Cat

He gave me a wink, remember.

Of course. Keep grinning and gazing at him as you are, you may even be awarded another.

Alex and Josh are comparing mobile phones like errant schoolboys might electronic pocket games during morning assembly. Somebody has asked the directeur sportif about sponsorship and the directeur is coming to the close of an informative but monotone soliloquy. For Cat, her surroundings have suddenly become dark, the sounds around her muffled. She feels detached and yet focused. She clears her throat, swallows once, carefully sets her pad and dictaphone to one side and then stands up.

‘Hunter?’

God, that was my voice. What the fuck was my question?

Cat’s voice seems to her too loud, too detached even to be her own. Its very femaleness has created a hush around her. Alex’s and Josh’s jaws have dropped.

‘Hi there,’ says Hunter, tipping his head and granting Cat his undivided attention. The other members of Megapac, racers and managers alike, are regarding her too. She daren’t look. She stares fixedly at Hunter.

Oh Jesus, Hunter Dean has just said hullo to me.

So, say hullo back.

‘Hullo. Um,’ Cat coughs a little, ‘what’s the strategy and is it personal or team?’

Hunter licks his lips and Cat, to her horror, realizes she has inadvertently licked hers in reply. ‘Huh?’ he responds.

‘Are you – singular – after a Stage win for yourself,’ Cat enunciates, involuntarily loudly, terrified she might fart or lose her voice with nerves, ‘or are you – plural – pursuing a complete team finish in Paris? Which is the greater glory?’

That sounded good! Very professional. Very salle de presse. Cat McCabe – journaliste.

‘Man,’ Hunter responds in his North Carolina drawl, ‘who says we can’t have both? The team’s strong – hey, y’all? I’m real strong. Mental confidence and physical strength feed each other, you know?’

Cat nods earnestly, hoping Josh has all this in shorthand or on tape. Luca leans forward to the mike, nods at Cat and then bestows upon her a dazzling smile that she is too stunned to reply likewise to.

‘You know,’ Luca says, keeping eye contact direct, ‘I would say each and every Megapac guy has a Stage win in his legs plus – plus – the desire for us to arrive together in Paris in his heart. We’re a team – you know?’

Now Hunter is nodding alongside Luca and Cat wonders if the three of them shouldn’t just quit the room and go and have a coffee somewhere. Which is pretty much what Luca is thinking, observing the pretty girl all serious and attentive – although he would of course drop Hunter from the equation.

‘The Tour de France,’ says Hunter, ‘is about team effort, team spirit, personal triumph plus – plus – pain. We’ll all be suffering, but hey, you’re not given a dream without the power to realize it!’

‘We are nine great riders racing under the Megapac flag,’ Luca proclaims in his gorgeous accent which today he sees fit to infuse with a twang of American. ‘You watch us go.’

‘I will!’ Cat enthuses. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ says Hunter, who’s never been thanked in a press conference before.

‘It’s a pleasure,’ Luca smiles, thinking that a one-on-one interview with this girl would be a dictionary definition of pleasure.

‘You’re well in there,’ Alex growls under his breath, most impressed as Cat takes her seat, stares at her lap and wonders just how red her cheeks are. A healthy blush? Or downright crimson?

‘Good call,’ Josh says, reading through his notes and congratulating Cat genuinely, the facial colouring of his now-esteemed colleague being of little consequence to him.

I’m a bona fide journaliste, Cat thinks, trying not to let an ecstatic smile expose her as an adoring fan foremost.

‘I got propositioned by a total babe,’ Luca told Ben an hour later.

‘Oh Jesus!’ Ben exclaimed, dipping litmus paper into urine samples. ‘Are the groupies out in force already?’

‘Actually,’ Luca explained, ‘this one is a very welcome addition to the press corps – cor blimey!’ he added, tittering at his pun.

‘And she propositioned you?’ Ben laughed. ‘In the middle of a fucking press conference? Now, what did she say, I wonder? “Luca, Luca, after Stage 3, can we shag if you’re not too tired?” Something along those lines?’

Luca looked quite hurt. ‘Fuck you,’ seemed the most appropriate response, ‘she questioned me, man.’

‘And what did she ask?’ Ben asked with a wry smile giving a lively sparkle to his eyes. ‘Did she enquire as to the dimensions of your cog? How long you can keep going for?’

Luca did indeed hear the word as ‘cock’ and gave Ben a larky look which, predictably, said ‘fuck you’.

‘Well,’ he rued, ‘she actually asked about Personal Glory and Survival to Paris and shit – but she was a babe, let me tell you.’

‘I do believe you already have,’ said Ben. ‘Please ensure that for you, Personal Glory on the Tour de France is about racing your brilliant best. Keep your head down and direct all your energy – physical and mental – to la Grande Boucle.’

‘The big, beautiful, killer loop,’ Luca sighed, the route of this year’s Tour clearly mapped out in his mind’s eye. ‘Sure, Pop. Work first, then play – hey? That’s what I’m paid for.’

Ben cuffed Luca’s head and sent him on his way.

Friday. Team presentation. Hôtel de Ville, Delaunay Le Beau. 7 p.m.

Cat finished her piece. She polished the words and tweaked the punctuation until her brain felt frazzled. But the true headache befell her when she tried to e-mail it to the Guardian. In the phone room, the expletives in various languages from fellow journalists suffering similar telecom trauma were mildly comforting. She swore with the best of them for half an hour before technology kicked in and swiped her work away from her in a matter of seconds.

‘It’s the team presentation,’ she said to Josh and Alex, who were still in the throes of adjective selection.

‘It’s just the entire peloton in their gear but minus their bikes, poncing across the stage,’ Alex dismissed. Cat could think of nothing she’d like to see more.

‘It’s more for the VIPs and local dignitaries,’ Josh added, ‘like in horse-racing when the nags are paraded around before the off.’

‘Well,’ Cat said breezily, ‘this is my first Tour and I feel I ought to experience everything that’s going. So, à demain, mes enfants.’ She left the salle de presse and made her way to the town hall. It was humid, the still air hanging thick with the sense of anticipation felt by all connected with the race.

As thrilled as Cat was that she had made friends already, now, at the town hall, sneaking a seat near the front, she was most pleased that she was by herself. She wanted to soak up, savour and smile her way through the team presentation without being laughed at by Alex or, worse, perhaps to be judged and discredited by Josh.

I want to see my boys, standing before me, complete as teams, their bodies unharmed as yet by the traumas of the Tour. I want to keep the image – it’s important. Tomorrow changes everything.

Cat had come into close quarters with lycra-clad bike racers many times but it was bizarre, unsettling almost, to see the élite peloton so very out of context, paraded before her, for her, strutting their stuff without a bike in sight.

I almost don’t know where to look – because wherever I try to look, my eyes seem drawn back to the bulges. They’d give male ballet dancers a run for their money.

It was like a fashion show. Deutsche Telekom team, looking pretty impressive in pink, left the stage and Cofidis filed on, the riders’ chests and backs emblazoned with a vibrant golden sun symbol. Système Vipère looked stunning in their predominantly black lycra, a viper picked out in emerald and scarlet curling itself round each rider’s body and left thigh. Despite it being almost eight o’clock, Fabian Ducasse was wearing his Rudy Project sunglasses but Cat was perfectly happy that he should for he looked utterly stunning.

‘What do you miss?’ Cat understood the compère to be asking Fabian. Fabian replied with an expressive Gallic shrug-cum-pout and said wine and women. ‘What does Paris mean to you?’ the compère furthered. Fabian looked at him as if he was dense. ‘Wine and women, of course.’

And the yellow jersey, perhaps, thought Cat, not that Vasily will let it go easily, Oh, why can’t you both have it?

Zucca MV, in their blue and yellow strip, striped into rather dazzling and possibly tactical optically psychedelic swirls, sauntered on to the stage next and stood, legs apart, hands behind their backs. Though there was no music, Massimo Lipari was tapping his toe, nodding his head and grabbing his bottom lip with his teeth as if he were in a night-club and on the verge of dancing his heart out. Cat smiled. Stefano Sassetta smirked arrogantly, his torso erect, his thighs slightly further apart than those of his team-mates and, Cat noticed, tensed to show off their impressive musculature. Her eyes were on an involuntary bagatelle course; if they moved upwards from Stefano’s thighs, they hit his crotch from where they rebounded back to his thighs before being sent north again.