I can’t really.

Are you deluding yourself?

I’ve never felt so at home as I have here, within this moving world, over these past three weeks. I’m exhausted. But look what’s happened to me, see how I’ve changed, grown.

Good for you, Cat. Well done.

‘Fabian is thirty-one seconds behind you,’ said Rachel, peeling the skinsuit off Vasily Jawlensky, ‘he will not be able to make up thirty-two seconds tomorrow. You are the maillot jaune and I’m so proud of you.’ Vasily looked at his soigneur, and saw straight to the softness she liked to believe her wiry exterior hid from view. Rachel McEwen was one of the most important people in his life. He could not conceive of riding the Tour de France, any race in fact, without her.

Rachel handed her naked rider a pair of tracksuit bottoms and fresh socks. As he took them, their hands brushed and instantaneously their eyes were locked. Vasily made to kiss her and for a suspended moment, Rachel felt her lips yield. But she turned her head consciously and Vasily’s mouth touched down on her cheek. His lips parted and confusion swept across his face. Rachel tried to smile kindly. A swift soft sadness clouded his eyes momentarily. He tipped his head to one side. Rachel shook her head, making the gesture meek and small. Vasily physically pulled his body taller by an inch or two.

‘Thank you, Rachel,’ he said huskily, ‘for all that you do for me.’

‘Hey,’ said Rachel softly but lightly, ‘I’m only doing my job.’

She watched her rider leave. It was the closest she had come to seeing true emotion in the man. Not that she knew it, it was the closest anyone had come.

Strong. Solitary. Enigmatic.

‘Makes me sad,’ Rachel said quietly to herself, ‘for him and for the women he will never allow himself.’

Fabian’s efforts pleased him on an objective level – it was the best Time Trial he had ever ridden – but frustrated him supremely on an emotional level.

It is still not enough to win the Tour de France.

He couldn’t believe it. Reality dawned and he awoke to it as if trapped in a terrible dream.

Last year I said next year. This year I must now say next year. Next year. Le Tour de France. Le maillot jaune. Fabian Ducasse.

‘André!’ he called down to the mechanic in the hotel car park. André looked up and smiled. Fabian saw that Jules Le Grand was walking towards a team car. ‘When you go to fuck the Zucca soigneur, sabotage their bikes, hey?’

Jules Le Grand jerked his head. He knew the sabotage part was a joke. But to confirm his suspicions that his mechanic was indeed involved with the soigneur of his rival team he found to be no laughing matter.

When André made love tenderly with Rachel later and for a leisurely, mutually gratifying hour and a half, he murmured her name as he came. At much the same time but for a fraction of the duration, Fabian was fucking some fan he had found loitering in the foyer when he went there expressly to prowl. He said nothing when he came. There wasn’t anything to say. He hadn’t asked her name. Actually, he had. But he hadn’t listened to what she had said.