Humming his Giro pop song brought no solace, a funeral dirge seemed more appropriate, but he opted for the sad song of love and loss his grandmother had crooned to him under the olive trees when he was a child. He had so wanted to be King of the Mountains; the title suited him as much as the jersey. He made a solemn procession to the bathroom, took a razor and shaved off his goatee beard. He almost wept. And then he saw how the skin around his chin was ever so slightly, but certainly recognizably paler. He yelled in frustration. He needed fresh air. He eased up a window and gulped deeply. He gazed at the team truck, envisaging the bike that failed him hanging from its hook. Let it hang!

Fifteen minutes later, Rachel answered her door in her towel, so insistent was the rapping and banging and hollering outside her room.

‘What you think you do?’ Massimo spat, pushing past her, his eyes searching every nook of the room.

‘I’m about to have a bath!’ Rachel remonstrated, noting that she ought to change the dressing on his knee first.

‘You bad bitch,’ Massimo growled, ‘what you do? You poison me?’

‘Mass!’ Rachel exclaimed, flummoxed and truly taken aback.

‘Or you are stupid and maybe he put something in my drink, no?’ he shouted. ‘He make me bonk.’

‘Who?’ Rachel pleaded, thinking she ought to work also on Massimo’s shoulder to prevent it stiffening.

‘Maybe he turn you away from me,’ Massimo declared, ‘make you not look after me so well?’

‘Who?’ Rachel implored, prophesying that Massimo would either hit her or burst into tears.

Massimo did the latter. Rachel secured her towel and sat on her bed beside him, laying an arm across the rider’s quivering shoulders.

‘Poor Mass,’ she said, ‘what a terrible day for you.’

‘Bad bitch,’ he sobbed.

‘What have I done?’ Rachel asked, trying not to be offended.

‘I see you in the truck – with the Viper mechanic. You are stupid! He is dangerous!’

Rachel, who was utterly at ease with her level of intelligence and with the authenticity of André’s virtues, was nonetheless agitated by Massimo bombarding into her personal life.

‘I go tell our directeur!’ Massimo cautioned. ‘Then I go tell L’Equipe.’

Though Rachel would have quite liked a profile in France’s famous sports paper, she knew that it would not be her sex life which warranted any such exposure. She accepted that Massimo’s concerns were legitimate, for the good of the team, but still Rachel was exasperated.

‘I’m entitled to some privacy, Massimo,’ she said.

‘Why you do it?’ Massimo demanded. ‘You spy? Who you poison next? Vasily? He ride like shit today.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Rachel said emphatically, ‘I was just having a shag.’

Massimo regarded her blankly. ‘You?’ he gasped, utterly staggered, as if considering for the first time that Rachel McEwen had a libido, let alone an active sex life. ‘You? Rachel?’

‘Me, Rachel,’ she said with steel in her voice.