It’s OK. This. It’s good. I’m having a great evening. I think he really is flirting with me. I’m not sure. It’s been a while. Is he?

Go back and see.

Oh. Alex and Josh are sitting by Ben. Eating olives. Drinking Seize. Oh.

‘Hey, Cat,’ Alex says, a little dishevelled in the hair and somewhat wild about the eyes.

‘Finito completo,’ says Josh, who looks utterly exhausted.

‘Hullo, guys,’ says Cat, taking her seat, glancing at Ben and wondering if that really was a glimmer of a remorseful shrug he’s just given her. ‘I’m having croque monsieur,’ she announces as if her fellow press men had been pondering a reason for her presence at the table with Ben and his olives and the strong beer.

‘So are we,’ says Josh.

They eat. They talk. Cat concentrates only on Josh and Alex, studiously avoiding any eye contact, any direct anything, with Ben, though she so wants to. Ben, however, ensures he speaks to Cat directly; he buys her another beer, he even answers on her behalf.

‘No,’ he tells Josh, ‘the guy at Maillot didn’t seem very interested in her ideas for an article on female soigneurs.’

Josh yawned. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘I forgot to phone home.’

Cat wonders whether this has been said for her benefit and wonders again whether Josh has designs on her. And she wonders if she has designs on Ben and whether it’s presumptuous or OK for her to wonder whether this is reciprocated. And then she thinks what utter nonsense. This is the Tour de France. It’s work. Her livelihood. Absolutely no room for anything else.

‘Beer?’ Alex asks.

Ben yawns. ‘I’d better push some zeds,’ he says.

‘Pardon?’ Cat says.

‘You know,’ Ben explains, with a chuckle at his wit, touching her arm, ‘like a cartoon character asleep with “z”s coming out of their mouth.’

Cat finds this funny. So do Alex and Josh. But Cat laughs longer, and more loudly. In fact, she gives Ben’s knee a quick push and wonders whether that’s OK. It felt OK to do it. More than OK. Was it OK for it to be felt by Ben? Witnessed by the other two?

Can’t we stay a while longer?

Alex stands and stretches and blasphemes whilst yawning. Josh rises too and does the same, without the choice epithets. Ben stands up. He doesn’t yawn but he clasps the back of his neck drawing Cat’s eyes to his elbows before they meet his. Cat is disappointed.

Please stay. I’m enjoying myself. This is what I was hoping for, camaraderie. Colleagues becoming friends. That we’d work hard and earn evenings like this.

Exactly. You’re all here working. So there will be tomorrow. Indeed, just under three weeks of tomorrows.

‘Night all,’ Ben says, heading for the stairs.

‘Later!’ says Josh, as is his wont.

‘See you,’ says Alex through a yawn, pressing for the lift.

‘Night, Ben,’ Cat says, though he has now gone.

‘I think you’ve pulled there,’ Alex goads, leaning against the mirror in the lift, regarding Cat quizzically.