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

even know at which hotel Megapac are staying and her booklet with that information is in the boot of the car parked at the salle de pressé.

       Should I just phone him? Or perhaps Rachel?

      Cat dials Ben. His phone is switched off and she has to work hard at not attaching great significance to this. She dials Rachel who gives her details of the Megapac hotel but who is not given the chance to have a chat or suggest a drink. Cat goes as directly as she can to the Megapac hotel, though she makes two wrong turnings and almost collides with an irate woman on a scooter. The hotel foyer is thrumming with fans and press. She goes to the lifts, scans the information of the team rooms and goes to the fourth floor. It is eerily quiet and she can sense that the doors are closed on empty rooms. It’s the Repos, the Rest Day, tomorrow, after all. Megapac have the perfect opportunity to celebrate their Stage victory in their first Tour de France.

      ‘Where would they do that?’ Cat asks Ben’s shut door, at which she continues to knock gently. ‘Where are you all?’ Cat goes to the car park in the hope that a soigneur or mechanic might be finishing duties. Why would they be? It’s the Rest Day tomorrow, the one opportunity for things to be put on hold for a night.

      ‘Well, I’ll just have to lie in wait,’ Cat says to the silent, lumbering team buses. And she does. For over an hour. Thinking what to say. Planning how to say it. Becoming word perfect, perfecting intonation, facial expressions, gestures. Soon enough changing her mind and her soliloquy. Now fretting that she’ll fluff her new lines and ruin the depth and sincerity of it all.

      She walks around to the front of the hotel and promenades to and fro, delivering her soliloquy quietly. There’s Ben. Over there. On the other side of the street. He’s with a group of people, Cat. Men and women.

       He’s with Luca. Luca looks slightly pissed.

      So does Ben. Who are the women?

       No idea. They looked pissed too.

      They’re with the American journalists.

       Yes.

      They also look somewhat drunk. They’ve bypassed the hotel and gone into that bar.

       Yes.

      Is that where you’re going?

       Yes.

      When Cat walked into the bar, which was smoky and packed, she was instantly relieved to see that in the far corner the women, whoever they were, were draped over the journalists. The swarm of people was as dense as at the finish-line media scrum but Cat squeezed and prodded and weaved her way forwards.

      ‘The Babe!’ Luca sang as she tripped and stumbled on her final approach to their party, steadying herself with a stranger and the edge of a table.

      ‘Luca!’ Cat beamed, trying to look composed, wondering why she couldn’t feel Ben’s gaze upon her, sensing icy stares from the women that the journalists were now wearing like football scarves.

      ‘You came to see me!’ Luca proclaimed.

      ‘Congratulations,’ Cat breathed, wondering if she was going to cry and whether it would be for Luca or herself, ‘I’m so proud of you.’

      ‘Ah!’ said Luca, nudging Ben. ‘The Cabe McBabe came to see me.’

      ‘Actually,’ Cat heard herself all but interrupt, ‘I came to see Ben.’

      ‘She came to see you!’ Luca laughed.

      ‘Can it wait till tomorrow?’ Ben asked. ‘We’re taking time out here to celebrate.’

      ‘No,’ said Cat, not blaming him for his reserve though it hurt, trying to remind herself that he was still under the illusion that she was a two-timing fraud.

      ‘Have a drink, McBabe,’ Luca said ingenuously with a small hiccup, ‘sit on my lap.’

      ‘Your legs are far too precious to have my bum on them,’ Cat said jovially, before regretting such an uncouth comment. ‘Ben?’ she implored. He glanced at his watch and asked the group to excuse him. The noise level was very high and Cat could barely stay her ground for all the jostling.

      ‘Outside?’ she asked, making her way with pencil-sharpenered elbows through the mass.

      ‘Cat,’ said Ben, once outside but before she had the chance to suggest they walk to the seafront, ‘I haven’t really got time – I told you, don’t worry about it.’

      ‘We could go to the beach,’ Cat blustered.

      ‘Huh? I’m midway through a party,’ Ben said.

      ‘I know, I know – I just.’ She looked at him and put her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance. ‘You don’t know,’ she said emphatically.

      ‘Yes,’ said Ben, scratching the back of his head and glancing over his shoulder to the direction of the bar, ‘I do.’

      ‘No,’ Cat remonstrated with a light stamp of her foot, ‘it’s your hands.’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘You see, it’s your hands that I know,’ she shrugged, sitting in a deflated hunch on a low wall, ‘I know your hands, Ben.’

      ‘That’s because they’re the most recent pair to have been all over you,’ said Ben. ‘Listen hon, I have to go.’

      He walked away.

      He’s walking away, Cat. Bloody go after him. Forget your speech and just talk honestly with him.

      ‘Ben!’

      He raises a hand but does not turn around or even slow down, as if to say, ‘Please – another time, Cat.’

      Cat jogs after him and uses him as a maypole again. He tries to walk on but she gives him a forceful shove and he stops and regards her, irritated.

      ‘Ben,’ she says, knowing neither what to say next nor where to look. Her eyes are drawn to his. He’s regarding her sternly, as if he’s allocated her a final two minutes before he’s bloody going back to the bar. ‘Ben,’ Cat says, feeling a smile spill across her lips in advance of the liberating truth, ‘there is nobody back home for me.’

      Ben says nothing.

      Say something, Ben – alleviate her ordeal.

       No. I think I ought just to listen.

      ‘There was someone,’ Cat says quietly, ‘a very significant other – but that was some months ago.’

      ‘Really,’ says Ben but not as a question.

      ‘Honestly,’ Cat implores.

      ‘Why lie?’ Ben asks after a moment’s contemplation. Cat shrugs. ‘Don’t shrug, speak.’

      ‘Because it felt safe – at the start – before you,’ Cat elaborates. ‘I’m in a minority out here,’ she continues, ‘I’m surrounded by blokes – I had no idea and no intention of falling, I mean fancying anyone.’

      Say something, Ben.

       Like what?

      ‘I told Josh,’ Cat continues in earnest, ‘very early on, before I knew him, let alone you.’

      ‘Why haven’t you told him that it was a lie?’

      ‘Because we’re on the Tour de France and it’s a race. Every day is a fucking race. To pack and check out. To get to the village, to scrounge quotes, to glean gossip. To rush to the salle de presse. To write the report. File it. Eat at some point. Sneak time with you. Sleep.’

       God, she’s almost as gorgeous all in a dither as she was when she was livid with me over Monique.

      Well, tell her.