‘Twat!’ Josh hissed. ‘You missed the sodding junction.’

‘Bollocks!’ Alex retorted. ‘I know this area – it’s a short cut.’

‘Short cut, my arse,’ said Josh, with no malice.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Alex affectionately.

Rachel and André are not travelling together but they are communicating the whole route long. Rachel behind the wheel of the vast Zucca MV truck and André driving the enormous Système Vipère lorry. They are chatting most affably via indicators and hazard lights. They are taking it in turns to overtake so that they can draw alongside and grin idiotically and stare longingly and voice their desires by looks alone, saying things with their eyes that they’ll fulfil in person later. Rachel couldn’t even speak to Cat on the mobile phone. Not because to do so would be dangerous if not illegal, but because she claimed she was talking to André. Which she was. Not dangerous. Not illegal. Lovely.

And Ben York and Cat McCabe are travelling north together. They haven’t said much. Ben is somewhat shellshocked by Luca’s news and Cat is just plain exhausted. And if they were to speak, and the conversation was not focused on what it is that exists between the two of them, it would be instead only idle chatter. And a glaring effort not to broach sensitive issues that really ought to be confronted. I could suggest to them that they throw caution to the wind, bite the bullet and launch right in, but they wouldn’t listen. I could yell at them to confide how they feel, but they wouldn’t hear me. All I can do is eavesdrop. And wince that Cat has said ‘glorious landscape’ for the third time in an hour.

They fill the car with fuel, sit a while and have coffee that is absurdly good for a motorway service station. Ben mentions the weather. Cat hopes it will stay dry for tomorrow’s Time Trial. Every time she looks at him, she has to glance away, for she surges with desire and finds herself wanting to grin inanely. To her, he is most handsome and his seemly exterior speaks volumes of the personality she has grown to know and adore. Love, Cat?

Ssh. Don’t spoil the moment.

Why on earth would love spoil a thing?

Stop it. I just want to absorb everything of the present.

Ben buys a packet of Petite Beurre biscuits for the journey and suggests to Cat that they motor on. Cat, who has let the straps of her sundress hang down and who is turning her face to the sun, nods. She appears merely to be soaking up warmth, developing a nice colour to her cheeks and shoulders. Actually, her mind is in overdrive with thoughts bombarding her and sentences, some complete, some unstructured, all unspoken, racketing around. She wants to stay firmly in the here and now. If she opens her eyes, she will have to follow Ben to the car and they will restart their journey and the minutes and the kilometres will be swallowed up, taking her closer and closer to going home.