Why can’t the Tour de France last for ever?

What a daft thing to say, Catriona McCabe. You’re the journaliste, you know the pressures on body and mind of a Stage Race three weeks long as it is.

‘Um,’ says Ben, displaying a vulnerability in voice and choosing vocabulary that surprises Cat. He is fidgeting; tapping the steering-wheel, checking his blind spot an inordinate number of times though he has not yet switched on the engine. Cat, bizarrely, feels suddenly empowered and calm. She takes her hand to his wrist and strokes him.

‘What?’ she asks quietly. Her voice, so soothing, so familiar, relaxes Ben and he turns to her.

‘I have something for you,’ he says, twisting and leaning to the back seat, the sight of his torso delineated beneath fabric making Cat swoon and reach for him. He is rummaging in his jacket pocket and presents her with something concealed in a wad of crumpled tissue paper. As soon as she has it in her hands, he starts the engine and drives off somewhat aggressively.

Cat unwraps. It is a watch. An extremely plain, second-hand watch with bold roman numerals and hands telling the wrong time. The strap is pale tan and very supple, very worn. Cat, who has only ever had plastic Swatches, thinks it quite the most gorgeous timepiece she has ever seen and she stares at him, staggered.

‘Beautiful,’ she whispers and it is audible to Ben above the din of the engine. He glances in the rear-view mirror, in the side mirror, cranes his sight well ahead, looks to one side. Just not at Cat. And nods nonchalantly.

‘It’s from La Chaux de Fonds – the centre of the watch-making industry. Sorry it’s not a Rolex,’ he muttered, the whole business of pampering a loved one being rather strange to him. ‘I saw it and thought it very you.’

‘It’s so me,’ Cat declares in a whisper, the business of being pampered by a loved one being rather new to her too. She snatches off her blue plastic watch and sets the new one on her wrist. ‘I love it.’

‘You need to wind it up and set it to the right time,’ Ben states the obvious ingenuously whilst doing lots of mirror-checking again. Cat does just that. The symbolism begins to dawn on her just as soon as Ben finds his mouth opening and words spilling out unchecked, uncensored.

‘I’ll be counting the hours, Cat,’ he says, ‘counting them. Wishing them away. Till I can have you again. Promise me you’ll have work for the Vuelta?’

Cat can’t answer because she’s staring hard out of the window, at the landscape fleeing backwards, at the knowledge of the Alps, the Golfe du Lion, at everywhere she’s been over the past three weeks, now so far behind but still on this very lump of land. She glances at her watch and has the crazy notion of turning the hands themselves backwards. Nobody before has spoken so beautifully, so emotively to her. He Who No Longer Exists would chastize her for being late, holler, ‘Can’t you tell the bloody time?’ or else curse her for being petty should she ever dare to be upset that he hadn’t come home at all.