On L’Alpe D’Huez Luca Jones dismounted. Now Cat gasped alarmed, having watched in silent horror her rider weaving and wavering before quitting his bike.

‘Get back,’ she murmured, ‘don’t stop. Don’t stop, Luca. Please.’ She closed her eyes, willing him to continue. Opening them, she saw the Megapac team car alongside Luca.

‘Make him get back,’ she implored, stirring the journalists around her but having no effect on Luca, ‘don’t let him stop. Tell him he can do it. Please.’

‘Let me stop,’ Luca sobs.

‘No! I will not have you fail. Get back and move. You are paid to do a job,’ the directeur, merely doing his, barks.

‘I can’t,’ Luca pleads.

‘You ride for Megapac,’ the directeur shouts, ‘you are not sick, you are lazy – ride on.’

‘Please,’ Luca pleads.

‘Last week you were the personification of success, today you are the epitome of failure.’

Luca remounts and slowly, painfully, painfully slowly, pedals onwards. He makes it up and around two further hairpin bends before dismounting again, this time sitting down on the tarmac, his fingers fixed as if still gripping the handlebars. His team car draws alongside. He looks at his directeur through his bloodshot eyes sunken deep into his skull. He is too cold, too desolate, to speak.

‘Luca, you will finish this Stage, you will not let L’Alpe D’Huez do this to you. How dare you even think of doing this to the team!’

‘My hands,’ Luca wails, ‘so cold.’

‘Piss on them,’ his directeur commands. ‘I forbid you to give up. You will not leave the Tour today.’

On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fen and Pip, drenched but warmed by Fritz’s schnapps, watched aghast as Luca Jones all but collapsed off his bike and sat shivering and hunched on the tarmac. They watched dumbfounded as he stood, stooped, rolled down his shorts a little and pissed. They watched stunned as he attempted to direct the flow over his hands. They watched in awe as he remounted. He was pushed along, from fan to fan, until his legs could take him forwards and his bike crept upwards and away. Pip chastized herself. She had been on the verge of moaning to Fen that she was wet, that it wasn’t much fun, that Channel 4 and a cup of tea were far preferable. But, having watched Luca, her triteness and selfishness appalled her. She needed to make amends. She summoned her spirit, found her voice and, with Marc and Fen and all her other new friends, cheered and urged each and every rider who passed her on their passage.

On L’Alpe D’Huez, four riders abandoned the Tour de France, bringing the number of riders retiring on Stage 14 to twelve. Luca Jones was not one of them. It took Massimo Lipari a phenomenal 36 minutes 51 seconds to climb the mountain, win the Stage and claim the polka dot jersey, a true King of the Mountains. It took Luca just under an hour to limp to the line. Ben was waiting in the team bus. When Luca crawled up the steps, Ben thought how his face was like that of a wizened old man, but how his fragility, his comportment, was that of a child. Luca looked to Ben and, just then, all the doctor felt he could do for the rider was to open his arms, into which the young rider collapsed. He sobbed, his body shaking in spasms of cold and fatigue.