boots, good legs clad in black jeans, a white shirt. Her eyes travel automatically upwards, over a strong neck, ditto chin, to a pair of just parted lips. She finally alights on very dark brown eyes which won’t let her go. She notes a handsome face enhanced by a wry smile, crowned by dark hair cut flatteringly close to the head and quite strikingly flecked through with grey. Momentarily, Cat wonders who he might be. But she knows he’s not a rider so her interest wanes.
Anyway, I have to go. I have to find the salle de presse. I’m working. It’s my job.
Ben watches her leave, rather gratified by the fact that he’ll see her again over the next three weeks.
Thursday. Salle de presse. 1 p.m.
Starving hungry, Cat’s appetite disappeared on entering the press room. Dread instead filled her stomach until fear was a hard lump in her throat and panic was a terrible taste to the tongue. She felt immediately that she had been transported back to Durham University, that she had just entered a vast exam hall and was ten minutes away from the start of her finals. The comparison was apposite but, as in an anxiety dream, disconcertingly twisted too. Noise. Too much of it. You can’t sit the test of your life amidst such a din. There again, you wouldn’t really sit your finals in northern France, in an ice rink requisitioned by the Société du Tour de France.
What had happened to the ice was initially of little relevance for Cat. Rather, she was transfixed by line upon line of connected trestle tables on which, at regular intervals, an army of laptops were positioned, gaping like hungry mouths eager to gobble down the information in any language as long as the topic was cycling. At the front and to either side, a brigade of industrial-sized televisions was mounted on tall stands, surrounding the journalists and perusing the scene like phantasmagorical invigilators.
If I’m not at Durham University, then I’m in a George Orwell novel or a Terry Gilliam film. Am I really at the Tour de France? It’s all so vast – anonymous, even. What on earth am I meant to do now? Where should I sit? This is my workplace for the next three days, how am I ever going to be able to concentrate?
Cat felt much sicker and far less steady on her feet than she had for any exam, or even on the ferry. But she made it to a space on a run of trestle conveniently close and which, to her relief, had an expanse of at least three metres between where she set up and the next journalist.
I’m in Babel. Did no one say hullo in Babel? Isn’t my pass enough – do I need a password too?
After a quick, furtive scout around, Cat plugged in her laptop, positioned her mobile phone near by and fanned out a selection of the booklets she had been given at accreditation.
See, now my workspace looks no different from any of those around me. I’m one of them, now. So, now someone should say hullo. I’m going to busy myself I’d like to scrutinize this one: ‘Les hotels, les equipes’ – see if any of my other hotels during the Tour might house teams too. Better not – that’s something I can look forward to doing later tonight when I’m in my room pathetically deluded that Jimenez or Lipari might come and find me.
I’ll start by flipping through this booklet – ‘Les régions, la culture’. Fuck, it’s all in French. I’ll just skim the pages as if I’m speed reading – oh God, but if I do, they might presume I’m fluent and come up jabbering away at me. PR packs from the teams. That’s better. I’ll start with Zucca MV.
She was staring at photos of the team when her mobile phone rang, causing her to jump and fumble with the handset.
‘Hullo?’ she whispered, her hand guarding her brow, her eyes cast unflinchingly down towards the keys on her laptop.
‘Bonjour!’ boomed Django so loudly that Cat glanced around her expecting to find the entire press corps listening in, knowing it wasn’t work, that she was but a pseudo journaliste. However, her presence, let alone that of Django’s voice, was obviously still undetected. Now she was relieved.
‘Hullo,’ she said, ‘Django.’
‘How are you?’ he asked, slurring his words in his excitement. ‘Where are you? What’s happening? Keeping a decorous distance from all that lycra, I do hope?’
Though she’d hate herself for it later, Django’s enthusiasm irritated Cat.
I’m working. This isn’t a holiday. Take me seriously.
Ah, but don’t deny it is a pleasure for which you yourself cannot believe you are being paid.
I bet nobody else’s uncles are phoning them.
Well then, you should pity them.
‘I’m fine,’ Cat said quietly, ‘but busy – press conferences, deadlines – and then some.’
Haven’t actually been to a press conference. My first deadline is tomorrow.
‘And the people?’ The pride in Django’s voice caused Cat’s eyes to smart. ‘Are they nice? Have you made friends? And the riders, girl – have you met and married?’
‘Oh,’ Cat sighed, swiping the air most nonchalantly, unaware that it was a gesture wasted on Django, ‘loads – great. Everything.’
‘Well, I’ll phone again,’ Django said gently, sensing her unease. ‘Just had to make sure that you’re really there – now that I hear you, I can continue with my jam-making. I’m trying damson and ouzo. I thought an aniseed taste and an alcoholic kick might be an interesting addition to an otherwise relatively mundane preserve. There’ll be a jar, or pot, probably plural, awaiting your return.’
Django’s culinary idiosyncrasies suddenly touched Cat. She closed her eyes and listened. It was like a voice not heard for a long while and yet its immediate familiarity was so comforting it was painful.
‘Thanks, Django,’ Cat said, smiling sadly, ‘but I have to go. Bye.’ She switched off, stared hard at the phone and forced herself to switch off. Back she was, in the formidable ice rink.
Too many people were smoking too many cigarettes. A man with a handlebar moustache was smoking a cigar. A large one.
He looks like an extra from a spaghetti western. What do I look like? A journaliste? I don’t think I’m noticeable at all. Do I want to be? And I haven’t done any work, I haven’t even switched my laptop on.
And there’s the Système Vipère press conference in ten minutes.
Good, I can get out of here.
Thursday. Team Système Vipère press conference. 1.30 p.m.
Cat just sits and stares. Her physical proximity to Fabian Ducasse is causing her to hold her breath. It is as if she fears that if she doesn’t, unless she keeps utterly still, he’ll disappear and all of this will have been some tormenting apparition. And what a shame that would be, with Fabian currently smouldering at the press corps, his mouth in its permanent pout, his eyes dark, his focus hypnotic. He is taller, broader, than Cat had previously assumed from television appearances. His skin is tanned, his hair now very short and emphatically presenting his stunning bone structure. His cool reserve, the aloof tilt of his head draw all present to his every move, his every word, at the expense of his equally hallowed team-mates sitting alongside. The conference is conducted in French and fast and, to Cat, the very timbre impresses her far more than the specific words she can pick out and string, if not into a sentence, into the gist of one. The room is charged. Or is it? Is it Fabian Ducasse’s doing? Or is it just Cat?
On the platform at one end of the conference room, Jules Le Grand has flanked himself with Fabian Ducasse, Jesper Lomers, Carlos Jesu Velasquez and the youngest member of the team, Oskar Munch, whose first Tour de France this is. Oskar appears as awestruck as Cat – if they caught sight of each other they could exchange empathetic gazes. This, though, is unlikely to happen in a room of at least two hundred people.