He spits again. He does not notice the crowds, nor does he hear them banging on the barriers, cheering. He does not listen to the fading, megaphone drone from a team car out on the course yelling ‘Allez! Allez! Allez!’ at the rider it is following. Hunter notices in a glance that his own team car is ready and he sees his name, printed on a board positioned above the front bumper. Dean.

‘Hunter Fucking Dean. Strong legs. Strong heart. Strong mind. Strong soul.’

He sweeps his bike through two controlled circles and ignores a fellow competitor leaving the ramp.

‘I am fit for this. I am prepared. I am built for this Time Trial. Legs to pump. Heart to pump. Mind steady. Soul ready.’

He takes his position, aware there is a man’s arm under his saddle, which presses lightly against his back.

‘Backbone – strength. Legs – stamina. Heart – power. Mind – focus. Soul – commitment. I am good. I am ready.’

The official is counting him down.

‘Open, lungs – fill. In. Out. Ready.’

Away. Allez.

‘Corner. On. On. Go go go. Corner. Done. Propel me, legs. Drive me, back. Cobbles. Take them. Take them. On. On.’

Hunter is riding well. He is surrounded by noise, but that of the ecstatic crowd is but a sub layer deep in the recesses of his awareness. What he hears is his breathing. As he sweeps the wide arc which takes him to the finishing straight, he does not listen to the growing clangour of the spectators thumping the barriers, he hears instead the pounding of his heart banging in his chest and in his mouth and in his stomach, flat out.

‘Legs. Legs. Legs. Eight twenty-seven. Eight twenty-seven. Come on, you fucker, go.’

Hunter is out of the saddle, stamping down hard, making a great sprint of his final metres. His head is down as he thrusts forward for the line, then it is up and over his shoulder immediately, to clock the time.

Eight minutes, twenty-seven point six eight seconds.

‘Point six eight. Shit.’

Django McCabe took three plain chocolate digestive biscuits and carefully swiped a lick of Marmite over the chocolate sides. He steeped three tea-bags in a small teapot, added three spoonfuls of sugar to the inch of milk in the china cup, selected a non-matching but china saucer and put everything on a tray. He went into the Quiet Room and turned it into the Family Room merely by way of flicking on the television set. He selected Channel 4, muted the volume on the closing scenes of Brookside and made to telephone both his nieces, sipping tea but saving the biscuits until later.

‘Fen, darling, Django here – are you switched on? The bike race is starting in five minutes or so.’

‘God, I almost forgot,’ said Fen, untying and then rebunching her pony-tail two or three times, the telephone receiver tucked under her chin. ‘Does Pip know?’

‘Isn’t she with you?’ Django enquired, a little perturbed. For some reason, Fen actually looked around her flat before replying.