Chapter Twenty-Three
“It’s aubergine.”
Barnaby was holding his King’s Trust polo shirt up to the light in Lex’s kitchen, pinched between his thumb and forefinger, his arm extended as he squinted at the fabric.
The logo sat on a background of royal blue that skewed fractionally towards purple, and Barnaby had clocked it from across the room before Lex had even finished his coffee.
“It’s blue, Barns.”
“It’s aubergine adjacent. Someone in procurement has made a catastrophic error with the Pantone reference, and nobody at the Palace had the moral courage to flag it.”
“Put the shirt on.”
Barnaby put the shirt on. It sat loose across his shoulders and caught at his waist where the cotton bunched above his belt, because King’s Trust polo shirts were not cut for men who were five-eleven and built like a riding crop.
Lex’s fit properly, since Lex’s body was the shape that branded sportswear was designed for, and the cotton stretched across his chest and biceps until the logo looked painted on.
They’d driven separately to the school, which was a farce.
Barnaby had spent the night at Lex’s flat in Canary Wharf, where they’d ordered Thai food, watched two episodes of a Netflix dating show that Barnaby pretended not to enjoy, and then Barnaby had climbed into his lap on the sofa and ground against him until they’d both come in their joggers like teenagers.
The school was in Newham, a low-rise comprehensive with pebbledash walls and a car park that doubled as a basketball court.
The gym was on the ground floor, a converted assembly hall with climbing bars bolted to one wall and motivational posters featuring athletes whose sponsorship deals had expired three years ago.
Lex had been here twice before. He’d run sessions with the Year Sevens and Eights, basic fitness circuits, some pad work with the older kids, a talk about discipline and goals that he’d written on the back of a receipt in the car park because his agent had told him to “just speak from the heart”.
But Lex didn’t trust his heart not to say something that would get clipped out of context and posted on Twitter.
Today was high-stakes. The BBC cameras were here, two of them, discreet but present, with a producer named Sasha who’d already told Lex three times that they wanted “natural interactions” and then immediately repositioned him so the lighting favoured him better.
Today there were thirty kids in the gym, aged eleven to fourteen, in PE kits and trainers that ranged from box-fresh Nikes to whatever had been cheapest at Sports Direct.
James had arrived first. He brought with him two protection officers, a private secretary, and an equerry.
He swept in, wearing his King’s Trust polo and a pair of navy chinos and shook the headteacher’s hand warmly.
The headteacher, a woman called Mrs Hausa, went pink and called him “Your Majesty” twice in the same sentence.
Just a few months ago he’d have stood in front of the king and wondered whether he was meant to bow, nod, or simply try very hard not to swear.
Now he knew, because he’d been drilled on it by the most pedantic little aristocrat in London, that it was Your Majesty the first time and sir every time after, until you took your leave.
James had greeted Lex first. Given him the full treatment of a handshake, and intense eye-contact. Then Barnaby had walked in from the car park, and James had shaken his hand too, and then leaned in to murmur something that made the equerry step back three paces.
“So you’ve moved on to the cohabitation stage, Bash.”
It wasn’t a question. James’s mouth barely moved, his expression pleasant and neutral for anyone watching from across the corridor.
Barnaby’s spine went rigid. His chin came up, and two spots of colour appeared high on his cheekbones. “Why would you possibly think that?”
James pulled back. His hazel eyes were bright. “You smell like his soap. And there’s a musk underneath that’s distinctly Lex.” He adjusted the collar of Barnaby’s polo shirt with one finger. “Earthy. Warm. Testosterone-adjacent.”
“I am going to kill you,” Barnaby said, “and I will get away with it by revealing the emotional distress you’ve caused me over the years. My tale will be harrowing. American TV would pay me a fortune.”
“You’ve been threatening regicide since we were fifteen, Bash. I remain unalarmed.” James patted his shoulder and moved past him towards the gym, where thirty children were about to meet their King.
Barnaby turned to Lex. He made his eyes go soft, deliberately, the same way he did when he was about to ask Lex to suck his cock or to get up and turn off the lights because he didn’t want to leave the bed.
Lex smirked at how transparent he was. “I’m not going to kill the King for you, Barns.”
“Then what’s the use of you?” Barnaby huffed, and followed James down the corridor.
? ? ?
Lex ran the session. This was his territory, the knowing settled into his body the way it did when he stepped into the ring.
The gym was his corner. The kids were his audience.
Barnaby and James were here as guests, and Lex felt the inversion every time James deferred to him on a question about the circuit layout or the warm-up sequence.
He’d had six stations set up: skipping, press-ups, shuttle runs, a speed ladder, a balance drill, and the pads.
Each station had a timer and a score sheet, because competition made kids try harder.
The idea was that sport wasn’t just about talent.
It was about turning up and doing the work when nobody was watching, and then doing it again when your legs were shaking and your lungs were burning and you wanted to quit.
Lex knew this because he’d lived it. He’d been these kids, in a gym worse than this one, in a part of London that nobody drove through on purpose.
Barnaby was stationed at the speed ladder.
He’d been shown the footwork pattern once, had absorbed it instantly and was now demonstrating it to a group of twelve-year-olds.
His feet hit every square. His timing was perfect.
His face held an expression of grave concentration that suggested he was performing at Badminton rather than shuffling through a plastic ladder in a Newham school hall.
James was at the balance drill, crouched beside a boy who couldn’t have been more than eleven, helping him hold a plank.
The boy’s arms were shaking. James was talking to him, low and steady, his hand flat on the boy’s back, and whatever he was saying was making the boy grit his teeth and hold on for another five seconds.
When the timer went, James high-fived him, and the boy walked back to his group with his chest puffed out and his chin up.
The cameras caught all of it. Sasha, the producer, was gliding between stations intent on getting the footage she needed.
Lex saw her direct one camera towards Barnaby, who was now being asked by a girl with box braids why he talked “like that,” and was explaining, with a patience Lex had never seen him deploy with an adult, that he’d grown up in a very old house with a lot of very old people and they had all sounded rather like this, so by the time he’d noticed, it was too late to do anything about it.
It was during the pad work that Lex saw it.
He was holding pads for a fourteen-year-old called Tyler who had decent hands and terrible footwork, walking him through the jab-cross combination, when he glanced across the gym and saw Barnaby kneeling on the linoleum.
One of the parents had brought a younger child, a boy of about four who’d been sitting on the bench with his mum for the past hour, swinging his legs and eating raisins from a small box.
He’d slid off the bench at some point and wandered across the gym floor, and now he was standing in front of Barnaby with one foot raised, his trainer dangling half off, the laces trailing on the ground.
Barnaby knelt in front of him. He eased the trainer back onto the boy’s foot, picked up the first lace, crossed it, looped it, and tied it without hurrying.
The boy watched Barnaby’s hands with grave, total attention.
Barnaby said something, low enough that Lex couldn’t hear, and the boy nodded once, solemnly, as though they’d reached an agreement.
Then Barnaby did the second shoe, slower this time, showing him, his pale fingers working through each step.
When he finished, he stood, brushed off his knees, and rested his hand on the top of the boy’s head for a moment. The boy looked up at him, handed him a raisin, then turned and ran back to his mum on the bench.
Lex’s hands dropped to his sides. The pads hung from his wrists. Pure want expanded in his chest, warm and ungovernable. He was staring at Barnaby and couldn’t make himself stop.
“Oh my God.” The voice came from his left.
James was standing three feet away, a bottle of water in one hand, watching Lex watch Barnaby with undisguised glee.
“You absolute sod.” James’s voice was low and vibrating with suppressed laughter.
“You’re envisioning him with a baby that has your eyes and his pretty blond hair right at this very moment, aren’t you! ?”
Lex’s face went hot. “I’m not.”
“You are. I can see it. You’ve got the face. The soft, gooey, domesticated face. Lex Murphy, two-time Olympic gold medallist, professional heavyweight, is standing in a school hall having a fertility fantasy about the Marquess of Ashworth, just because you saw him tying a child’s shoe laces!”
“That’s a biological impossibility, sir.” Lex pulled his gaze away from Barnaby and looked at James. “Even I know that. And I didn’t go to Eton.”