Josh says Cat, where are you, please call, he’s worried. Alex says you’re cool, McCabe, don’t worry about it, your street cred has just rocketed. Ben tells her he’s just spoken to Josh, asks her to call, call now. Josh implores her to call, please Cat, just call.
It is because Cat can feel their affection and detect no ridicule that she decides she won’t be flying home from Toulouse. She knows she will be able to enter the salle de pressé tomorrow, even if she won’t quite be able to hold her head high. Who to phone? Who else.
‘Josh?’
‘Cat,’ Josh sighs, relieved, delighted, ‘where the fuck are you?’
‘Oh,’ Cat says, a wavering voice coming through more clearly than her breezy tone, ‘just sitting. Having a think.’
‘Do you want company?’ Josh asks.
‘Can we just chat on the phone?’ Cat replies, dipping her fingertips into a rock pool.
‘Sure,’ Josh says.
‘Josh, I’m so sorry,’ Cat says, hugging her knees and wishing she was hugging him.
‘You don’t need to be,’ Josh assures her.
‘No, I do,’ Cat confirms, her voice breaking, ‘I lied to you and I don’t feel good about that and I should have set records straight ages ago.’
‘About the non-existent boyfriend?’
‘Yes,’ Cat gasps, ‘how do you know about him?’
Josh wasn’t about to tell her that he was in Rachel’s room, eating cereal, with the Zucca MV soigneur and the Megapac doctor trying to hear both sides of the conversation. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ Cat was continuing, ‘when I, um, fibbed.’
‘Fibbed!’ Josh laughs. ‘It was a fucking whopper!’
‘I know,’ Cat concedes, trying to lean back against a rock but finding it singularly uncomfortable, ‘I know. But I did it for many reasons, many of them daft but mainly for my own security.’
‘I understand,’ says Josh honestly because, after lengthy conversations with both Ben and Rachel, he does.
‘I adore you, Josh,’ Cat says from the heart, clutching hers for unseen emphasis, ‘I truly value our friendship and I hope I haven’t hurt you.’
Josh smiles. He’s glad Ben and Rachel didn’t hear that. He wants to keep it for himself. He’s touched.
‘So,’ Cat says, ‘I’m not an immoral slapper.’
‘Good God no!’ Josh replies with great affection. ‘You’re just a sex-crazed compulsive liar.’
To be teased in such a way but with such affection at such a time is a true tonic for Cat and she is further soothed by Josh imploring her to come to the Zucca MV hotel to raid Rachel’s veritable grocery store.
‘Have you been with Rachel, then,’ Cat asks, ‘this whole time?’
‘Yes,’ says Josh, ‘and Ben’s here too.’
Cat poked her head around Rachel’s door with her eyes trained firmly on the carpet. She noted Rachel was wearing pretty sandals, Ben was in his lovely Docksiders and Josh was in trainers. Very slowly, she let her gaze travel upwards over three pairs of legs of varying degrees of hirsuteness. Rachel was sitting in a chair, Ben and Josh were on the edge of her bed. Gradually, Cat lifted her head and finally her eyes alighted on the three faces. Rachel was shaking hers slowly, with a wry smile etched across her lips. Josh had tilted his, broadcasting a supportive smile as loudly as he could. Ben was simply looking at her.
God, you’re gorgeous, Cat.
‘Hullo,’ Cat said to all asunder, bashfully.
‘Do you want some food?’ Rachel asked, rising and slipping her hand around Cat’s waist, giving her a squeeze.
‘Yes, please,’ said Cat, shuffling further into the room.
‘Fuck it, Cat, you mad girl,’ Josh said, coming over and enveloping her in a bear hug. He kissed her cheek with a sonorous ‘mmwah!’ and then helped himself to a banana which he munched thoughtfully.
When Cat had consumed two bowls of cereal and a yoghurt, Ben yawned, stretched and rose. ‘Come on, you,’ he said, going to her and running his fingers through her hair. Cat knew she blushed at the sudden public display of his affection, but up she stood obediently, beamed gratitude at Rachel and said, ‘Come, Josh, let’s go.’
Josh, Ben and Cat strolled leisurely back to their hotel. Every now and then, Cat glanced gratefully at the moon, checked on Cassiopeia’s whereabouts and observed that the queue of clouds had dispersed. It was going to be a fine day tomorrow.
The journalists’ hotel was small and the foyer served as an impromptu bar. Alex was there with the buxom woman, ensconced in sagging seats and surrounded by several empty bottles of Seize.
‘Cat McCabe!’ he bellowed, unravelling his gangly limbs, extricating himself from the capacious chair and the drape of the woman. He loped over to her, picked her up off the floor, swung her around and then deposited her somewhat cack-handedly. ‘Cat McCabe,’ he said again, with a veritable twinkle in his eye, ‘you little vixen you.’ Then he turned to Ben. ‘You’re a wanker of a bastard,’ he praised the doctor, ‘you’re loathed and envied by the entire salle de pressé right now.’ Ben thanked him courteously for the compliment, Cat kissed Alex goodnight and raised her eyebrow quite saucily in reference to Mary or Margaret or Molly.
‘Maria,’ Alex whispered. Cat winked and they left Alex to his questionable yet obviously relatively effective seduction.
‘Sweet dreams,’ Cat said to Josh, laying her hand on his arm before hugging him tightly.
‘You too,’ Josh grinned. ‘Night, Ben.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Ben.
Cat had the most horrendous headache, slicing right across her brow and searing into the centre of her skull. Ben said that, ironically, the best cure for a headache was sex. Cat was happy to believe him and needed no spoonful of sugar to facilitate such medicine. He was a doctor. She trusted him.
STAGE 12
Frontignan La Peyrade-Daumier. 196 kilometres
Back in London, Pip, who’d hardly slept, phoned Django at 5.30 a.m.
‘Can you lend me some money?’ she said.
‘Jesus Christ – are you in trouble? Are you in jail?’ Django cried, throwing back the bedcovers, ready to dress in a second and pelt down to London at a moment’s notice even if his eyes were still firmly shut.
‘God, I’m fine,’ Pip laughed, ‘only I’m a bit broke this month. So can you?’
‘Can I what?’ Django asked, rubbing his eyes and his head and trying to massage his memory into recalling what his niece had phoned for.
‘Lend me some money,’ Pip repeated.
‘Money?’ said Django. ‘What for? Are you in trouble?’
‘God, no,’ said Pip, ‘I want to go to France to visit my sister.’
‘You want to go to France to visit your sister,’ Django repeated attempting, at this ungodly hour, to recall which niece was not in England and why.
‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘Cat.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say?’ Django exclaimed. ‘Of course you can have some money – if I have some.’
‘You have lots,’ Pip prompted, ‘somewhere.’
‘Of course I do,’ Django said, as if thanking his niece