‘Oh,’ said Luca, thinking he should sip his coffee and make use of the caffeine, but wondering when he might need to speak again.

‘I am referring,’ Jules continued, ‘to a rider who shows more than promise. Indeed, this rider has the promise of sheer brilliance. He recovered supremely yesterday – his morale was high and his legs were strong. He rode sensibly and scaled the General Classification by eight positions.’ Luca nodded and thought he really ought to drink the coffee if he was to manage to pee and then absorb two more doses of caffeine.

‘Please,’ said Jules, ‘drink – I know what you need, what you like. Coffee with three sugars.’

Luca drank; a little faster than he’d like, but with Jules now silent and staring intently at him, relaxing over coffee was not a possibility.

‘This rider of whom I speak,’ said Jules rather theatrically, looking to the middle distance as if seeing a vision of his subject there, ‘has enormous talent. But it must be nurtured, it must be nourished, loved. It must be developed and honed. True potential must never be wasted.’ He paused till he knew he had Luca’s gaze. ‘Sometimes true talent can remain untapped.’ He paused again. ‘Travesty!’ he spat. Luca nodded earnestly, now needing to pee rather urgently. ‘This rider I speak of,’ said Jules, ‘is you, Luca Jones. You are a good rouleur but you could well be fantastic. You have the makings of a true champion. Système Vipère would be honoured to have you as a team member.’

Luca Jones almost pissed his shorts and his coffee very nearly fountained out of his mouth. But he crossed his legs and swallowed hard so he could murmur, ‘Fucking hell!’ instead. Jules was standing. ‘Think about it, Luca,’ he said. ‘I would of course say “name your price” but once I tell you of what I have in mind – the salary, the apartment, the bikes, the Système Vipère super micro hi-fi – I don’t think you will need to negotiate.’ He laid his hand on Luca’s shoulder, bent to his ear and spoke a figure that was roughly double Luca’s Megapac wage. And then Jules was gone. And Luca sat immobile, murmuring, ‘Fucking hell!’ desperate to phone Mama, to find Ben, to piss, to absorb caffeine, to run around the village yelling. ‘I have the makings of a true champion! I have enormous talent as long as it’s nourished and nurtured!’ Of course he did none of these. He sat alone, utterly speechless apart from ‘Fucking hell!’ whispered to himself at regular intervals.

There’s a Viper Boy, Luca remarked to himself as he was leaving the village. I could be riding with Jesper Fucking Lomers.

‘Ciao, Jesper!’ he greeted, making a detour, presuming, for some reason, that the whole team must have colluded on the potential acquisition of Luca Jones.

‘Luca,’ Jesper acknowledged, a little baffled at the magnitude of the young rider’s smile but pleased to respond to this likeable newcomer to the peloton. Briefly, Jesper watched Luca go on his way, before making his own way to Maison du Café. He took his coffee and went to sit with a posse of Dutch riders from various teams who liked to gather at one of the marquees each morning to sit in affable silence or chat quietly and usually, for some reason, in English. Today, Jesper chose silence but his was more reflective than sociable and the others sensed this and steered tactfully away from intrusion. Jesper looked around the village.