go haywire and her confidence is going to collapse. Worst of all, she will soon doubt her standing as a respected member of the Tour de France family. I have no idea how she’ll cope or how she’ll recover or why this has to happen to her. She deserves an easy ride, after all, doesn’t she?
It’s a beautiful day. She wants to go for a swim in the sea later. With Ben. Have a long, boozy supper, with Ben, perhaps with Rachel and the others too. Sleep with Ben tonight and wake up in the same bed as him tomorrow. She could even stroll through the village départ hand in hand with him. First, though, she has to go to the salle de pressé. She is ready and eager to confess to Josh, to hug him and thank him and apologize for the fact that she spun him a yarn she should have unknotted days ago. So she’s going to the salle de pressé, a spring in her step, a head-turning smile on her lips and in her eyes, energy and well-being instilled in her every move. I’m sorry. Poor Cat.
Alex and Josh were at home and happy in the salle de pressé on the Repos. They had no pressing urge to swim or stroll. To pack up at tea-time, as they intended to do, was treat enough. They liked it that the pace was down a gear, that the salle was populated today only by the diehard cycling enthusiasts who masquerade as journalists.
‘Would you mind finishing the last part of the tape?’ Josh, who types at a fraction of Cat’s speed, asked Alex. ‘I hate transcribing. It means we need only do it the once between us.’
‘Sure,’ said Alex, yawning, ‘sounds about all I’m capable of today. Fuck, I’m shagged.’
‘I’ll go and get caffeine,’ Josh informed. Alex fiddled with the earpiece before deciding to dispense with it. He set the tape running, turned up the volume, and transcribed from where Josh had left off. When Josh returned with coffee, Alex paused the tape and drank the liquid as if it were nectar.
‘Good old Luca,’ Alex laughed, ‘he says the only humping he’ll be doing is going up and down the mountains – “the fucking mountains”!’
‘God,’ said Josh, rewinding the machine, ‘did Cat just ask him if he was nervous?’
They listened. ‘Yeah,’ Alex confirmed, ‘but he didn’t bloody reply. We’ll have to ask her if he gesticulated positively or negatively or whether he kept a poker face. Fuck, she just asked him if he’s scared.’
‘No reply. I think that’s probably about it,’ Josh surmised, flicking down the volume.
‘I’ll just check,’ said Alex, turning the sound up again.
How long do you have? a male voice but not Luca’s seeps out of the dictaphone, Because I have about seven inches.
I have to write my report, a female voice, too British and unmistakable to be anyone other than Catriona McCabe, journaliste, le Guardian, is heard to reply.
All heads in the salle de pressé turn to Alex and Josh and Cat’s dictaphone; delighted, flabbergasted, hungry for more. Thank God only a third of the press men are working.
I want you now, the man is murmuring amidst much rustling.
You can have me now, the English girl replies whilst bedsprings creak.
There is the sound of deep, desirous breathing and some laughter and some moaning and some bed bouncing. Penetration or not – and the recording doesn’t divulge – it is indisputable what has been recorded; it is obviously an aural sex show and the press men are transfixed.
‘Come on,’ Josh tells Alex, ‘switch the fucker off.’ But neither of them silence the machine because both of them know they are listening to Cat and Ben.
Don’t stop, the girl pleads.
‘Whoa whoa whoa,’ says Alex, grabbing the dictaphone but not touching the volume, let alone switching the thing off.
Now! the girl is remonstrating when the man tells her ‘Later’. She is panting and gasping and audibly on the verge of orgasm.
Cat came into the salle de pressé just as she was about to come on tape. And when she came in, all eyes were on her in the here and now whilst all ears were still trained to her in the then and there. There was silence amongst the press corps. But not from the dictaphone.
‘But I want you – I do – now!’
Cat was rooted to the spot.
‘Look on this as a taster – I’m going to whisk you away tonight, I know of a place. It’s private and beautiful and we’re going to have sex there.’
Cat remembered distinctly how, at that point, Ben had had his fingers inside her. And even if she’d forgotten, the sound of her rhythmic, lust-urgent breathing would have reminded her.
Isn’t technology marvellous! How sensitive dictaphones are! See, it can pick up and project the unmistakable rasps and clicks of two people kissing and it can preserve crystal clear and loud the sound of Cat imploring, ‘Don’t go – oh God, Ben!’ It is a shame that the salle de presse isn’t quite so sensitive to allow a private situation to remain so. But can you blame them? Have you ever heard anything like it? Luca Jones. Sex. Gossip. On the Tour de France. Compulsive listening. I dare anyone to switch it off.
What did Cat do? What could she do? What do you think she did? What would you do?
She gave a strangled yelp. She turned on her heels. She ran. Fast. Just to get the fuck away from there. And fast. It probably wasn’t the most logical thing to do, nor the most constructive because it would of course make her return – and she would have to return, it was her job – all the more difficult. But she acted on impulse, reacted to the sheer horror of it all, and all her senses barring common sense had told her to bolt.
Was the dictaphone then switched off? What? And miss Ben having his private wank? The tape must run to the end. After all, say Luca came back with a fantastic quote? Fast forward? No, no – wouldn’t want to run down the batteries.
I could fly home from Toulouse.
But you’d have to inform Taverner at the Guardian.
And he’d want to know why.
And then, of course, so will Maillot.
And yarn-spinning obviously lands me in more trouble than the truth.
Plus, if you left under a cloud, you’d have no control over the way this whole débâcle will be recounted.
Jesus. Before you can say maillot jaune, legend will have me live on video shagging the entire Megapac team.
How long have you been sitting there? It’s drawing to dusk. Isn’t the sand damp and your bottom wet?
I didn’t go to the hotel for fear of being followed. I found this secluded chink away from the main beach. There are rock pools. The sand is dry.
There is a funny side, Cat, you do know that? But you alone can orchestrate the way this afternoon is preserved for posterity.
I know. It would only take Rachel or my sisters to point it out, but I’m actually too humiliated to contact anyone. Even Ben.
Instead, Cat opted out of the present tense and sat a while longer, by herself. She analysed how the clouds simpered up to the moon and over it, having their edges singed brown like the circumference on a cup of espresso coffee. Then she made the clouds appear to stand still so that she imagined the stars to be making a reverential pilgrimage towards the moon. Then she saw the night clouds as a slow, silent procession; like a line of melancholy people moving quietly, secretly away. Finally, she scoured the sky for the constellations she knew and she mused a while on how, at different times and in different places, she’d seen Cassiopeia as a W, an M and a 3. Finally, she admitted that such meanderings were just pointless displacement activities and that facts had to