Chapter Twenty-Three #2
James’s laugh escaped him. It was short and bright and entirely too loud for a school gym with BBC cameras present, and two of the nearest children turned to look.
James covered his mouth with his hand, his shoulders shaking, his eyes creased shut above his knuckles.
The equerry, who had been standing by the fire exit, shifted his weight.
James recovered. He took a breath, straightened his polo shirt, and looked at Lex with an expression that had rearranged itself into something warmer and less teasing.
“He’d be good at it, you know.” James’s voice was quiet.
“He was always good with smaller things. Animals. Perry, when Perry was little. Anything that needed patience and caring for.” He took a sip of water.
“He’d be insufferable about the schools, obviously.
He’d have a spreadsheet. He’d interview the headteacher.
He’d probably make the child sit an entrance exam for nursery. ”
“Sir,” Lex said.
“Mm?”
“You’re doing the thing where you plan my whole life for me again.”
James smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “I’m going to check on the shuttle runs,” he said, and walked away, leaving Lex standing by the pads.
Across the gym, Barnaby looked up. Their eyes met. Barnaby frowned and mouthed what?
Lex shook his head. He picked up the pads, turned back to Tyler, and said, “Right, lad. Show me that jab-cross again.”
? ? ?
They came out through the main entrance into weak afternoon light, the three of them still in their King’s Trust polos. James was between Lex and Barnaby, his equerry, Benton, two paces behind, and the protection officers flanking at a discreet distance.
A small crowd had gathered along the pavement.
Fifteen people, maybe twenty, a mix of parents who’d lingered and locals who’d clocked the unmarked Range Rovers and done the maths.
A photographer from the local paper was crouched at the kerb.
Mrs Hausa stood by the entrance with her arms folded, radiating the satisfaction of a woman whose school was about to feature in a national news cycle.
Then Lex saw the sign.
A woman in a denim jacket was holding it at chest height, both hands gripping the edges.
It was A3, laminated, and the product of premeditation and access to a Ryman’s.
The image was AI-generated, rendered in that uncanny-valley style where the faces were almost right but the hands had too many knuckles.
It showed Barnaby standing close to a shirtless Lex, his pale fingers resting against Lex’s wrist, unwinding a hand wrap in a slow, tender spiral.
The lighting was soft gold. Their expressions were grave and intimate.
Lex’s tattoos were in the wrong places and Barnaby’s hair was dark brown, but the composition was unmistakable.
Someone had fed a prompt into a machine and asked it to generate almost the exact moment Lex had lived through in a locker room just a few weeks ago.
It was deeply strange to see himself rendered in AI form. AI-Lex was also, he had to admit, quite fit.
“Barns,” he said. “Don’t look left.”
Barnaby looked left.
His stride didn’t break. His jaw tightened and he fixed his gaze on a point somewhere past the crowd.
The woman with the sign let out a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a kettle reaching boiling point.
Beside her, two girls in their twenties clutched each other’s arms and produced a sound so high-pitched that Florence would have lost her mind if she’d been present.
A third was already filming on her mobile, arm extended, moving with them as they walked.
“BLEX!” one of the girls shouted. “Oh my God, BLEX!”
Lex grinned. He raised a hand, and the small cluster erupted as though he’d just walked out at Wembley.
“Hi! Hello. Yeah, cheers. Thank you.”
Barnaby smiled. It was tight and controlled. It communicated warmth without inviting further engagement, which Lex attributed to either decades of aristocratic training, or a personality disorder.
James, between them, kept walking. He lifted a hand to the small crowd and then his protection detail closed around him and guided him toward his waiting car.
The transition was seamless. One moment he was a man in a polo shirt walking out of a school.
The next he was being absorbed into the back seat of a black Range Rover, and the equerry was pulling the door shut behind him.
The girls surged forward. Not toward the King’s departing car, but toward Lex.
“Can we get a photo? Please? We’ve been here since half ten!”
“Go on then.” Lex stopped. Barnaby kept walking for three paces before he realised he was alone.
The photos were taken quickly. Two girls on either side, mobiles held high, the school building behind them.
Then the woman with the sign pushed forward, beaming, and pressed a sheaf of papers into Lex’s hands.
They were warm from being gripped in her hands for too long.
“These are for both of you,” she said. “From the community. Fan art and letters. There’s one in there from my daughter, she’s eight, she drew you boxing a horse, it’s not…it’s meant to be Barnaby on a horse and you’re boxing next to it, the perspective’s a bit. Anyway, she loves you both.”
“That’s…yeah, that’s lovely, thank you!”
More papers were being produced from bags and jacket pockets, thrust at him in a growing stack that he couldn’t hold and still shake hands. Benton materialised at his elbow. He lifted the stack from Lex’s arms and tucked it under his own, like a butler receiving the post.
“I’ll see these are looked after, Mr Murphy.”
“Cheers, Benton.”
Barnaby was already crossing the car park toward his own car, hands behind his back and his spine rigid. He didn’t look back at the crowd. He didn’t wave. He unlocked his Audi with a click of the fob and was inside it before the girls had finished filming.
Lex jogged to his own car, lifted a hand to the last of the stragglers, and pulled away from the kerb. The A12 was backed up past Bow, so he cut south through Stratford and picked up the Westway to join the King of the United Kingdom and his marquess best friend at Kensington Palace.