The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  She returned to her seat between Josh and Alex without a word or a glance. Her mind was in a muddle. The Stage was being replayed on the televisions but it was Ben’s words, echoing in her head, which provided the incongruous commentary.

  What should I do? Find him? Phone him? Phone Fen? Run to Rachel? Write? Cry? Hit Josh? Thump Alex? In what order? Oh, for order, for some sense of control.

  ‘Cat,’ Josh said, placing his hand on her shoulder and making her flinch, ‘can I borrow your Luca interview?’

  ‘God yeah,’ Alex enthused, ‘and me?’

  ‘I haven’t transcribed it yet,’ she said to Alex, unable even to look at Josh. ‘Perhaps once I’ve done so,’ she continued, staring at her screen.

  With all that was buffeting around her mind, writing her article was the perfect way of taking time out from it all. Amazingly, the words flowed on the tide of emotion subsuming her whenever she replayed Luca’s victory in her mind or caught snatches of it on the screen. She pleaded successfully with Taverner to let her have an extra 150 words purely for the purpose of purple prose and finished her work well before Josh and Alex. When she came back from transmitting her piece, she took her seat, glanced at Alex and then turned to Josh.

  ‘Josh, I need to talk to you.’

  He turned his cheek slightly towards her but kept his eyes on his screen and mumbled, ‘Sure.’

  ‘No,’ Cat said, looking at him, ‘I really want to talk to you.’

  Josh stopped typing and looked at her ingenuously. Why shouldn’t he? After all, what had he said? What, if anything, had he done wrong? There was not a malicious cell in his body, only affection for Cat.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘In private,’ Cat said quietly, regarding his fingers resting, mid-sentence, over the keys.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Josh asked. Cat shrugged and tried to raise an eyebrow in a Ben-like way, unaware that the result was more startled fawn than nonplussed doctor. ‘Let me just finish up,’ Josh continued, ‘then we’ll go for a quiet drink, yes?’

  Cat sat quietly, happily watching the replays on the TV screens. What a tremendous day’s racing. Luca Jones. Four hours, thirteen minutes and sixteen seconds. It should be written in full. He deserves glory for every fraction of each moment.

  Here’s Luca heading home with just under 5 kilometres to go. This is when the cameras focused on his hands. Here they are. Gloveless. Pink. One silver ring. Slender fingers. Cat found that she was standing up and knew she had just said, ‘Oh my God!’ out loud a number of times. She looked from Alex to Josh, both of whom were regarding her somewhat puzzled. ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘I have to go.’ And she went.

  En route to her hotel, Cat makes a detour to the water’s edge. In contrast to the fiery Atlantic Coast which provided the backdrop to her initial coupling with Ben, the Golfe du Lion is mellow and affable. The water is lapping lazily, as if it always does so, as if this is the preferred pace of the place, regardless of whether 175 men (two retired) hurtled into town at 60 kph that afternoon. She lays her hand lightly in the spume and feels the bubbles tingle and effervesce, senses them burst in a tickle when the water pulls back. It is dusk, the water is warm. If she was wearing a bra she’d undress and swim in her underwear. But she isn’t, so she doesn’t. She looks at her hand, all glistening, and dabs her tongue against her salty fingertips, sucking them at length and thoughtfully.

  Hands. That was it. That’s when I knew. Hands.

  Hands, Cat?

  It was seeing Luca’s hands.

  What did you see?

  That’s when I suddenly realized.

  Realized what?

  I’m going to say this out loud.

  ‘I know Ben’s hands off by heart. It’s his hands that I can conjure. I can’t recall the hands of Him – and is that surprising? After all, Rachel pointed out that He No Longer Exists. I can’t remember what they look like. Not even if I scrunch my eyes tight shut and concentrate. And yet I can envisage Ben’s hands effortlessly. It doesn’t bother me at all that I no longer know what that other man’s hands looked like. It’s Ben’s that I know. It’s Ben that matters. I’m going to find him.’

  How easy should this be for Cat? Should Ben be in his room, reading, relaxed, receptive? Might Cat come across him right now, strolling along the beach, nicely contemplative? Maybe he’ll be having a quiet beer alone in a harbourside bar with a spare chair conveniently close? Perhaps he’ll be coming to find Cat as she goes to locate him. And they’ll see each other a way off. And, as they near, their smiles will spread. And they’ll grasp hands, kiss and confide and feel elated and go straight to bed.

  Actually, Cat doesn’t even know at which hotel Megapac are staying and her booklet with that information is in the boot of the car parked at the salle de pressé.

  Should I just phone him? Or perhaps Rachel?

  Cat dials Ben. His phone is switched off and she has to work hard at not attaching great significance to this. She dials Rachel who gives her details of the Megapac hotel but who is not given the chance to have a chat or suggest a drink. Cat goes as directly as she can to the Megapac hotel, though she makes two wrong turnings and almost collides with an irate woman on a scooter. The hotel foyer is thrumming with fans and press. She goes to the lifts, scans the information of the team rooms and goes to the fourth floor. It is eerily quiet and she can sense that the doors are closed on empty rooms. It’s the Repos, the Rest Day, tomorrow, after all. Megapac have the perfect opportunity to celebrate their Stage victory in their first Tour de France.

  ‘Where would they do that?’ Cat asks Ben’s shut door, at which she continues to knock gently. ‘Where are you all?’ Cat goes to the car park in the hope that a soigneur or mechanic might be finishing duties. Why would they be? It’s the Rest Day tomorrow, the one opportunity for things to be put on hold for a night.

  ‘Well, I’ll just have to lie in wait,’ Cat says to the silent, lumbering team buses. And she does. For over an hour. Thinking what to say. Planning how to say it. Becoming word perfect, perfecting intonation, facial expressions, gestures. Soon enough changing her mind and her soliloquy. Now fretting that she’ll fluff her new lines and ruin the depth and sincerity of it all.

  She walks around to the front of the hotel and promenades to and fro, delivering her soliloquy quietly. There’s Ben. Over there. On the other side of the street. He’s with a group of people, Cat. Men and women.

  He’s with Luca. Luca looks slightly pissed.

  So does Ben. Who are the women?

  No idea. They looked pissed too.

  They’re with the American journalists.

  Yes.

  They also look somewhat drunk. They’ve bypassed the hotel and gone into that bar.

  Yes.

  Is that where you’re going?

  Yes.

  When Cat walked into the bar, which was smoky and packed, she was instantly relieved to see that in the far corner the women, whoever they were, were draped over the journalists. The swarm of people was as dense as at the finish-line media scrum but Cat squeezed and prodded and weaved her way forwards.

  ‘The Babe!’ Luca sang as she tripped and stumbled on her final approach to their party, steadying herself with a stranger and the edge of a table.

  ‘Luca!’ Cat beamed, trying to look composed, wondering why she couldn’t feel Ben’s gaze upon her, sensing icy stares from the women that the journalists were now wearing like football scarves.

  ‘You came to see me!’ Luca proclaimed.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Cat breathed, wondering if she was going to cry and whether it would be for Luca or herself, ‘I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Luca, nudging Ben. ‘The Cabe McBabe came to see me.’

  ‘Actually,’ Cat heard herself all but interrupt, ‘I came to see Ben.’

  ‘She came to see you!’ Luca laughed.

  ‘Can it wait till tomorrow?’ Ben asked. ‘We’re taking time out here to celebrate.’

  �
�No,’ said Cat, not blaming him for his reserve though it hurt, trying to remind herself that he was still under the illusion that she was a two-timing fraud.

  ‘Have a drink, McBabe,’ Luca said ingenuously with a small hiccup, ‘sit on my lap.’

  ‘Your legs are far too precious to have my bum on them,’ Cat said jovially, before regretting such an uncouth comment. ‘Ben?’ she implored. He glanced at his watch and asked the group to excuse him. The noise level was very high and Cat could barely stay her ground for all the jostling.

  ‘Outside?’ she asked, making her way with pencil-sharpenered elbows through the mass.

  ‘Cat,’ said Ben, once outside but before she had the chance to suggest they walk to the seafront, ‘I haven’t really got time – I told you, don’t worry about it.’

  ‘We could go to the beach,’ Cat blustered.

  ‘Huh? I’m midway through a party,’ Ben said.

  ‘I know, I know – I just.’ She looked at him and put her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance. ‘You don’t know,’ she said emphatically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben, scratching the back of his head and glancing over his shoulder to the direction of the bar, ‘I do.’

  ‘No,’ Cat remonstrated with a light stamp of her foot, ‘it’s your hands.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You see, it’s your hands that I know,’ she shrugged, sitting in a deflated hunch on a low wall, ‘I know your hands, Ben.’

  ‘That’s because they’re the most recent pair to have been all over you,’ said Ben. ‘Listen hon, I have to go.’

  He walked away.

  He’s walking away, Cat. Bloody go after him. Forget your speech and just talk honestly with him.

  ‘Ben!’

  He raises a hand but does not turn around or even slow down, as if to say, ‘Please – another time, Cat.’

  Cat jogs after him and uses him as a maypole again. He tries to walk on but she gives him a forceful shove and he stops and regards her, irritated.

  ‘Ben,’ she says, knowing neither what to say next nor where to look. Her eyes are drawn to his. He’s regarding her sternly, as if he’s allocated her a final two minutes before he’s bloody going back to the bar. ‘Ben,’ Cat says, feeling a smile spill across her lips in advance of the liberating truth, ‘there is nobody back home for me.’

  Ben says nothing.

  Say something, Ben – alleviate her ordeal.

  No. I think I ought just to listen.

  ‘There was someone,’ Cat says quietly, ‘a very significant other – but that was some months ago.’

  ‘Really,’ says Ben but not as a question.

  ‘Honestly,’ Cat implores.

  ‘Why lie?’ Ben asks after a moment’s contemplation. Cat shrugs. ‘Don’t shrug, speak.’

  ‘Because it felt safe – at the start – before you,’ Cat elaborates. ‘I’m in a minority out here,’ she continues, ‘I’m surrounded by blokes – I had no idea and no intention of falling, I mean fancying anyone.’

  Say something, Ben.

  Like what?

  ‘I told Josh,’ Cat continues in earnest, ‘very early on, before I knew him, let alone you.’

  ‘Why haven’t you told him that it was a lie?’

  ‘Because we’re on the Tour de France and it’s a race. Every day is a fucking race. To pack and check out. To get to the village, to scrounge quotes, to glean gossip. To rush to the salle de presse. To write the report. File it. Eat at some point. Sneak time with you. Sleep.’

  God, she’s almost as gorgeous all in a dither as she was when she was livid with me over Monique.

  Well, tell her.

  No. This is to savour.

  You’re a bastard.

  No. But a very quiet, private part of me has been, dare I say it, just a tiny bit – oh God, oh all right – hurt. No, no, not hurt, just disconcerted. Yes, that’s it. So I’ll let the balm of her honesty soothe me a while. I’m entitled.

  ‘So,’ says Cat with a shrug, ‘that’s kind of my story in brief. I’d be happy to elaborate. Suffice it to say, I am quite categorically single. I am desperately sorry for the misunderstanding. I rarely lie. And I’m hoping, very much, that we can pick up from where we left off. And run with it.’

  She’s exhausted. Ben can see that.

  ‘And,’ Cat concludes, taking his right hand and scrutinizing it though she knows it off by heart, ‘I know your hands, you see. And I can’t remember those of this other bloke – it’s weird but liberating because it doesn’t bother me. I no longer care. I know yours and I do care.’

  Ben is stalled. He finds himself taking her hand flat between both of his. Against what he presumes to be his better judgement, but helpless to do anything about it, he finds he has kissed her knuckles, turning her wrist to kiss the palm of her hand, licking it suddenly.

  ‘You’re salty.’

  Stating the obvious.

  Cat nods and says, ‘So is the sea,’ which is a daft thing to say but neither of them reflect upon it.

  Ben shakes his head and savours the bewilderment criss-crossing Cat’s face before he alleviates it with his smile. He pulls her against him and finds her mouth.

  I’ve never met anyone quite like you. You thrill me and unnerve me and I don’t know what I’m meant to do about any of it.

  Tell her, Ben.

  It’s probably not a good idea. None of this. But I can’t let common sense allow it to go.

  ‘I have to go,’ Ben says. ‘Come in with me. Come and join us.’

  Cat shakes her head. Her job is done and she desperately needs to rest. And have a bath. And find Josh and confess.

  ‘Come with me,’ Ben repeats but again Cat shakes her head. Ben does not even bother to check who is around, who is staggering out of the bar or forcing their way in, or who is on the other side of the street, or in earshot, or who might see. He cups Cat’s face in his hand and kisses her, lightly at first and then deeply, his tongue dancing in delight at the taste of her which he has foregone for almost forty-eight hours. ‘Tomorrow’s the Repos,’ he says, eyes alight. ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘I need to transcribe Luca’s interview,’ Cat says, her eyes still closed, her head tilted upwards presenting lips eager to be kissed again. Ben licks her mouth with the tip of his tongue, swiftly, gently, from corner to corner. Cat is utterly light-headed between her legs.

  ‘And then?’ he asks.

  ‘And then, Ben,’ says Cat, looking at him and laying a hand against his chest, another against the bulge in his trousers, ‘I’m all yours.’

  ‘What was that about?’ Luca asked Ben. ‘Where’s the Babe?’

  ‘She’s gone,’ Ben shrugged, taking a hearty drink.

  ‘She OK?’ Luca asked.

  ‘Hands,’ said Ben with a slow nod, displaying his for emphasis.

  Luca, pissed on two bottles of Seize and hyper after too many bottles of Coke, nodded earnestly. ‘All that typing,’ he justified, looking at his own hands, ‘quite a tough job, I would think.’

  REPOS

  Cat couldn’t believe she was singing ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside’, but she was. She had started to hum it whilst cleaning her teeth and now, sweeping back the hotel curtains and looking out over the navy-blue water, she was singing it with gusto. She needed to call Taverner at the Guardian and Andy at Maillot, she had her Luca interview to transcribe and she planned to have everything wrapped up before lunch-time to warrant the rest of the day alone in Ben’s company.

  ‘First, I must find Josh. I’m not only going to tell him about He Who No Longer Exists but also about He Who Most Definitely Does. I owe it to Josh, he’s my pal and he cares about me.’

  She went along to Josh’s room and knocked on the door. Josh grinned at her. ‘You like it, don’t you?’ he brandished.

  ‘Yes?’ she answered. ‘Do I? What?’

  ‘Cat McCabe,’ he smiled and then broke into song most operatically, ‘beside the seaside, beside the sea!’


  ‘Oh shit,’ Cat declared, hiding her face behind her hands.

  ‘The walls are paper thin,’ Josh said, casting a glance towards Alex’s room on the other side of his and shaking his head.

  ‘Was Alex singing too, then?’ Cat asked artlessly. Josh snorted but the explanation came soon enough in the form of a buxom woman opening Alex’s door, stepping out in to the corridor, rearranging her clothing, murmuring, ‘Ciao!’ back into the room and then nodding most courteously to Josh and Cat as she passed.

  ‘Fletcher!’ Josh cried once he’d closed his jaw, while Cat stood stock still and flabbergasted. ‘Bloody show yourself.’

  Alex appeared, with a John Wayne swagger and a Benny Hill grin. ‘I’m shagged!’ he declared. Then he steadied his head with both hands and moaned, ‘I’m also still pissed, I think.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Cat whispered.

  ‘Oh,’ Alex fumbled, waving the air dismissively, ‘Mary, Margaret, Molly – something like that,’ though he knew full well that her name was Maria Angelo because it had taken him most of the previous evening, his entire repertoire of chat-up lines, an exorbitant amount of Pernod and the false promise of Laurent Jalabert’s autograph to lure her back to his room. ‘Come on, I desperately need caffeine. And food. I need to replenish. I’m knackered. Shagged. Fucking hell.’

  ‘I’m going to the salle de pressé,’ said Cat, looking imploring at Josh who was looking reprovingly at Alex.

  ‘See you there,’ Josh said, glancing at Cat. ‘I’d better chaperone this jerk all the way.’

  ‘Oh,’ faltered Cat, ‘OK.’

  ‘Are you going to transcribe your Luca tape?’ Josh asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Cat said pensively. She tried to communicate via loaded glances but, whereas Rachel would have read her perfectly, Josh just thought he had shaving cream on his cheek or toothpaste on his lips or sleep dust in his eyes. ‘If you have a mo’,’ Cat said to Josh, realizing Alex was too distracted and hungover to eavesdrop, ‘I wanted to talk – remember?’