The McCabe Girls Complete Collection: Cat, Fen, Pip, Home Truths

While Cat continued to gorge on chocolate and girlie gossip, her sisters, her colleagues and Ben ate liver, tongue and various indefinable parts of cow and pig at a hearty, rustic mountain-top restaurant. It was joyous and noisy, with yelling coming from the kitchen and animated chatter from the diners who were mainly presse apart from a hirsute group of men Pip decided were goat-herders, a comment which Alex reacted to with excessive chortling. Red wine flowed, as did the conversation. Especially, Josh noted, between Pip and Alex. Fen also noticed, but her attention was given to Ben.

‘Where do you live, Ben?’ Fen asked.

‘Boulder,’ said Ben.

‘In the New Forest?’ Fen exclaimed, heartened. ‘Near Lymington?’

‘Er, Colorado,’ said Ben, almost apologetically.

What’ll happen to my sister when the Tour de France finishes? What is she to you, Ben? A French fling? Might you have another lined up for the Vuelta? Was there someone during the Giro?

‘I’ve invited Cat to visit,’ Ben was saying. ‘She told me about your mother running off with a cowboy from Denver – we thought we might track her down.’

‘What, on Cat’s paltry freelance pay?’ Fen derided, unnerved that Ben was so au fait with her family history.

When has Cat ever wanted to track our mother down?

Fen wondered why she wanted to dislike Ben; especially as, having now spent time with him, she could not dispute that his seemly exterior complemented a strong, likeable character.

Nourished and rejuvenated by the wholesome food, lubricated by the wine, Ben regarded Fen quizzically.

I know I don’t have her seal of approval and the bizarre thing is, it matters to me and I rather want it.

‘I don’t mind saying I was gutted when I thought Cat was involved with someone back home,’ he said frankly. continuing while Fen was still wondering what sort of reply a statement like that necessitated. ‘But I felt,’ Ben paused, ‘I felt not just relieved but pretty damn delighted when she told me he was just an ex from months ago.’

Just An Ex? Fen thought to herself. Why hasn’t she told Ben much? Why has she played down the impact it all had on her? Her past is defining her present and will shape her future. Why, and what, does she not want Ben to know? She’s either protecting herself – or she is not being herself at all.

‘More wine, Fen?’ Ben asked, raising an eyebrow at Josh with a glance in the direction of Alex and Pip who were sporting matching flushed cheeks and looking particularly cosy.

‘Thanks,’ said Fen, who sipped and smiled politely and tried unsuccessfully to catch her sister’s eye. ‘Ben,’ she started, her conscience warning her to bite her tongue but the wine letting it loose, ‘I love my sister. She’s extremely precious,’ Fen persisted, with more than a hint of warning to her voice.

‘Fen,’ said Ben, tilting his head and regarding her.

‘I love Cat very very much,’ Fen interrupted again.

‘I know you do,’ he said, nodding again.

And I do too. But I’m not going to say it out loud. Not because I know I’m drunk, but because I’m certainly not going to tell you unless I’ve told Cat herself.

‘To Cat,’ he said instead, raising glasses that he’d refilled once more.

‘To Pip and Alex,’ Josh murmured, suddenly missing his wife desperately.

As Cat walks down from the Zucca MV hotel, she contemplates how she hasn’t seen Ben at all today. They haven’t even spoken. Not since yesterday.

And I’ve missed him. Shit.

The notion simultaneously warms Cat and worries her.

She approaches the apartment block at the same time but from the opposite direction to her sisters, her colleagues and Ben, whose status she has great difficulty in defining.

‘They’re pissed!’ she observes, wondering whether Pip is linking arms with Alex purely for stability and, indeed, whether it is for her own stability or his. Cat’s eyes are locked on to Ben’s. She’s delighted to see him.

I have missed him, I really have.

Fen observes how Cat sparkles at the doctor. She regards how her sister practically sings, ‘Hullo!’ to the rest of them before she beams at Ben, focuses on him exclusively and they kiss. The affection between the two of them is pronounced. It simultaneously warms Fen and worries her.

STAGE 15

Vizille-Gilbertville. 204 kilometres

Most courteously, Alex and Josh had taken the room with bunk beds so that the sisters could have the room with the small double and tiny single bed. Pip told her sisters she ought to take the single bed as she feared she was developing a cold. Josh was well aware that Alex presumed him to be asleep when his colleague crept from the room and when he returned in the early hours. Fen and Cat did not hear Pip leave their room but they heard her return. Facing each other in the double bed, they opened their eyes, raised eyebrows, bit back grins and pretended to be fast asleep.

Cat’s mobile phone woke them for real an hour later, at seven in the morning.

‘Cat?’

‘Rachel?’

‘Are you busy?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Are you asleep?’

‘Er, no.’

‘I need some help – can you come? Bring your sisters. It’s women’s work and I need all hands on deck.’

Rachel welcomed them into the Zucca MV team bus. Cat observed her sisters’ open mouths and wide eyes and realized with a certain warmth how initially she too had been staggered at glimpsing such a different, special, self-contained world; but how now all of this had become the norm to her, a plausible, preferable way of life.

It’s my world too, now. Part of my life. I’m happy here. I feel I belong.

‘Now,’ said Rachel, most officiously, ‘down to business.’ From a carrier bag, she laid out a selection of porn magazines.

‘Shit,’ Pip gasped, ‘where did you find those?’

‘Are they banned?’ Fen whispered ingenuously. ‘Did you have to confiscate them? Have you to surrender them to Jean Marie LeBlanc?’

Rachel and Cat laughed, though Cat, aware that porn mags were not a banned substance, was not yet sure of their purpose.

‘The boys had a really tough day yesterday,’ Rachel said, flipping through a magazine leisurely, ‘and today the forecast is very hot.’

‘And today they have five mountains to climb,’ Cat added, peering over Rachel’s shoulder at female limbs in a quite startling configuration.

‘So,’ said Rachel, ‘I thought, to hell with tin foil – I’ll wrap their race food in something far more appetizing. We need a production line. Fen, would you mind going through this pile, Pip you have that.’

‘What do you want?’ Fen asked, deadly serious. ‘Big tits?’