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

The soigneur looked at her, but was obviously seeing something quite else. Cat knew that look.

      ‘Vasily,’ Cat prompted, with what she hoped was a conspiratorial tone of camaraderie.

      Rachel said nothing but nodded very slowly, rolled on to her back and remarked that the publicity caravan of floats and music preceding the race by an hour would soon be approaching.

      I’ll let it lie, Cat decided thoughtfully. There’s a time and a place – it isn’t here but hopefully she might let me take her there sometime soon. She lay on her back and her mind streamed off to the tangents that sky-gazing generates.

      ‘We,’ said Rachel breezily, before closing her eyes to forestall the tongue-loosening effects of the troposphere, ‘oh. Nothing. I was. I was just.’

      Cat knew very well what incomplete sentences were all about. She also knew that silence was not the best medium for revelation. The gaiety of the caravan, however, could well provide the perfect ambience. She awaited the raucous, garish publicity snake; daydreaming and sky-gazing until she could detect the distant toots of the approaching carnival.

      ‘Tell me,’ she prompted gently while the floats came upon them in a wave of colour, lousy music and grinning personnel scattering freebies like modern-day winnowers. Bolstered by a panini, Rachel spoke. Sustained by a ham roll, Cat listened attentively.

      ‘We kissed,’ Rachel began, with the hint of a grin she then saw wise to curtail. ‘I don’t know why,’ she shrugged, ‘but we kissed. Just before the Time Trial. I mean, really kissed.’

      Cat’s jaw dropped.

       You and Vasily – wow! Hearts will be breaking amongst the female fans world-wide.

      Cat regarded Rachel. ‘Lucky you, I’d say. Just the once?’

      Rachel shook her head. Then she shrugged. She did not look as ecstatic as Cat felt that someone kissed regularly by Vasily Jawlensky really ought.

      ‘Well,’ Rachel declared, standing, ‘it was probably nothing. Anyway, they’ll be along soon – come on, Shadow Girl, action stations.’

      ‘You liked it?’ Cat encouraged, following Rachel to the trunk of the car, thrilled to be given a Zucca MV jacket to wear to assist the riders looking for their lunch. ‘Or you didn’t? You want more – or you don’t?’ Cat observed a blush, barely perceptible but emphatically there, bloom across Rachel’s cheek.

       Isn’t it funny what a man can do even to the most seemingly sussed and self-contained, self-content woman. Strong, sassy Rachel who keeps Zucca MV in order, shipshape, is here beside me churned up by a kiss.

      ‘It’s odd,’ Rachel elaborated, handing Cat a clutch of musettes like a bunch of balloons upside-down, ‘in all the time I’ve been involved in pro cycling, I’ve never even had to keep my professional and private lives separate – the one has never infringed on the other. I’ve not really been tempted. To be honest, apart from a wee dalliance last year with a journalist – a Dutch one, in case you’re wondering – I haven’t really had a private life at all and it’s not something I’ve minded. I’m a soigneur – I’m at the beck and call of the team. I don’t resent it.’

      ‘And now there’s a spanner in the works?’ Cat broached.

      ‘Yes,’ Rachel agreed, ‘I don’t know how to deal with it. I can’t really figure out what the fuck happened.’

      ‘Did you see Vasily this morning?’ Cat asked.

      ‘I’m his soigneur,’ Rachel said simply. ‘Of course I saw him, I massaged him.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘I had a job to do, massaging my rider,’ Rachel shrugged. ‘He likes silence.’

      ‘Well,’ said Cat in a businesslike way, ‘have you ascertained what you want?’

      ‘I’m trying not to,’ Rachel said, ‘for fear of it not coinciding with what he may want. As I say, I’m at his beck and call.’

      ‘You can pander to the needs of your riders,’ Cat said emphatically, ‘that’s your job. But your own needs are paramount within the grander scheme of things.’

      Rachel considered this. ‘I don’t know what I want. I was so damned tempted to get in to that salt and vinegar bath yesterday. But I didn’t. Because he didn’t ask.’

      ‘And you would have?’ Cat asked. ‘If he had?’

      Rachel shrugged.

      ‘I can’t think why Vasily wouldn’t,’ Cat said supportively. ‘We just have to figure a way to verify his desire without disrupting his ride.’

      ‘Maybe snogging helps his ride,’ Rachel said wryly.

      ‘Thank God it’s you who’s his soigneur – not your portly, bearded colleague!’ Cat returned.

      ‘Vasily is such a dark horse,’ Rachel continued quietly, ‘you rarely know how he feels let alone what he’s thinking.’ She regarded Cat and winked. ‘But if he kisses like Casanova, even speculating on his bed skills sends me spinning.’

      Cat laughed. And then she thought of Ben.

       How can I miss him?

      ‘But,’ Rachel said with a touch of resignation, ‘it’s probably a terrible, crazy idea.’

      ‘Say he doesn’t think so?’ Cat posed, it suddenly dawning on her that, if she actively missed Ben, it meant she herself had become embroiled. With a lurch, she was at once aware of the merits and dangers therein. ‘What you need,’ Cat continued, keen to concentrate on her friend’s situation instead, ‘is clarification – on how he feels, what he wants and where you stand.’

      ‘You never know with Vasily,’ Rachel mused, ‘you just don’t know what’s in his head or if his heart races for anything other than cycling.’

      ‘Providing a leg rub is one thing,’ Cat said, ‘sexual therapy is something quite else.’

      ‘Well,’ Rachel replied, ‘it’s certainly not on my job spec!’

      Suddenly, the police outriders were visible in the distance. Rachel and Cat took their action stations. Megapac’s Travis Stanton streamed towards them and swished past them in a blink.

      ‘Ready?’ Rachel yelled, not looking at Cat but at a small bunch pelting through the heat haze towards them. With her heart in her mouth, Cat held out her arm, proffering the musettes which were swiped away, whipped from her hand almost instantly. It stopped her heart and then sent it into overdrive. The hiss of wheels, the zip of colour, tension tangible, adrenalin a taste. Then they were away. Gone. Flashed past. And yet their impact lingered. Massimo Lipari. Gianni Fugallo. Speechless, grinning, transfixed, Cat had her gaze pulled after them until they were a blur and then out of sight. Suddenly, her attention was magnetized back to face the second rush, slightly larger, just coming in to view. The noise of the boys, shouting, whistling, swearing. The pace. The energy.

       Luca! Fabian – oh my God – not with Vasily’s group.

      Gone and distant more quickly than they’d approached; heading for the Col de Port, not particularly high but a 1-in-20 climb lasting 12 kilometres. Onwards to the Plateau de Boudin, the final climb and altitude finish; hors catégorie, viciously steep at the outset and almost 1,800 metres high. Best known as a cross-country ski station. Claim it by bike? Racing? After 154 kilometres in which there were four other mountains and two hot-spot sprints? Why? A touch of insanity? Or the pursuit of glory? What?

       I’m going to have to confront her.

      Ben York assessed the gash on Hunter’s elbow and decided three stitches would suffice.

       But if I do, and she backs off, then