Don’t stop, the girl pleads.
‘Whoa whoa whoa,’ says Alex, grabbing the dictaphone but not touching the volume, let alone switching the thing off.
Now! the girl is remonstrating when the man tells her ‘Later’. She is panting and gasping and audibly on the verge of orgasm.
Cat came into the salle de pressé just as she was about to come on tape. And when she came in, all eyes were on her in the here and now whilst all ears were still trained to her in the then and there. There was silence amongst the press corps. But not from the dictaphone.
‘But I want you – I do – now!’
Cat was rooted to the spot.
‘Look on this as a taster – I’m going to whisk you away tonight, I know of a place. It’s private and beautiful and we’re going to have sex there.’
Cat remembered distinctly how, at that point, Ben had had his fingers inside her. And even if she’d forgotten, the sound of her rhythmic, lust-urgent breathing would have reminded her.
Isn’t technology marvellous! How sensitive dictaphones are! See, it can pick up and project the unmistakable rasps and clicks of two people kissing and it can preserve crystal clear and loud the sound of Cat imploring, ‘Don’t go – oh God, Ben!’ It is a shame that the salle de presse isn’t quite so sensitive to allow a private situation to remain so. But can you blame them? Have you ever heard anything like it? Luca Jones. Sex. Gossip. On the Tour de France. Compulsive listening. I dare anyone to switch it off.
What did Cat do? What could she do? What do you think she did? What would you do?
She gave a strangled yelp. She turned on her heels. She ran. Fast. Just to get the fuck away from there. And fast. It probably wasn’t the most logical thing to do, nor the most constructive because it would of course make her return – and she would have to return, it was her job – all the more difficult. But she acted on impulse, reacted to the sheer horror of it all, and all her senses barring common sense had told her to bolt.
Was the dictaphone then switched off? What? And miss Ben having his private wank? The tape must run to the end. After all, say Luca came back with a fantastic quote? Fast forward? No, no – wouldn’t want to run down the batteries.
I could fly home from Toulouse.
But you’d have to inform Taverner at the Guardian.
And he’d want to know why.
And then, of course, so will Maillot.
And yarn-spinning obviously lands me in more trouble than the truth.
Plus, if you left under a cloud, you’d have no control over the way this whole débâcle will be recounted.
Jesus. Before you can say maillot jaune, legend will have me live on video shagging the entire Megapac team.
How long have you been sitting there? It’s drawing to dusk. Isn’t the sand damp and your bottom wet?
I didn’t go to the hotel for fear of being followed. I found this secluded chink away from the main beach. There are rock pools. The sand is dry.
There is a funny side, Cat, you do know that? But you alone can orchestrate the way this afternoon is preserved for posterity.
I know. It would only take Rachel or my sisters to point it out, but I’m actually too humiliated to contact anyone. Even Ben.
Instead, Cat opted out of the present tense and sat a while longer, by herself. She analysed how the clouds simpered up to the moon and over it, having their edges singed brown like the circumference on a cup of espresso coffee. Then she made the clouds appear to stand still so that she imagined the stars to be making a reverential pilgrimage towards the moon. Then she saw the night clouds as a slow, silent procession; like a line of melancholy people moving quietly, secretly away. Finally, she scoured the sky for the constellations she knew and she mused a while on how, at different times and in different places, she’d seen Cassiopeia as a W, an M and a 3. Finally, she admitted that such meanderings were just pointless displacement activities and that facts had to be faced and that faces had to be braved.
So she switches on her mobile phone. There are six messages. Rachel wants to know if she’d like to have tea and a window shop. Ben says hasn’t she finished her work yet, he thought she was just going to the salle de pressé to retrieve her stuff. Josh says Cat, where are you, please call, he’s worried. Alex says you’re cool, McCabe, don’t worry about it, your street cred has just rocketed. Ben tells her he’s just spoken to Josh, asks her to call, call now. Josh implores her to call, please Cat, just call.
It is because Cat can feel their affection and detect no ridicule that she decides she won’t be flying home from Toulouse. She knows she will be able to enter the salle de pressé tomorrow, even if she won’t quite be able to hold her head high. Who to phone? Who else.
‘Josh?’
‘Cat,’ Josh sighs, relieved, delighted, ‘where the fuck are you?’
‘Oh,’ Cat says, a wavering voice coming through more clearly than her breezy tone, ‘just sitting. Having a think.’
‘Do you want company?’ Josh asks.
‘Can we just chat on the phone?’ Cat replies, dipping her fingertips into a rock pool.
‘Sure,’ Josh says.
‘Josh, I’m so sorry,’ Cat says, hugging her knees and wishing she was hugging him.
‘You don’t need to be,’ Josh assures her.
‘No, I do,’ Cat confirms, her voice breaking, ‘I lied to you and I don’t feel good about that and I should have set records straight ages ago.’
‘About the non-existent boyfriend?’
‘Yes,’ Cat gasps, ‘how do you know about him?’
Josh wasn’t about to tell her that he was in Rachel’s room, eating cereal, with the Zucca MV soigneur and the Megapac doctor trying to hear both sides of the conversation. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ Cat was continuing, ‘when I, um, fibbed.’
‘Fibbed!’ Josh laughs. ‘It was a fucking whopper!’
‘I know,’ Cat concedes, trying to lean back against a rock but finding it singularly uncomfortable, ‘I know. But I did it for many reasons, many of them daft but mainly for my own security.’
‘I understand,’ says Josh honestly because, after lengthy conversations with both Ben and Rachel, he does.
‘I adore you, Josh,’ Cat says from the heart, clutching hers for unseen emphasis, ‘I truly value our friendship and I hope I haven’t hurt you.’
Josh smiles. He’s glad Ben and Rachel didn’t hear that. He wants to keep it for himself. He’s touched.
