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

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СКАЧАТЬ their gear but minus their bikes, poncing across the stage,’ Alex dismissed. Cat could think of nothing she’d like to see more.

      ‘It’s more for the VIPs and local dignitaries,’ Josh added, ‘like in horse-racing when the nags are paraded around before the off.’

      ‘Well,’ Cat said breezily, ‘this is my first Tour and I feel I ought to experience everything that’s going. So, à demain, mes enfants.’ She left the salle de presse and made her way to the town hall. It was humid, the still air hanging thick with the sense of anticipation felt by all connected with the race.

      As thrilled as Cat was that she had made friends already, now, at the town hall, sneaking a seat near the front, she was most pleased that she was by herself. She wanted to soak up, savour and smile her way through the team presentation without being laughed at by Alex or, worse, perhaps to be judged and discredited by Josh.

       I want to see my boys, standing before me, complete as teams, their bodies unharmed as yet by the traumas of the Tour. I want to keep the image – it’s important. Tomorrow changes everything.

      Cat had come into close quarters with lycra-clad bike racers many times but it was bizarre, unsettling almost, to see the élite peloton so very out of context, paraded before her, for her, strutting their stuff without a bike in sight.

       I almost don’t know where to look – because wherever I try to look, my eyes seem drawn back to the bulges. They’d give male ballet dancers a run for their money.

      It was like a fashion show. Deutsche Telekom team, looking pretty impressive in pink, left the stage and Cofidis filed on, the riders’ chests and backs emblazoned with a vibrant golden sun symbol. Système Vipère looked stunning in their predominantly black lycra, a viper picked out in emerald and scarlet curling itself round each rider’s body and left thigh. Despite it being almost eight o’clock, Fabian Ducasse was wearing his Rudy Project sunglasses but Cat was perfectly happy that he should for he looked utterly stunning.

      ‘What do you miss?’ Cat understood the compère to be asking Fabian. Fabian replied with an expressive Gallic shrug-cum-pout and said wine and women. ‘What does Paris mean to you?’ the compère furthered. Fabian looked at him as if he was dense. ‘Wine and women, of course.’

      And the yellow jersey, perhaps, thought Cat, not that Vasily will let it go easily, Oh, why can’t you both have it?

      Zucca MV, in their blue and yellow strip, striped into rather dazzling and possibly tactical optically psychedelic swirls, sauntered on to the stage next and stood, legs apart, hands behind their backs. Though there was no music, Massimo Lipari was tapping his toe, nodding his head and grabbing his bottom lip with his teeth as if he were in a night-club and on the verge of dancing his heart out. Cat smiled. Stefano Sassetta smirked arrogantly, his torso erect, his thighs slightly further apart than those of his team-mates and, Cat noticed, tensed to show off their impressive musculature. Her eyes were on an involuntary bagatelle course; if they moved upwards from Stefano’s thighs, they hit his crotch from where they rebounded back to his thighs before being sent north again.

       There’s padding and there’s padding – and I estimate that only a fraction of what Stefano has down there is padding. Blimey!

      Zucca’s six domestiques, staring earnestly into the middle distance, same height, same build, same haircut, now the same peroxide blond, looked utterly interchangeable and Cat cussed herself for confusing Gianni with Pietro or Paolo and Marco and Mario or Franscesco.

      They’re the cogs that keep Zucca’s wheels turning. If these boys weren’t domestiques, they’d most probably be working in their fathers’ restaurants. Not as head chefs or maître d’s, but as waiters, scurrying back and forth, keeping everybody happy. And they would indeed be happy – working for others is what they do. And they do it brilliantly and with pleasure. Their sense of family is strong. A family is a team. A team is a family. Put any obstacle in front of a line of soldier ants and they will not look for a way around it, they will climb up and over it and so it is with the Zucca MV domestiques. Their selflessness is legendary within the peloton. I’d like to write a piece about them.

      Cat was making a mental note to phone the publishers of Maillot on Monday morning to propose such an article, when Megapac replaced Zucca MV on stage, the nine riders fresh-faced grinning virgins in comparison to the suave comportment of the Italian team who had a long-standing relationship with the Tour de France. She had to physically stop herself from leaping to her feet and waving at Hunter and Luca whom she now thought of as personal friends.

       We meet again. You all look so lovely. Please take care. Have a good race. See you tomorrow. Adieu.

       Catriona McCabe. Journaliste.

      Cat McCabe is exhausted. She is back at the hotel, in her room, praying that neither Alex nor Josh will call for her. In fact, tonight she wouldn’t even open the door to Stefano Sassetta or Jose Maria Jimenez, no matter how insistently they knocked. The team presentation has been a reality check; she is truly here, on the eve of the Tour de France. She really is a journalist and a journaliste. She’s written her piece which Taverner rather liked, allowing her to keep the extra forty-four words which exceeded his word limit, and it will be published tomorrow morning.

       Will He read it, I wonder?

      He? Taverner? He has already – he liked it.

       No – Him.

      Why are you thinking about him, Cat? Aren’t your three weeks in France meant to be putting that all-important distance, in time and space, between you and all that?

       I’m just wondering. I still miss Him, all right?

      Who, Cat, or what? Do you miss the status of what he was – a long-term boyfriend – or do you miss the person he is? If it’s the former, that’s understandable; if it’s the latter, it’s unacceptable.

       I know. It’s just the world seems a very spacious place without Him.

      And your world was an unhappy one with him. Let him go. Let go. Here you are – just look where you are. You’re going to be fine.

       Am I?

      See her sitting up in bed. She is wearing a Tour de France T-shirt and a Team Saeco-Cannondale baseball cap. All the journalists are bribed with branded clothing and yet none are wearing them in public. Cat is disappointed. How can so many seem blasé when she herself is brimming with excitement? Cat has noted how it appears to be cool to wear branded items from previous Tours, but no one wears the current gifts as if somehow that would be too obsequious. Next year, though, no doubt they’ll be an enviable commodity and worn with pride and panache.

      Cat, anyway, is wearing hers in bed, scanning L’Equipe and pleased that she can understand most of what she reads. She hauls her laptop from chair to bed and reads through her article. She pulls the neck of the T-shirt up and over her nose, inhaling deeply and knowing that, whenever she smells this T-shirt again, it will say to her ‘Tour de France, eve of the Prologue, Hôtel Splendide, Delaunay Le Beau. Room 50. Jimenez above, Lipari below. Alex Fletcher and Josh Piper in the bar. I was there.’ Cat pulls her cap down over her brow and reads.

       COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CA TRIONA McCABE IN DELA UNA Y LE BEAU

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