Cat. Freya North

a donkey.’

      ‘Aye, that’s you,’ Rachel laughs again. ‘Now turn over. I need to do your glutes. By the way, how are your haemorrhoids? I think that new cream is probably better – yes?’

      ‘Oh la la, chica chica la la. Le Tour, oh yeah, le Tour. Yeah. Yeah. Le Tour. La!’

      Massimo Lipari, pleasantly rejuvenated from his session with Rachel, is singing in his apartment, gyrating his way from bathroom to bedroom, giving a good shimmy by the cupboard door and then delving around his quite extensive wardrobe. Never mind the imminence of the Tour de France, it is the team supper itself tonight that requires greatest application from Massimo. He repeats his song and sings it fortissimo.

      If I were not a professional cyclist, I would be a pop star. He regards his handsome reflection and gives himself a wink. His cheekbones are as sharp as his eye reflexes when he’s descending mountains at 100 kilometres an hour. His smile is as dazzling as the way he can dance up the ascents of the most unforgiving climbs. He sings his pop song again. The tune is the one he recorded as the official song of the Giro D’Italia last year which made it into the top ten.

       It was almost as thrilling as finishing third overall in the race itself Almost – but not quite. Cycling defines me. A cyclist could, conceivably, become a celebrity. But a pop star could not decide to become a pro racer.

      Off his bike, Massimo lives as a star and loves it. He’s on adverts on television and billboards, he’s been in the hit parade, his face is on a particular brand of chocolate-hazelnut spread and his local bar is bedecked with Massimo memorabilia. And yet astride his bike, he is utterly focused, racing brilliantly and seemingly independent of crowd adulation. The transformation to superstar occurs the moment he crosses the finish line. He always wipes his mouth and zips up; there are thousands of cameras, press and TV, fans staring everywhere – he believes it his duty to delight them both in and out of racing conditions. He wants to take the King of the Mountains jersey this year, to make his hat trick.

      He goes to the vast gilt mirror above the flamboyant paved fireplace that his sponsors built for him. He gazes at himself and nods.

      ‘I am Donna magazine’s “Sexiest Man on Two Wheels”,’ he remarks. ‘Nice! But if I can take the polka dot jersey for a third time – well! National hero comes home to party time!’

      Looking like a healthy composite of mafioso, pop star and Milanese advertising executive, Massimo Lipari leaves his apartment for the team dinner. He could drive. He could take a cab. He could have taken up Rachel’s offer to taxi him there as she is doing for other members of the team. But Massimo decides to walk. He likes to hear the calls of ‘Ciao, Massimo!’ He likes to feel people looking, he likes to sense the recognition, he likes to imagine what they say to each other when he has passed by. He is a local hero, all the Zucca MV boys are, living in close proximity just north of Verona and in the shadow of the foothills of the Dolomites.

      With his hair gelled and tweaked, his goatee beard clipped to perfection, his jet-black eyes hidden from view behind Oakley sunglasses despite it being dusk, Massimo Lipari cuts a dashing figure, slicing into the fantasies of the women he passes on his way to the restaurant with much the same force as when he slices through the pack on a mountain climb.

      Rachel is wearing a skirt, not that anyone has noticed and not that she’s noticed that it’s gone unnoticed. It is pale blue linen, straight, and to the mid-calf. She has teamed it with a white linen shirt and white lace-up pumps. It suits her. Her hair is down but scooped away at the sides. She is wearing perfume but no make-up, her fresh complexion giving a radiance to her already pretty features.

      It’s the last bloody time for over three weeks that I’ll be able to wear light colours and not smell of embrocation. The Tour de France, and the perils of being a soigneur, mean dark plain clothes are not just practical but a necessity. Anyway, I still haven’t had the chance to do my own laundry. Poor Paolo has had a very bad stomach which he is playing down because this will be his first Tour and he doesn’t want to miss it. However, his shorts have really taken the brunt. Terrible mess. It’s taken me most of the afternoon. Poor boy.

      Rachel, you’re a saint.

      Bollocks. I’m a soigneur. It’s my job.

      She looks around the table at the team and realizes she is on tenterhooks on their behalf.

       Look at you all, seemingly so relaxed. My God, when I think what’s in store for you.

      And for you, Rachel. It’s your first Tour de France.

       Me? Oh, I’ll be fine. The Tour, the Giro, the Vuelta – surely just the scenery is different. But the boys have the Col du Galibier, the Madeleine, L’Alpe D’Huez – not to mention the fucking Pyrenees beforehand. Shit, I must remember cashmere socks.

      ‘I must remember cashmere socks,’ Rachel all but shouts. The table falls silent, pieces of pizza halt half-way to mouths; spaghetti unravels itself from motionless forks.

      ‘Huh?’ says Massimo shooting glances to his team-mates.

      ‘In case it becomes cold, in case you develop sore throats. If Benylin is a banned substance, a cashmere sock worn round the neck at night surely is not.’

      ‘Rachel,’ said Stefano very seriously, stretching his arm across the table and laying his hand on her wrist for emphasis, ‘we finished work for the day. Shut the fuck up, relax, eat. Please.’

      The team cheered and raised their glasses in support. Rachel twitched her lip and then raised her glass too.

      ‘Here’s to you lot,’ she said with immense feeling. ‘Have a good race.’

      Rachel knows that she is to be one of only two female soigneurs on the Tour de France and the thought doesn’t worry her in the least. Cat has no idea that, in the salle de pressé of 1,000 journalists, she will be one of only twelve women.

      If I were to meet Vasily Jawlensky, Cat muses, coming home from the Guardian office, what on earth would I say to him? Ought I to bow? Curtsey? In his presence, surely major genuflection is highly appropriate. I wish I could speak bloody Russian.

       I can’t wait to meet Massimo Lipari, he always kisses everyone three times, regardless of their sex or relationship to him. Remember how last year, Phil Liggett from Channel 4 was given the Lipari smackers live on TV after Massimo won at L’Alpe D’Huez? Liggett looked lovestruck and told the viewers he’d never wash his face again. I’d like some Massimo kisses. But how would I go about getting them? What exactly would I ask him?

       I’d love to set Stefano Sassetta off against the inimitable Mario Cipollini. They’re both the most extravagant, over-the-top personalities in the peloton. Stefano tall, dark and handsome; Cipo with blond highlights, a pony-tail and a great line in outrageous one-liners. There’s Stefano banging on about the aesthetic excellence of his thighs, and there’s Cipo saying if he wasn’t a cyclist he’d like to be a porn star. Italian stallions, both.

       But.

       I suppose it’s not so much what I’d say to them, but whether or not they’d talk to me.

       Oh.

      BEN YORK AND TEAM MEGAPAC

      Ben York, born thirty years ago in Hampshire, studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital, London. It was perfectly reasonable for his mother, his father, his friends and his then-girlfriend Amelia, to assume he’d take the position offered to him by Guy’s, further his career, become as brilliant as everyone had always anticipated, marry Amelia (as she anticipated), afford a very lovely place in Notting Hill and take up golf.

      Ben York, however, hates golf.

      Ben turned down the job at Guy’s, let down Amelia, appalled her parents and stunned his parents when he announced he was going to downtown