by Freya North
FREYA NORTH: THE MCCABE GIRLS COMPLETE COLLECTION
Cat
Fen
Pip
Home Truths
Freya North
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Freya North 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007462247; 9780007462223; 9780007462261; 9780007325788
Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008160098
Version: 2015-08-25
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Cat
Fen
Pip
Home Truths
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Freya North
About the Publisher
FREYA NORTH
Cat
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by
William Heinemann 1999
Copyright © Freya North 1999
Afterword © Freya North 2012
Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
Source ISBN: 9780007462230
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462247
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
For Emma O’Reilly
Honest and true.
And a great friend.
Contents
Cover
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Cat McCabe and the Tour De France
Jules Le Grand and Team Systeme Vipere
Rachel McEwen and Team Zucca Mv
Ben York and Team Megapac
Setting the Wheels in Motion
Prologue Time Trial: Delaunay Le Beau, Saturday 3 July
Stage 1: Delaunay Le Beau-Rouen. 195 kilometres
Stage 2: Rouen-Vuillard. 260 kilometres
Stage 3: Vuillard-Plumelec. 225 kilometres
Stage 4: Plouay-Chardin. 248 kilometres
Stage 5: Nantes-Pradier. 210 kilometres
Stage 6: Pradier-Bordeaux. 215 kilometres
Stage 7: Computaparc - Individual Time Trial. 54.5 kilometres
Stage 8: Sauternes-Pau. 162 kilometres
Stage 9: Pau-Luchon. 196.5 kilometres
Stage 10: Luchon-Plateau de Boudin. 170 kilometres
Stage 11: Tarascon sur Ariège-Le Cap D’Arp. 221 kilometres
Repos
Stage 12: Frontignan La Peyrade-Daumier. 196 kilometres
Stage 13: Valadon-Grenoble. 186.5 kilometres
Stage 14: Grenoble-L’Alpe D’Huez. 189 kilometres
Stage 15: Vizille-Gilbertville. 204 kilometres
Stage 16: Gilbertville-Aix-les-Bains. 149 kilometres
Stage 17: Aix-les-Bains-Neuchâtel. 218.5 kilometres
Stage 18: La Chaux de Fonds-Lautrec. 242 kilometres
Repos: Transfer by road and rail. Lautrec-Disneyland-Paris
Stage 19: Disneyland Paris, Individual Time Trial: 63 kilometres
Stage 20: Disneyland-Paris. 149.5 kilometres
Day 27. Monday
October: Paris. The launch of next year’s Tour de France
Acknowledgements
Afterword
Acclaim for Freya
CAT McCABE AND THE TOUR DE FRANCE
‘I know that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Django McCabe reasoned with his niece, ‘but you chasing through France after a bunch of boys on bikes – well, isn’t that taking the family tradition to new extremes?’
Cat McCabe, sunbathing, eyes closed, in her uncle’s Derbyshire garden, smiled.
It feels funny smiling with closed eyes; like you can’t really do both.
So she opened her eyes, stretched leisurely, sat up cross-legged, and picked blades of grass from her body, fingering the satisfying striations they had left on her skin.
‘Lashings of lycra!’ her elder sister Fen offered from her position under the pear tree.
‘Oily limbs a-plenty,’ connived her eldest sister Pip, suddenly cartwheeling into view.
Cat tried to look indignant but then grinned. ‘The Tour de France is the world’s most gruelling sporting event,’ she said defensively, hands on hips, to her audience. ‘It demands that its participants cycle 4,000 k in three weeks. At full speed. Up and over mountains most normal folk ski down. Day after day after day.’
‘And?’ said Django, rubbing his knees, bemoaning that the sun wasn’t doing for his arthritis what it did last year.
‘And?’ said Fen, an art historian who was much more turned on by bronze or marble renditions of Adonis than their pedal-turning doppelgangers her sister seemed so to admire.
‘And?’ said Pip courteously, more interested in perfecting her flikflaks across the lawn for her new act.
Cat McCabe regarded them sternly.
‘A Tour de France cyclist can have a lung capacity of around eight litres, a heart that can beat almost 200 times a minute at full pelt and then rest at a rate at which most people ought to be dead. They can climb five mountains in a row, descending them at up to 100 k per hour.’
‘Wow,’ said Fen with sisterly sarcasm, ‘I bet they’re really interesting people.’
‘Greg LeMond,’ countered Cat, ‘won the Tour de France in 1989 by eight seconds on the final day.’
‘Bully for him,’ Pip laughed, doing
a handstand and wanting to practise her routine right the way through.
‘And that was two years after coming back from the brink of death when he was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident.’
Now you’re impressed!
Fen nodded and looked impressed.
Pip executed a single-handed cartwheel and said, ‘Mister LeMond, I salute you.’
Django said, ‘Bet the bugger’s American.’
Cat confirmed that indeed he was.
‘In what other sport would you have participants called Eros? Or Bo? Or teams called BigMat or OilMe or Chicky World?’
‘Topless darts?’ Pip proposed.
‘They can also pee whilst freewheeling,’ Cat slipped in before anyone could change the subject.
‘In their shorts?’ Pip asked, quite flabbergasted.
‘Nope,’ Cat replied in a most matter-of-fact way. ‘They just whip it out, twist their pelvis, and pee as they go.’
‘So,’ said Django, ‘you’re off to France to experience a great sporting spectacle performed by superhuman athletes with great bike skills but no sense of urinary decorum?’
‘Partly,’ said Cat with dignity, ‘and because hopefully there’ll be a job at the end of it.’
Fen raised her eyebrow.
Pip regarded her youngest sister sternly.
Well aware that her sisters continued to stare at her, Cat looked out over Darley Dale and wished she had her mountain bike with her.
‘Oh, all right!’ she snapped whilst laughing and covering her face, ‘I’m not just pursuing the peloton because there’s a job at the end of it if my freelance work is good enough.’
I wish I had my bike. I could just ride and ride and be on my own.
‘You are pursuing the peloton—’ started Fen.
‘Because there’s a—’ continued Pip.
‘Hope of adventure?’ Cat tried contemplatively, still covering her face.
‘Lashings of lycra,’ Fen shrugged as if resting her case.
‘Silky smooth shaven thighs,’ Pip said in utter agreement. ‘Big ones.’
‘Over the sea and far away,’ Django mused. Everyone mused.
Cat nodded. ‘It’s time to move on,’ she said thoughtfully. Everyone agreed. No one had to say anything more.
‘I am Catriona McCabe,’ Cat muses to herself, sitting under a cedar in the grounds of Chatsworth House, not two miles from where her uncle lives and from where she was brought up when her mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, ‘and I’m twenty-eight years old.’
And?
And I’m going to the Tour de France, with full press accreditation, to report on the race for the Guardian newspaper.
And?
If my reportage wins favour, I might land the job of Features Editor for the magazine Maillot.
Jersey?
Maillot.
And?
I’ll be sorted. And happy.
OK. But all things on two wheels aside, what else?
I’m twenty-eight.
We know.
I live in London. In Camden. In a tiny, rented one-bedroom flat with gay neighbours, a tapas bar opposite, and my two sisters near by.
We met them.
Fenella is a year older than me, Philippa two. Fen’s an art historian. Pip’s a clown. We’re close but different.
Certainly. And you’re into journalism?
Actually, I’m into cycling. The journalism part just enables me to indulge my passion.
Isn’t a passion for pedal sport rather unusual for a British female? Wouldn’t it be more common for you to be into three-day eventing? Or tennis? Or soccer, even?
Cycling is my thing. It is the most beautiful, hypnotic sport to watch. The riders are consummate athletes; so brave, so focused, so committed. My heart is in my mouth as they ride and I watch.
But how and why?
Because I.
That’s a fine sentence, Cat.
Because I was … with … a man who kindled my interest. He left. The interest didn’t.
When did he leave?
Three months ago.
A time trial indeed.
Indeed.
So France will be good.
France is my dream. France can mark a new me. France can help me heal. Can’t it?
I’m sure.
Cat was helping Django prepare supper. Though the McCabe girls visited their uncle monthly, it was rare for them all to be there at the same time. June was turning into July but with his three girls with him, Christmas had come early for Django.
‘I’m going to do a Spread,’ Django announced. For three girls whose mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver and who were brought up by a man called Django in the wilds of Derbyshire, the Spread was nothing to raise eyebrows at. For normal folk of a conventional upbringing and traditional meal times using regular foodstuffs, a Spread by Django McCabe would cause eyebrows to leave the forehead altogether.
Django McCabe is sixty-seven and, in his jeans with big buckled belts, faded Liberty shirts and trademark neckerchiefs, he looks like he should be an artist, or a jazz musician. In fact, during his lifetime, he’s dabbled in both. Twenty-five years ago, in Montmartre, he combined the two rather successfully and sparked a certain trend for neckerchiefs. But then his sister-in-law ran away with a cowboy from Denver and he had to forsake Parisian prestige for the sake of his bereft brother and three small daughters and an old draughty house in Derbyshire. The two men and the three girls lived harmoniously until their father died of a heart attack when Pip was ten years old.
The house is still draughty but Django’s warmth, and his insistence on multilayered clothing and his obsession with hot thick soup at every meal during the winter months, ensured that the McCabe girls’ childhoods were warm and healthy. They have also developed palates that are robust and tolerant. Soup at every meal throughout the winter months is one thing; that the varieties should include Chicken and Apple, Celery and Baked Beans, and Tuna Chunks with Pea and Stilton, is quite another. Luckily, it is June and there is no call for soup today.
Pip is having a rest in the back bedroom following further exertion on the lawn. Fen is sitting quietly on the window seat in the room whose name changes according to time of day and current season. On winter mornings and evenings, it is the Snug. On spring afternoons it is the Library. On weekday evenings, if the television is on, it is the Family Room. On weekday evenings if the television is off, it’s the Drawing-room. On summer afternoons, it is the Quiet Room. In mornings, it is the Morning Room. When the girls were young and naughty, it was Downstairs. Fen is in the Quiet Room which, after supper, will no doubt be the Drawing-room. Cat is in the kitchen, peeling, scrubbing, grating and chopping and being as diplomatic as possible in dissuading Django from adding Tabasco to the trout, or to the mashed potato, or to the mint and cranberry sauce.
‘It’s best in Bloody Mary,’ Cat informs him. So Django finds vodka but no tomato juice and just mixes the Tabasco in anyway.
‘Cheers!’ he says, knocking his drink back.
‘Cheers!’ Cat responds with a hearty sip only to fight back choking and tears.
‘I think I’d better name this drink, Bloody Hell, Mary,’ Django wheezes, but takes another glug regardless.
Cat nods and wonders if chopped apricots will really add much of consequence – good or bad – to the trout.
They’ll counteract the olives, I suppose.
‘So, Cat, you’ll be a good girl? You’ll be careful in France? I know all about Alain Delon and Roger Vadim.’
‘I don’t,’ Cat laughs.
‘You watch yourself,’ Django cautions, absent-mindedly pointing a knife at her and then apologizing profusely.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Cat assures him, ‘I’m in the press corps. There’ll be 900 journalists. The Tour is a movable town, a veritable community. I’m in it for the ride, for the duration.’
I’ll be safe.
‘You look after yourself,’
Django repeats, thinking a dash of stout might be welcomed by the mashed potato.
‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ Cat says pensively.
The Spread ready, the four McCabes assemble. They stand by their places and look from one to the other in silence. Django gives the nod and they sit. And eat. He’s all for picking and dipping and having a taste of this, a soupçon of that. So arms stretch amiably and serving spoons chink and dollop. There’s much too much food but whatever’s left will be blended together tomorrow, liquidized the next day and then frozen, to reappear as soup in some not-too-distant colder time.
In the Drawing-room, over coffee and some dusty but undamaged After Eights which Pip discovered in her bedside table, Django looked to his three nieces. Fen looked wistful as ever, her blonde hair scrunched into a wispy pony-tail which made her look young and vulnerable and like she should be living at home. Django noticed that she was visibly thinner than when he saw her at Easter and knew that this could be attributed to one of two things.
‘Love or money, Fen?’ he asked.
She jolted and looked at each of her palms as if assessing the merits of telling him one thing or another.
‘Both,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap.
‘Has he too much or too little?’ Django enquired.
‘It depends,’ said Fen.
Django looked puzzled. Cat couldn’t resist. ‘One is loaded and the other is broke.’
‘Good God, girl!’ Django exclaimed in honest horror, much to Cat and Pip’s delight. ‘Two of them?’
‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked Fen. ‘Have you decided yet? The old or the young?’
‘Who’s the one?’ Pip pushed. ‘The rich or the poor? Did you toss for it or did they have a duel?’