their poor French and their pigeon Italian met with apologetic shrugs.
‘Everyone looks shattered,’ Fen remarked, ‘bags under the eyes, crumpled clothes.’
‘Some look like they need a good scrub,’ Pip added, ‘and a haircut, and a cutthroat shave. There – that bloke looks friendly – your go, Fen. Try him.’
‘Monsieur?’ Fen asked Josh.
‘Oui?’ Josh replied, thinking she looked familiar but, seeing no pass, not dwelling on it.
‘Cat McCabe?’ Fen asked.
‘Journaliste, le Guardian?’ Pip interjected.
‘What about her?’ Josh said.
‘Oh good, you’re English, we’re looking for her,’ Pip replied.
‘Who are you?’ Josh asked.
‘Who are you?’ Pip retorted, wondering why everyone was so accusatory.
Josh looked down at his pass and twisted it the right way round. ‘I’m Josh Piper, as it goes,’ he said, ‘and let me guess – you’re her bloody sisters, aren’t you?’
‘We are her bloody sisters!’ Fen exclaimed delighted.
‘I can’t believe you’re Josh,’ Pip cried, leaping into the air and having to exercise enormous restraint not to do a line of cartwheels, ‘I can’t believe it!’
‘Why?’ Josh exclaimed. ‘How did she describe me?’
‘No,’ Fen laughed, ‘she means that we found you – we asked one vile man who referred to Cat as a whore and then – bingo! – here you are.’
‘That’ll be Jan Airie,’ Josh said, ‘fuck him.’
‘My sister’s not a whore,’ Pip said defensively.
‘Of course she isn’t,’ said Josh.
‘Do you know Ben, then?’ Pip probed. ‘Ouch!’ she said as Fen dug her in the ribs.
‘Of course I know Ben, then,’ Josh said, contemplating Fen’s caution.
‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend, you know,’ Fen explained, just in case Josh still thought she did.
‘I know,’ said Josh, ‘though she has Ben – mind you, what you’d call him, given that she’s landed him whilst on the Tour de France, I don’t know.’
‘Where is Cat?’ Pip asked, as if suddenly remembering their mission to the salle de presse in Grenoble.
‘She’s finished for the day,’ Josh said, ‘so has Alex. I’m the last of the lot. Jesus! Where are you staying? Does Cat know? Bloody hell! When did you arrive? When are you leaving? What are you even doing here, for fuck’s sake?’
‘We’ve come to watch the Tour de France,’ Fen said as if Josh was dense.
‘We don’t have anywhere to stay,’ Pip said, as if it really wasn’t a problem.
So where is Cat?
She’s with Luca.
Where?
Round the back of his team hotel, sitting under a tree in the still-considerable heat of late afternoon.
What’s she doing? What’s the purpose? Does she have that dictaphone with her again?
They’re having a chat.
‘Luca,’ says Cat, who feels they’ve analysed the Stage for long enough, ‘I have something to tell you.’
‘Sure, Babe,’ he says. He regards her. Though she looks uncomfortable, this is strongly contradicted by the veritable glow enveloping her. Her mouth might twitch but her eyes sparkle. She shrugs and smiles simultaneously.
‘Ben,’ she says, ‘and me.’
Luca considers this and then he nudges her. ‘If I was a doctor instead of a cyclist – would you love me instead?’
‘Don’t you dare even muse upon being anything other than a cyclist,’ she chastizes him, nudging him back. ‘The world would be a poorer, duller place.’
‘I knew of course, I knew all along,’ says Luca, holding Cat’s hand in his and tapping at his thigh gently, ‘back in Delaunay Le Beau, all those years ago, before the Tour had even started.’
‘At the medical?’ Cat reminisced. ‘That’s when I first saw both of you. Sitting together on a bench.’
‘Yup,’ Luca says, now tapping his handful of hand on Cat’s thigh, ‘that’s when my main man Ben went skippy.’
‘What’s skippy?’ Cat laughs.
‘It’s a word, no?’ Luca says earnestly. ‘I say it to mean that’s when Ben – well – went.’ Cat’s eyebrows twitched. ‘OK, in sensible English, I tell you that’s when Ben got the horn.’ They both laugh heartily.
‘Did he tell you?’ Cat probes.
‘Ben York?’ Luca exclaims. ‘Bastard didn’t have to. You know why?’
Cat shakes her head.
‘Usually, if I joke about women – you know my style – yeah, she’s a fit chicky, or maybe I say yo! tasty honey-babe,’ Luca says, all excited, suddenly finding a hearty gossip most reviving, ‘well, that boy Ben would normally join in, pass comment – you know?’ Cat nods. ‘Whenever I talked about you,’ Luca says, raising a finger to emphasize significance, ‘if I talked about Gatto, or the Babe, you know what?’
Cat realizes she has to say, ‘No – what?’ for Luca to continue.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Luca says, ‘Ben doesn’t say a fucking thing. So then I knew. I had fun.’
Luca releases her hand from his, Cat stands and pulls Luca to his feet.
‘I have to go,’ Cat says.
‘Gatto!’ he calls after her. Cat turns. ‘I can still call you the Babe McCabe, right?’
‘I don’t think I could answer to anything else,’ Cat assures him.
Cat returned to her hotel which, though clean and bright, smelt of mothballs and the type of disinfectant used liberally in schools when someone’s thrown up. A note had been slipped under her door from Josh, informing her that they were in a bar around the corner. Her chat with Luca, talking in the open about Ben, had infused her with extreme happiness, the likes of which she had not felt for some too long time. She floated off to find the bar and, from a way off, saw that joining Alex and Josh were Ben and two women she thought she knew. From a distance, out of context, far from home, on the Tour de Bloody France, there was no way she was going to recognize
