I’m fine. Right as rain.

But you weren’t.

Well, I am now. Don’t dwell.

And here’s Ben, walking up the corridor, handsomely dishevelled in the face having not shaved, attractively crumpled in attire, wearing yesterday’s khakis and soft polo shirt.

‘Hey you,’ he says to Cat, going to the window-sill and kissing her bare knees.

‘Hullo,’ Cat says to him, placing her hand on his cheek and letting herself become lost in his eyes.

‘Seen the patient?’ Ben asks, glancing at his watch and noting that it’s half an hour since he left Luca in search of breakfast in lieu of last night’s supper.

‘No,’ says Cat, nodding towards the door, ‘there’s someone in with him.’

‘A nurse?’ Ben asks.

‘A male voice,’ Cat defines, ‘been in there for ages.’

‘Probably the surgeon,’ Ben reasons, looking out of the window and feeling enormously tired and still hungry.

Luca’s door opened. No surgeon came out. No doctor either, nor a male nurse. The man who emerged from Luca’s bedside, who nodded most courteously at Ben and brandished a suave smile at Cat, was Jules Le Grand. In a cream silk suit, he swished away along the corridor not registering the dropped jaws and bulging eyes of the journaliste and doctor.

‘How nice that Jules Le Grand came to see how Luca’s doing,’ Cat said feebly, persuading neither herself nor Ben in the process. They entered Luca’s room and Ben swiped away his gobsmacked, brooding silence.

‘Honestly, fuckwit,’ he laughed jovially, ‘I leave your bedside for a piss-awful cup of coffee and I return to find you in cahoots with slithery King Viper!’

Luca said nothing but stared at Ben very measuredly. Cat couldn’t bear the loaded silence so she broke it.

‘Hullo, Luca,’ she said, all but tiptoeing to his bedside, ‘how are you? I brought you flowers and a silly card. I couldn’t sleep on your behalf and now I have a stiff neck in sympathy.’

‘The Babe,’ said Luca, a smile briefly lighting otherwise pain-dulled eyes, ‘you’re the Babe.’

Cat proffered the flowers for Luca to sniff and then she tore open the envelope and presented the front of the card for his perusal before unfolding it and holding it for him to read. It was the only card in the room.

‘And Le Grand brought you his best wishes too?’ Ben all but demanded.

‘No,’ said Luca soberly, ‘he made me an offer I’d be a madman to refuse.’

Ben went over to the window and hated himself for hating Luca for loving Jules Le Grand and his ostentatious offer to join his fucking brilliant pro cycling team. Cat took a seat by Luca and fixed him with an expression of enthusiasm and support.

‘Will you take it?’ she asked. ‘The offer, the opportunity?’

‘Gatto,’ Luca wailed, ‘I love Megapac, my heart is there because my friends are there and my friends there are as close as family.’

‘It must be a desperately difficult decision,’ Cat deduced, glancing at Ben’s resolutely turned back, trying to implore him to offer advice, support, to join the conversation at the very least.