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

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СКАЧАТЬ the Alps, contending with the terrible conditions, the terrifying gradients, and their own personal demons taunting them with fatigue, cramp, cold, breakdown.

      ‘The Galibier towered above on the race, glowering down on the men who had the audacity to scale its heights by bike,’ wrote Cat. ‘For a mountain whose bleak wastes are inhospitable even in sunshine, in the rain today it was grim and desperately dangerous too.’

      She was paragraphs into her article though the race was a long way from the finish. Though she was going to exceed her word limit, she needed to recount the awesome magnitude of the day, to do justice to the men who were out there; just let Taverner dare edit!

      Luca and Didier were in a small group with the green jersey of Jesper Lomers, way ahead of the toiling gruppetto, but an insurmountable distance behind a breakaway containing Lipari, Velasquez, Ducasse and Jawlensky.

      ‘Welcome to hell,’ Didier said to Luca when the descent of the Telegraphe had at once become the climb of the Galibier.

      ‘This isn’t rain,’ Luca remarked, ‘it’s fucking sleet.’

      ‘We need our rain capes,’ Didier said.

      ‘Can’t we just keep going?’ Luca suggested, not wanting to slow down, let alone stop, wanting only to be done with the Galibier.

      ‘We’ll freeze, we’ll never make it,’ Didier insisted.

      ‘I can hardly see,’ said Luca, ‘and I’m bursting for a piss.’

      ‘Just piss yourself,’ said Didier, ‘it’ll keep you warm.’

      ‘God, this is horrible,’ said Luca, not at all comforted by the hot trickle that seeped its way around his shorts. His group tried to work together to combat the headwind, the flurries of sleet but ultimately it was each man for himself. Luca’s legs felt appallingly heavy, his eyes stung, his feet were numb and his fingers felt welded with ice to the handlebars. He was dropping back but knew that if Didier was to survive the Galibier, he must be allowed to do it at his preferred pace and rhythm. Luca was on his own and he was hurting badly across his forehead and the back of his neck. His arms ached supremely, the fronts of his thighs and inside his knees were scorched with pain and felt on the verge of malfunction. His breathing, laboured and painful, filled his ears.

      ‘Help me,’ he whimpered, ‘oh God!’

      A fan ran beside, chanting encouragement and pushing Luca for a few yards. His team car drew alongside and his directeur yelled hard and heartlessly at Luca to fucking keep going. Somehow, Luca clambered and straggled his way to the Galibier’s summit; thirty-five minutes behind Carlos Jesu Velasquez and Massimo Lipari, thirty minutes behind the group with Fabian and Vasily, eighteen minutes behind Didier’s group and fifty-eight minutes in front of the gruppetto. Luca’s limbs froze on the descent and so did the blood in his veins. It was absolutely terrifying. He was dangerously stiff. Visibility was but a few metres. He felt he had little control over his bike or brakes, with fingers frozen, mind numbing and spirit dying.

       I don’t want to be here. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t know how the fuck I am going to carry on. I want to be in Italy. I don’t want to be on a bike. Sunshine. Mama.

      On L’Alpe D’Huez, Massimo Lipari stood on his pedals and danced away from Carlos Jesu Velasquez, commandeering the invisible motor that should be the advantage of the polka dot jersey wearer. The Spaniard could do nothing but ride his best and he could do nothing about the fact that, today, Massimo Lipari was simply riding better. It was going to be a legendary Stage finish. Système Vipère’s Velasquez had won at altitude in the Pyrenees, now Zucca MV’s Lipari was set to do the same in the Alps. The salle de presse and their editors back home were ecstatic about the copy such a day was generating.

      On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fabian Ducasse bonked. In the salle de pressé, fingers went apoplectic over keyboards, but not Cat’s. Though she had been grinning transfixed by Massimo’s great bid for victory, her jaw dropped in awe as she watched Vasily Jawlensky pull away and power up the mountain, sitting calm in his saddle, his shoulders, his eyes, his resolve, rock steady. Incredibly, Vasily hugged the inside of each hairpin, riding the shorter but steeper route as if it were the easier option, the most direct route to the yellow jersey after all. Cat’s mouth remained agape in disbelief to see Fabian unable to counter Vasily’s attack.

      On L’Alpe D’Huez both the polka dot and yellow jerseys changed backs, yet excitement amongst the press for the new victors was countered with compassion for the vanquished. It was gut-wrenching to watch Fabian flounder, to watch the yellow jersey himself slip away from his group, the jersey slip from him. No one helped him. Their pace had not changed. His had. Will power is one thing, grim determination is another, but limbs shot away with pain and muscles ravaged by lactic acid is something else entirely. Fabian simply could not turn the pedals with the force and effect that the other riders could. His eyes were swollen, his mouth was agape, his upper body could not pull and his lower body could not propel. Whatever was going through his mind, no matter how deep he dug within his soul, his body was emphatically on strike and he was utterly at its mercy.

      On L’Alpe D’Huez Luca Jones dismounted. Now Cat gasped alarmed, having watched in silent horror her rider weaving and wavering before quitting his bike.

      ‘Get back,’ she murmured, ‘don’t stop. Don’t stop, Luca. Please.’ She closed her eyes, willing him to continue. Opening them, she saw the Megapac team car alongside Luca.

      ‘Make him get back,’ she implored, stirring the journalists around her but having no effect on Luca, ‘don’t let him stop. Tell him he can do it. Please.’

      ‘Let me stop,’ Luca sobs.

      ‘No! I will not have you fail. Get back and move. You are paid to do a job,’ the directeur, merely doing his, barks.

      ‘I can’t,’ Luca pleads.

      ‘You ride for Megapac,’ the directeur shouts, ‘you are not sick, you are lazy – ride on.’

      ‘Please,’ Luca pleads.

      ‘Last week you were the personification of success, today you are the epitome of failure.’

      Luca remounts and slowly, painfully, painfully slowly, pedals onwards. He makes it up and around two further hairpin bends before dismounting again, this time sitting down on the tarmac, his fingers fixed as if still gripping the handlebars. His team car draws alongside. He looks at his directeur through his bloodshot eyes sunken deep into his skull. He is too cold, too desolate, to speak.

      ‘Luca, you will finish this Stage, you will not let L’Alpe D’Huez do this to you. How dare you even think of doing this to the team!’

      ‘My hands,’ Luca wails, ‘so cold.’

      ‘Piss on them,’ his directeur commands. ‘I forbid you to give up. You will not leave the Tour today.’

      On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fen and Pip, drenched but warmed by Fritz’s schnapps, watched aghast as Luca Jones all but collapsed off his bike and sat shivering and hunched on the tarmac. They watched dumbfounded as he stood, stooped, rolled down his shorts a little and pissed. They watched stunned as he attempted to direct the flow over his hands. They watched in awe as he remounted. He was pushed along, from fan to fan, until his legs could take him forwards and his bike crept upwards and away. Pip chastized herself. She had been on the verge of СКАЧАТЬ