‘Mademoiselle?’ said the clerk, with a superciliously raised eyebrow that made Rachel clench and reclench her fist as if she was about to aim a blow.

‘Look,’ Rachel said in a cold, courteous voice that served to accentuate her outrage more descriptively than any physical attack, ‘it is not my room I want changing, but room 46. I am not having one of my riders sleeping on a camp bed in a cramped room with crap curtains.’

‘Wait,’ said the clerk witheringly, dropping the one eyebrow and then twitching the other, along with a slight smirk, as he disappeared. He returned with his smirk and also a smartly dressed woman.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Rachel. ‘I was trying to explain to your colleague that I find it unacceptable that there is only one decent bed in room 46. I have two riders sharing and I will not have either one sleeping on a camp bed.’

‘Miss?’ the manageress, as she transpired to be, enquired.

‘Mc–Ewen,’ said Rachel briskly, breaking her name as she only ever did when she was deadly serious and very annoyed. ‘I am soigneur for Zucca MV.’

‘Zucca!’ the lady marvelled quietly, flushing slightly. ‘Miss McEwen, I am terribly sorry. I will of course rectify this problem immediately.’ She rustled through an index file, tapped officiously at a computer and gabbled at the clerk who scurried off, the smirk wiped from his face. She raised an eyebrow in a much more impressive way than her male junior. ‘Room 46 – Massimo Lipari? Ah, and Gianni Fugallo – a good domestique.’

Rachel smiled.

Here’s the link. Here’s the bond. A passion shared is a problem solved.

‘I shall put them in room 40 – I don’t know how this could have happened and I apologize.’

‘Thank you,’ Rachel said, the relief in her voice softening her tone, her hair no longer seeming wild but, rather, merely unkempt through stress and a devotion to priorities in which concerns for coiffure were too petty to feature.

‘Miss McEwen,’ the manager cleared her voice, ‘if it is possible, an autograph? From Massimo? For me – Claudia?’

‘Bien sûr,’ Rachel nodded.

Funny how I know just enough idioms in French, Spanish, Italian – even Portuguese and Flemish – to get by! If we ever raced in Latvia, no doubt I’d learn the lingo for ‘no problem’, or ‘cheers’, or ‘put your hands away I’m not interested in sleeping with you’.

Rachel marched back to the lifts, back to room 46 and told a dejected-looking Gianni not to worry. Then she made two trips to room 40, transferring the riders’ bags and belongings while they sat on the one good bed, resting their legs and feeling the minutes ebb away and the Tour loom ever nearer.

Wednesday. Hôtel Splendide, Delaunay Le Beau. 5.30 p.m.

‘Yes?’ said the manageress to, remarkably, another British girl.

‘MissMcCabe,’ Cat strung in a rushed whisper, looking around the foyer, her heart still racing from the excitement of spying the cars of three different teams in the hotel car park, emblazoned with logos and crowned with the bike racks.