it,’ Fen cautions.
‘Humble pie can be quite nourishing,’ Pip says encouragingly.
Django phoned almost as soon as Pip and Fen had gone.
‘They’re bloody lunatics!’ was his opening statement.
‘Who are?’ Cat said, startled at the severity of his accusation.
‘Your bloody bike boys,’ Django brandished. ‘Fancy wanting to ride a push bike up five fuckers of mountains. Bloody mad. Are they on drugs? I’m on double brandy after that.’
‘Good question,’ Cat said a little despondently.
‘Why all the sex?’ Django demanded.
‘The sex?’ Cat exclaimed, wondering if Django would move on to rock and roll next. ‘Where?’
‘On the mountains,’ Django said ingenuously, ‘that lovely Liggett commentator was telling us that certain riders bonk whores.’
‘What?’ Cat exclaimed aghast.
‘Oh yes,’ Django continued, ‘on the mountains themselves.’
Cat fell silent and then grinned. ‘Are you talking hors catégories?’
‘That’s the one!’ Django confirmed. ‘Would it have something to do with those mountains being such a bitch to climb?’
Cat roared with laughter, much to the consternation of a posse of Portuguese journalists near by. ‘Hors,’ she stressed, spelling it out, ‘hors catégorie means “beyond classification” – and yes, I suppose they are the bitch climbs.’
‘And the bonking?’ Django probed, most interested.
‘When a rider bonks, it’s like a marathon runner hitting the proverbial wall,’ Cat explained.
‘Have you bonked?’ Django asked.
‘I am knackered,’ Cat conceded.
‘Yes but have you bonked,’ Django pressed, ‘your doctor?’
Oh God. Ben. The boyfriend. The bullshit.
‘Ben?’ Cat used the house phone in the foyer of the Megapac team hotel.
‘Not a good time,’ Ben said, quite plausibly, though there was no one else in his bedroom and nothing urgent requiring his attention.
‘Come to me later?’ Cat said softly.
‘Perhaps,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t wait up for me, though.’
‘Rachel?’ said Cat, using the house phone in the foyer of the Zucca MV team hotel.
‘Hullo,’ Rachel replied.
‘Can I come up?’ Cat asked. ‘I’m desperate for a chat.’
‘Of course,’ said Rachel, intrigued and feeling too that she was entitled to an explanation. She placed her portable grocery store at Cat’s disposal. Gratefully, Cat filled a bowl with cereal and munched thoughtfully.
‘It was bullshit,’ she said at length, ‘what Josh told you.’
‘You didn’t tell him you have a boyfriend?’ Rachel probed.
‘No!’ Cat wailed. ‘I mean, I did tell him I have a boyfriend.’
‘Do you?’ Rachel pressed, obviously suspicious.
‘No,’ Cat said a little sadly, but quite categorically, ‘I don’t. Not any more.’
‘Since when?’ Rachel enquired, wondering if Cat had chucked him that evening.
‘Since a few months ago,’ Cat defined quietly.
Rachel regarded Cat. ‘Why did you tell Josh that you did,’ she asked quite reasonably, ‘if he no longer exists?’
‘I regret telling Josh that I did,’ Cat said, ‘but I told him very early on because – well, because it felt like protection. I didn’t know if he was trying to come on to me. I didn’t know there’d be Ben.’
Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Did Josh come on to you?’
Cat smiled and shook her head. ‘He’s a lovely married guy,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t know until after I’d spun my yarn.’
‘Well, you’ve created some tangle. You should put him straight. He Who No Longer Exists – as I think I’ll call him – has a stature he obviously doesn’t deserve.’
‘I know,’ Cat sighed, ‘I know. There hasn’t been the right time.’
‘Och, bollocks,’ said Rachel with fine Scots directness, ‘there’s never a wrong time – not when it concerns people of whom you are fond and who care about you.’
‘I know,’ Cat nodded, ‘I know.’
‘Have you cleared things with Ben?’
‘Not yet,’ Cat said, ‘but not from want of trying.’
‘Bloody boys,’ Rachel said, somewhat connivingly. ‘Was he bloody? Your ex?’
‘Yes,’ Cat admitted, ‘he was.’ She would have been pleased to elaborate, to tell Rachel all about Him and all about Ben had there not been a rap at the door. Vasily entered wearing only a towel – a skimpy one – around his waist. Cat’s eyes bulged and she flitted an impressed glance over to Rachel whose gaze was exclusively focused on the rider.
‘Rachel,’ Vasily said in his gloriously Slavic way, ‘you said you had something for me.’
Cat bit her lip.
‘Of course,’ Rachel exclaimed, smacking her forehead, ‘I suggested a bath.’ She looked over to Cat. ‘Epsom salts and vinegar – soigneurs of yore swore by them. If it soothes, it’s good, I say.’
‘I’d better go,’ said Cat.
‘Yeah,’ Rachel said, sternly but kindly, ‘you have work to do.’
‘Great ride,’ Cat beamed at Vasily, who was used to such praise but always accepted it graciously. ‘You might do it tomorrow, hey? You need only put a minute into Fabian.’
‘Shadow me tomorrow, Cat,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m doing the feed. You’ll get a great view – you’ll get my view – there may be an article in it.’
‘Too right,’ said Cat, adding a call to Andy at Maillot slightly higher on her mental list than transcribing Luca’s interview.
Cat left the hotel, omitting to ponder on the Vasily-Rachel situation about which she was faintly curious. She was much more concerned with returning to her hotel room, for Ben to come to her. She didn’t wonder whether
