Cat

‘You look after yourself,’ Django repeats, thinking a dash of stout might be welcomed by the mashed potato.

‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ Cat says pensively.

The Spread ready, the four McCabes assemble. They stand by their places and look from one to the other in silence. Django gives the nod and they sit. And eat. He’s all for picking and dipping and having a taste of this, a soupçon of that. So arms stretch amiably and serving spoons chink and dollop. There’s much too much food but whatever’s left will be blended together tomorrow, liquidized the next day and then frozen, to reappear as soup in some not-too-distant colder time.

In the Drawing-room, over coffee and some dusty but undamaged After Eights which Pip discovered in her bedside table, Django looked to his three nieces. Fen looked wistful as ever, her blonde hair scrunched into a wispy pony-tail which made her look young and vulnerable and like she should be living at home. Django noticed that she was visibly thinner than when he saw her at Easter and knew that this could be attributed to one of two things.

‘Love or money, Fen?’ he asked.

She jolted and looked at each of her palms as if assessing the merits of telling him one thing or another.

‘Both,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap.

‘Has he too much or too little?’ Django enquired.

‘It depends,’ said Fen.

Django looked puzzled. Cat couldn’t resist. ‘One is loaded and the other is broke.’

‘Good God, girl!’ Django exclaimed in honest horror, much to Cat and Pip’s delight. ‘Two of them?’

‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked Fen. ‘Have you decided yet? The old or the young?’

‘Who’s the one?’ Pip pushed. ‘The rich or the poor? Did you toss for it or did they have a duel?’

‘Neither,’ Fen wailed. ‘Both.’ She looked out of the window, unable to decipher the night from the moor, or the merits of one love from the other. Django, Cat and Pip gazed at her for a moment.

‘Pip,’ Django said sternly, ‘love or money?’

‘I can live most comfortably without either,’ said Pip, secretly wishing she had just a little of each.

‘Well, a pink afro wig, copious amounts of face paint and an alter ego called Martha the Clown can’t help,’ Django reasoned.

‘I.e., get a proper job,’ Pip groaned to Fen whilst ignoring Django. Django turned to Cat who was staring out of the window and way into the night. Her green-grey eyes glinting with the effort of uninvited memories, her sand-blonde hair suddenly framing her face and dripping down over drooping shoulders, her lips parted as if preparing for words she’d never said and wished she had. She looked distant. And sad.

‘She’s in France already,’ Fen whispered to Django, secretly worried that Cat should not be going on her own.

‘Best place for her,’ Pip colluded, secretly pleased that Cat was guaranteed time alone and away.

‘Cat?’ Django called softly. Cat blinked, yawned and smiled, hoping it would deflect attention from the obvious effort of pulling on a brave face at that time of night.

‘Mario Cipollini’s thighs have a circumference of 80 centimetres,’ she told them.

I could hear them, my sisters. And they’re right – I am in France, sort of. And I wonder if I shouldn’t go. I mean, if I stay, maybe He will pop round some time over the next three weeks. Say he wants to change his mind but I’m not here? Might he come back? And say sorry?

As if.

No no.

That’s over. Move on, Cat.

But he might.

No, I don’t think he will.

How can he love me and then not? And in the same day too?

‘I love you,’ he said in a rare phone call from work that morning. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, as so often he did, later that night. ‘So go then,’ I said, thinking if I stood up to him it would give him the reality check he needed. ‘Go then,’ I said, presuming he’d stand stock still in horror, sweep me off my feet and cry, ‘Never never never.’

Instead?

He went. He ran.

Three months since.

And I cannot bring him back. Yet I left the door metaphorically wide open, hoping he’d come back and bang on it, proclaiming, ‘I want to be here with you. Always. What can I do, sweet love?’

So now I think I regret what I did. But they all tell me not to.

The door’s still ajar. Soon I’m going to have to shut it. For my safety and my sanity. Let go.

I don’t want to. Won’t letting go be just that – letting go?

Giving up? Admitting failure? Admitting that it is really, truly over?

And if I let go, am I not saying that I relinquish my hope? Because who am I, Cat McCabe, without my hope?

France. Le Tour de France. La Grande Boucle. A dream I’ve had for five years. He was a dream I had for five years – at least this is one I can make come true, all the way to the Paris finale. I will follow the Tour de France, become a part of this fantastic travelling family. From start to finish. All the way, over the flat lands, over the Pyrenees and Alps, through the vineyards and home to the Champs-Elysées. Me and my heroes. Fabian Ducasse. Vasily Jawlensky. Luca Jones.

You can keep your Brad Pitts and Tom Cruises. You can even keep your George Clooneys. If you want a hero, choose anyone from the Système Vipère or Zucca MV teams. Brad and Tom couldn’t do a fraction of the twenty-one hairpin bends on L’Alpe D’Huez. Mr Clooney wouldn’t dare descend a mountain with the grace and speed of a peregrine falcon in full plummet.

Bollocks! What on earth has got into me? I mean, I know I have to move on now – but fantasizing about professional cyclists is not only unrealistic, it’s daft and it could be detrimental. Exactly. I’m a professional journalist about to infiltrate a male-dominated world. Not a groupie. Even if I was a groupie, why would they look at me? Put me next to a podium girl with their lips and their legs and their kisses and mini skirts, and I rest my case.

Exactly.

Anyway, the riders are mostly in bed by nine.

And I read something somewhere that hours in the saddle means impotence in the sack.

Only one way to verify that, I suppose.

Cat McCabe!

I meant, talking to the riders’ wives and girlfriends.

When Cat arrived home from Derbyshire, her neighbours had left a note inviting her upstairs for a snack and a chat. Eric and Jim (whose fifth anniversary that weekend Cat had missed for Django’s Spread) saw Cat’s emotional and physical welfare as their responsibility. They were positively parental though they were, in fact, but a year or two older than her. When she had food poisoning, they brought her tonic water and the bucket. When her flat was broken in to, they insisted she slept on their sofabed. When He left, they brought her ice-cream and comfort. They were almost as excited by France and the notion that an adventure and a change of scenery would work wonders for Cat, as they were by the thought of one hundred and eighty-nine amply muscled men in lycra shorts.

‘We have a present for you,’ Eric said. ‘We wanted to give it to you before you leave on Wednesday – by the way, if it doesn’t start till Saturday, why are you going so early?’