‘OK, not an interview,’ says Cat, not wanting to sound disheartened but not wanting to sound like she’s clutching at straws either, ‘how about an article on soigneurs?’

‘I’ve asked Josh to do something along those lines.’

‘Female soigneurs?’ Cat specifies.

‘There are only two.’

‘Women in cycling?’

‘Why don’t we discuss your ideas after the Tour?’ Andy suggests. ‘See how it goes.’ There’s not a lot Cat can say to this. She nods at her hotel room walls and says OK as brightly as she can.

I’m not going to give up. Nor am I going to be fobbed off. I’m going to formulate my ideas and bloody bombard Maillot again. Before the end of the Tour.

It was nine thirty. Neither Josh nor Alex were in their rooms but, aware that she was sharing the hotel with Megapac, her confidence and determination in fact bolstered by her potential future boss’s rejection, Cat left her room and, eschewing the lifts, meandered along the corridors as if that was the way to reception anyway. She was on a quote hunt; not quite brave enough to phone specific riders’ rooms, she was hoping to come across them accidentally-on-purpose.

She should have known that Megapac, by this hour, would mostly be asleep. She would not have known that Luca and his room-mate Didier LeDucq were deep in the pages of Penthouse and a Dutch magazine that made the former look like the Beano, but as all doors were shut, she was saved this unsavoury revelation. She found herself in reception with no real purpose at all. However, a huge rumble from her stomach suddenly gave her one. The humiliation of Ben York’s presence was almost enough to make Cat want to march purposefully back to her room but her hunger and his hypnotic eyes kept her exactly where she was.

‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘was that thunder?’

Cat swallowed down an embarrassed laugh but this lacked the substance and nutrition that her stomach needed so it groaned again, loudly in protest.

‘Yes,’ said Cat, surprisingly cool, ‘there it goes again.’

‘I was going to the bar for a quick drink,’ Ben said. ‘Do you want to join me?’

‘OK,’ said Cat, hoping she looked neither keen nor shy, for suddenly she was feeling a very odd combination of both. She was following Ben, just about to make small talk, when her phone rang. She stopped, Ben turned to her. She shrugged and regarded her handset.

Fen. It’s bloody Fen. No, not bloody at all. I have to take it.

Take it then.

‘Aren’t you going to take it?’ Ben asked, not moving a discreet distance away, if anything leaning towards her, appearing closer, invasive almost.

‘Hullo?’ Cat said.

‘Hullo!’ Fen replied.

‘Hey girly!’ Pip cried, from another extension. ‘We’re a bit drunk. We want to know about lycra.’

Oh God, thought Cat, holding the phone tight against her ear in the hope that her sisters’ voices were not transmittable to Ben who continued to stand close.