiders and Josh was in trainers. Very slowly, she let her gaze travel upwards over three pairs of legs of varying degrees of hirsuteness. Rachel was sitting in a chair, Ben and Josh were on the edge of her bed. Gradually, Cat lifted her head and finally her eyes alighted on the three faces. Rachel was shaking hers slowly, with a wry smile etched across her lips. Josh had tilted his, broadcasting a supportive smile as loudly as he could. Ben was simply looking at her.