Checking in to her room just to dump her bags, Cat noted the minibar, the satellite TV, the toiletries in the bathroom but she craved her beautiful little bedroom at the Auberge Claudette in Bordeaux. She even found herself reminiscing wistfully about featureless motels and insalubrious two-star establishments.

‘I’m going to the Champs-Elysées,’ Cat told Alex and Josh in the salle, bringing them Orangina and chocolate at enormous cost from her minibar.

‘You won’t see a bloody thing,’ Josh warned her, but wondering where she’d set up her laptop anyway.

‘You’d be better off staying here,’ Alex advised, ‘finish the work quick and then party.’

‘I’m in Paris,’ Cat explained, somewhat aghast, ‘on the last day of the Tour de France. I can’t possibly not walk the streets.’ She ignored Alex’s predictably raised eyebrow. ‘I just want to experience the atmosphere,’ she justified. ‘If a socket comes free, can you plug me in?’

The atmosphere out on the streets bewildered her and she felt as lost and as small as when she’d first arrived in France. Though it was bringing her full circle, it depressed her. The fact that it was cloudy made yesterday, with all the sunshine, seem very distant. Remember the torrential rain from Pau to Luchon? The sleet on the Galibier? The phenomenal heat from Nantes to Pradier? Remember skinny-dipping in the Atlantic? Sitting and star-gazing at Le Cap D’Arp? When was all of that? This year? Surely not. A dream away. Was it real? Did it actually happen? Was I really there? Can I take it home? Can I come again?

Who are all these people milling about? Where have they been these past three weeks? Where were they when the boys were struggling up lonely Pyrenean passes? Or on monotonous stretches of landscape without even farmers on tractors to wave them on? How many here know what it’s like at the Plateau de Boudin? How many stood for hours cheering for the Time Trial at Computaparc?

Why so harsh, Cat?

There are an estimated one million spectators in Paris today.

You should be pleased, they’re all here in support of your precious sport.

Look at the throngs! See, the Arc de Triomphe is positively swamped by what look like, to all intents and purposes, football fans. They’re rowdy. Urban. Unfamiliar.

How wonderful for the riders to return valiant and battle-sore to such clangorous support.

But most of this lot will only have seen the riders hitherto on television, mostly aerially.

Rather like you, hitherto. So, how lucky they are, then, to be treated to an afternoon with the lycra swarm in the flesh, close enough to smell and touch even.

I’m just feeling out of sorts. I don’t want to go home tomorrow.

We know.

I don’t see anyone I recognize. It’s almost impossible for me to move around. My pass seems redundant. There’s no family to belong to here. Just a huge city to contend with. I phoned Ben but we conceded we’d never find each other. I can’t wait for tonight, to see him. And yet I’m dreading tonight because it’s our last and will bring me within hours of having to say goodbye.