Will you be covering it?

I hope so.

For whom?

Well, Andy at Maillot has suggested a strategy meeting. Tomorrow, in fact, though I really can’t afford to hold my breath for the Features Editorship. My credit card bill is enormous. However, Jeremy Whittle has come up trumps and wants me to report the Vuelta for Sportsworld’s website. That’ll just about cover my expenses. Hopefully by then I might have a couple of freelance commissions. But you know, to be affiliated to the world of the peloton is riches enough for me.

Who’s meeting you at Victoria station?

I haven’t told anyone what time I’ll be home. I think it’s important I make my return journey by myself.

I think it’s important that you walk to the bow of the ferry, to bravely await the sight of the white cliffs of Dover.

Ben York

Ben sits in the departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport. Luca is milling about, delighted when anyone approaches him for an autograph or to commiserate on his bad fortune.

I had to say goodbye to Cat this morning.

You did?

It wasn’t easy. It’s been a phenomenally all-encompassing month.

Did you tell her how you love her?

Hearing it out loud, and hearing it back – I found it intensely emotional.

‘Ben, look at this – fucking fabulous, hey?’

Luca has bought a lighter in the shape of the Eiffel Tower which plays the ‘Marseillaise’ when activated.

‘But you don’t smoke,’ Ben laughs.

‘But look,’ he stresses, brandishing his acquisition, ‘listen!’ Luca sits alongside his doctor, frustrated that, though he is no longer in pain, he is still trussed up and out of action. He regards Ben. ‘So,’ he says. Ben looks at him. Shrugs and nods.

‘It was some Tour, Jonesy,’ says Ben, ‘huge.’

‘The Babe McCabe,’ Luca muses, striking his lighter on and off, never for long enough to move beyond the opening bars of the French National Anthem. Ben nods. ‘You’re good together,’ Luca says whilst nodding and humming thoughtfully. Ben looks away. ‘You see her some more?’ Luca asks. ‘I hope so. You two should – you know? It would be a waste not being together.’

‘Yup,’ Ben says, looking around the departure hall, looking intently at the seam of his trousers, at Luca’s hands fiddling with the lighter. ‘She’s quite something and she lives the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to me. But she’s what I want.’

‘And I always gets what I wants,’ says Luca in distorted American. He regards Ben. ‘Can it work? With your schedules? Your time zones?’

Ben falls silent. ‘I hope so,’ he says earnestly, ‘I really do.’

‘This month will shoot by,’ Luca says encouragingly, ‘before you know it – bam! The Vuelta. Give her a call,’ he suggests, offering his mobile phone for the purpose.

‘I just have,’ says Ben, longing to hear her voice again, torturing himself with the vivid memory of the now unattainable reality of what going to sleep and then waking up alongside Cat is like.