‘Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘Have you met him yet?’

‘Almost.’

‘What did you do today? I’m fascinated. I mean, we’re only granted half an hour’s summary of the whole day – how does it pan out for you?’

‘Oh –’ Cat said breezily, swiping the air nonchalantly with her hand, a gesture of course lost on her sister.

‘Cat?’ Fen asked again. ‘You OK?’

‘It’s odd,’ Cat defined softly, ‘I’m finding it difficult. I’m fighting homesickness already. I was hopeful of a family atmosphere here. I think that was naïve. We didn’t even have a drink to celebrate Boardman’s win.’

‘It’s very early days,’ Fen said sensibly, ‘riders and everyone else finding their feet, surely. Anyway, I’m concerned that drink, or lack of, is the prime reason for your melancholy.’

Cat sighed. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she chastized her sister, ‘today I was sent flying in the finish-line scrum.’

‘God!’ Fen sympathised.

‘I was pushed and shoved, trodden on and ignored,’ Cat elaborated. ‘I don’t stand a chance. Now, I feel on the verge of floundering, of becoming lost amongst it all.’

‘Is it every man for himself, then?’ Fen asked.

Cat nodded and then said, ‘Yes.’

‘Who’s the gorgeous one who stopped off for a picnic?’ Fen probed.

Cat grinned and felt a softening of her tangled brow. ‘Luca Jones,’ she said, ‘and he gave me a super quote.’

‘There you go!’ Fen encouraged.

‘I know, I know,’ Cat conceded, ‘but I just feel a little, I don’t know – out on a limb. It’s only just started, I’m here for a long time – and yet this was supposed to be my fantasy incarnate and a world in which I’d find all the answers.’

‘You’ve only just arrived,’ Fen pointed out. ‘I bet you anything tomorrow will be fabulous.’

‘Fen, I feel too small and female.’

‘Bollocks, Cat,’ Fen said strongly. ‘Yes, you’re an anomaly out there – small and female – so you must be a breath of fresh air. I’d use it if I were you.’

Cat observed Josh and Alex turning the corner a hundred yards away.

‘Fen, I have to go. This must be costing you a fortune.’

‘Phone bill? You’re far more precious, stupid!’ said Fen, thinking herself to sound like a mother – a proper one, not one that had run off with a cowboy from Denver.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ said Cat.

‘Promise?’

‘Yes.’

Cat walked off briskly. Her ears, however, were peeled. She was listening for a half-hoped-for ‘Wait up, Cat,’ from Josh or Alex. And yet half of her hoped they had not seen her, that she could go and sit by herself in her hotel room and ruminate on her day.

Rachel McEwen’s room at Zucca MV’s Rouen hotel was cramped enough as it was, without the addition of three strapping riders and the veritable grocery shop Rachel set up each day. Her portable massage bench held domestique Pietro Calcaterra. He’d swerved to miss the knot of Luca Jones and Laurent Jalabert but had careered into Fernando Escartin instead. Now his knee was hurting. Massimo Lipari sat at the small table, softly humming his Giro pop song, helping himself to a huge bowl of cereal and arranging a diced banana artistically over the top. Gianni Fugallo, the team’s super domestique, lay on Rachel’s bed reading her Cosmopolitan magazine whilst listening to a Walkman.