Poor Jesper Lomers, therefore. On paper, as all the journalists were busy lauding, Jesper won not just the Stage but the yellow jersey too. However, though he has a wife, she is not here. Nor was she at home. She had left no message on his mobile phone. Jesper craved her congratulatory embrace but he had to settle for his directeur’s praise, his team’s delight, the deluge of attention from the media. Though Jules Le Grand did not particularly like Anya Lomers, banned mere girlfriends of riders from the Tour and actively disapproved of the presence of wives during the race, today he would have welcomed her. The key sprinter of his Système Vipère team should be euphoric, buoyed by his victory and hungry to keep the maillot jaune for the team. Instead, Jules observed him at the team supper looking detached.

If I offered him the maillot jaune in one hand, Jules contemplated, his wife in the other, I fear I know which he’d choose. Wives are more disruptive, more harmful to my Viper Boys than the crashes. They can cause my riders more pain, more suffering, than back-to-back mountain Stages.

‘Women!’ he hissed with venom under his breath.

Fabian Ducasse heard him. Women indeed! he smirked to himself. I am Ducasse. I am a national hero. I can have any woman I want.

Système Vipère are having supper when Cat gathers her laptop and cables and goes to send her article down the line.

What a day!

She returns to the main hall and searches out Josh.

‘Coffee?’ she asks.

‘Can’t,’ he says, looking frazzled.

‘Alex?’ she offers. He’s typing so hard he does not answer, so she does not press.

‘I’m through,’ she says apologetically to Josh who regards her accusatorially as if she can’t possibly be a bona fide journaliste then.

‘Lucky you,’ he says, not unkindly.

‘I thought I’d phone Maillot,’ Cat whispers, ‘see if they’ll take an article. I so want that Feature Editor position, I thought some earnestness now wouldn’t go amiss.’

Alex and Josh nod politely but she sees they’re too engrossed in their work to be especially interested in her career development so she goes to the hotel to make her call.

‘Sutcliffe.’

‘Andy? This is Cat – um, McCabe.’

‘Hi Cat, how’s the Tour?’

‘Fine, brilliant – have you seen my daily reports?’

‘All two of them?’

‘Oh. Um. Well – I’ve had an idea for an article for Maillot, can I run it past you?’

‘Are you sucking up to me?’

‘No! Well – I’m serious. About the job – I know I don’t have it yet, that I have to earn my position, I know I’m out here for the Guardian, but I’m thinking ahead, thinking laterally.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Well,’ Cat clears her voice and wonders whether this conversation is as bad an idea as foisting even more work upon herself, ‘how about an interview with Rachel McEwen – Megapac’s soigneur?’

‘I know who Rachel McEwen is,’ Andy replies in a tone of voice Cat can’t really decipher, ‘but I don’t think it’s fleshy enough.’