Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lex’s flat had one of those polished concrete ceilings that the developer had called “industrial chic” and that Lex had chosen because it was the opposite of Artex, which was what he’d grown up under. He stared at it now as he listened to his agent unpick his failures.
“—the Adidas deal is paused, not pulled. Paused. That’s the language Jenna used, and Jenna doesn’t use language loosely, so I’m choosing to believe her.
” Sharon’s voice came from the kitchen island, where she’d set up what amounted to a field hospital for his career.
The legal pad she was scrawling on was covered in handwriting so aggressive that the pen had torn through in places.
“The Lucozade partnership is dead. They rang at seven this morning. They were very polite, but they made it clear the decision is final. You’ll get the kill fee but they’re scrubbing the autumn campaign. ”
“The BOA,” Sharon continued, and Lex heard her voice shift into the register she used when delivering news she’d already decided how to spin, “are considering sanctions. Your medal’s fine.
” She said this quickly. “They’re not touching the medal.
But future involvement is probably off the table for you.
Selection panels, mentoring programmes, ambassadorial work.
They want to be seen to act, and you’re the most visible name on the spreadsheet. ”
Lex kept his eyes on the ceiling. A hairline crack ran from the light fitting towards the far wall. He’d never noticed it before. He’d lived here three years and never once looked up long enough to find it.
“I’ve got David Fulmer on standby. He’s the best crisis PR in London and he owes me a favour from the Tyson Fury thing, so he’ll take the call, but I need you to tell me what you want to say before I let him anywhere near a statement.
” Sharon paused. Her heels clicked on the kitchen tile as she shifted her weight. “Lex. Are you listening?”
“Yeah.”
“Then sit up and look at me, because I’m not having this conversation with the top of your head.”
He didn’t sit up. Sharon had been his agent for six years.
She’d negotiated his Nike deal, his GQ cover, his Las Vegas billing for the Morozov fight.
She’d pulled him out of a tabloid sting involving a Page Three model and a Nobu receipt, and she’d done it by being louder, meaner and faster than anyone else in the room.
He loved her the way you loved someone who’d saved your career four times a year and charged you fifteen per cent for the privilege.
“What about the King’s Trust?” he asked.
Sharon’s pen stopped on her writing pad.
“Nobody’s answering. I’ve called the office three times.
Benton’s mobile goes to voicemail. The private secretary’s line is engaged.
The Palace press office issued a holding statement at nine o’clock that said the Trust was ‘aware of reports’ and ‘reviewing the circumstances,’ which in Palace-speak means they’re working out how far to throw you before lunch. ”
Lex watched the crack in the ceiling and breathed through the tightness in his chest, which had been there since six a.m. when Sharon had rung him and read out the Mail Online headline:
MARQUESS IN ‘GOD TIER’: Leaked Spreadsheet Reveals Olympic Sex Game Aristocrat Ranked as Top Conquest by Boxer Boyfriend
His mum had sent a text at eight: ring me when you can love. dont read the comments. had three journalists at the door already and Mrs Chowdhury next door told them where to go so dont worry about me. love you always xxxxx
That was the worst bit; journalists were at his mum’s door because of the stupid shit he’d done. It had got to the point where he’d called in a favour, and had Coach Malik put her up in a room at Claridge’s.
Lex brought his mobile up to his line of sight.
The screen was a wall of notifications, stacked so densely that the most recent ones had pushed the older ones off the visible field.
Twitter mentions he’d stopped counting. Instagram DMs from people he hadn’t spoken to since school.
Two missed calls from his accountant, which meant the money people were already doing the maths on what this would cost him.
He scrolled past all of it.
He was looking for one name only. His thumb moved through the notifications, then scrolled back up to check the list one more time. But there was still nothing from Barnaby.
No missed call. No text. No glacially polite paragraph ending their relationship, composed in complete sentences with impeccable punctuation that would gut him more efficiently than anything Sharon or the BOA could produce.
All that he was getting out of Barnaby was silence, and it was the worst sign for how they stood right then, because Barnaby didn’t go quiet when he was angry. He went quiet when he was done.
Lex locked the screen. He set the mobile face-down on his chest.
“Lex.” Sharon’s voice had dropped the spin. “This is fucking serious. We are in full crisis mode, and I need you to act like you care.”
“I don’t.”
The legal pad hit him in the face.
It wasn’t a particularly hard throw. Sharon was five foot four in her heels and had the upper body strength of a woman whose primary form of exercise was aggressive gesticulation, but the binding caught the bridge of his nose and the pages fanned out across his chest like a bird dying mid-flight. He didn’t brush it off.
Sharon stood over him. She’d come around the kitchen island and was at the foot of the sofa, her arms crossed, her jaw set in the way that meant he had about thirty seconds before she started making decisions without him.
She was the most competent person he’d ever met, and she was frightened, and the fact that she was frightened frightened him.
“You don’t care,” she repeated. “You don’t care about the Lucozade deal.
You don’t care about the BOA. You don’t care that every tabloid in the country is currently running your name alongside the words ‘sex game’ and ‘conquest spreadsheet’ and that your mum is hiding in a hotel because journalists won’t leave her doorstep.
You really don’t care about any of that? ”
“I care about my mum.”
“Then act like it.” Sharon’s heel struck the tile.
“Because right now, the man I’m looking at is lying on a sofa feeling sorry for himself while I try to save what’s left of his professional life, and I am telling you, as someone who has cleaned up every mess you’ve made for the last six years, that this one is different!
This isn’t a tabloid sting. This isn’t a bad photo.
This is a pattern of behaviour documented in writing, with screenshots, with your name on every message, and ‘boys will be boys’ stopped being a viable defence strategy fifteen years ago.
The public has moved on. The sponsors have moved on.
If you want any chance of getting through this without losing everything you’ve built, you need to move on too, and that starts with giving me something I can work with. ”
Lex stared at the legal pad on his chest. A section of Sharon’s handwriting was visible through the torn page, circled phrases, arrows, a list of names with ticks and crosses beside them.
She’d been up since before he had. She’d been doing triage on his life while he lay here looking up at the ceiling.
“What do you want me to say, Shaz?”
“I want you to tell me what you actually feel. Not what you think sounds good. Not what plays well. The truth, Lex, so I can figure out how much of it we can use and how much of it will make things worse.”
He sat up. The legal pad slid off his chest and landed on the sofa cushion. He put his elbows on his knees and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until he saw white.
“That I’m sorry for being such a knobhead.”
Sharon’s arms uncrossed. Her weight shifted back on her heels. “Okay. That’s a start. Is that the statement? ‘I was a knobhead, I’m sorry’?”
“I don’t know. Yeah. That’s what I did, isn’t it?
I treated people like points on a scoreboard, and I posted a photo of someone who trusted me while he was asleep, and I did it to show off to my mates, and there’s no version of that story where I come out looking like anything other than exactly the sort of bloke your mum warns you about.
” He dragged his hands down his face. “So yeah. I was a knobhead. That’s the statement. ”
Sharon was quiet for a moment. She picked up the legal pad from the cushion, smoothed the torn page, and tucked it under her arm.
“I can work with that,” she said. “The tone needs finessing, but the bones are right. Accountability. No excuses. No ‘I was young,’ no ‘locker room talk.’ Just: I did this, I’m sorry, I know it was wrong.” She paused. “David will want to soften it. I’ll tell him no.”
Lex nodded. His hands were hanging between his knees, and the knuckles on his right hand were swollen from the heavy bag yesterday, the skin split across the second metacarpal. He’d wrapped them badly.
“Sharon.”
“Mm.”
“Shazza, I need you to get a message to Barnaby.” Lex’s throat was tight.
He swallowed against it. “He’s not answering me.
His mobile’s off, or he’s blocked me, or he’s just — he’s just not picking up.
And I can’t go to Chester Square because there’ll be press outside, and even if there wasn’t, Perry would lamp me before I got to the front door, and he’d be right to. ”
His voice cracked on the last word. He pressed his lips together and waited for it to pass.
“I just need him to know that it wasn’t a game.
Not by the end. Not for a long time before the end.
” He looked up at Sharon. “I don’t care about the sponsors, or the BOA, or the King’s bloody Trust. I care that I hurt someone who’d trusted me, and the first thing I did after he slept with me was take a photo and send it to a group chat for points.
That’s what I did, Sharon. That’s the thing I can’t PR my way out of. ”
Sharon set the legal pad down on the kitchen island.
She came around the sofa and sat beside him, close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm.
“Let him be for now, Lex.” Her voice was quiet and stripped of strategy.
“He needs space, and you turning up at his door or sending messages through me is only going to make you feel better, not him. If Barnaby wants to hear from you, he’ll reach out when he’s ready.
And if he doesn’t…” She let the sentence sit.
“Then that’s his right, and you’ll respect it.
That’s how you show him that he wasn’t really a part of the game. ”
Lex’s jaw worked. He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that Barnaby needed to hear it now, that every hour of silence was another hour of Barnaby believing the worst version of the story, curled up in his bed at Chester Square with his mobile switched off.
But Sharon was right. She was usually right. That was why he paid her fifteen per cent of everything he made.
He leaned forward and put his face in his hands.
Sharon’s palm settled between his shoulder blades. She didn’t rub. She didn’t pat. She just left her hand there, warm and steady, and let the silence do what her words couldn’t.