Chapter Twenty-Nine
The studio was smaller than he’d expected.
He’d done television before, but those had been in arenas and media tents, big rooms with bad lighting and the smell of liniment stinking up the place.
This was a converted warehouse in King’s Cross with exposed brick walls, a single camera on a tripod, and two leather armchairs positioned at a slight angle to each other.
“There’ll be one take,” Sharon had said in the car. “No rehearsal. You say what you told me yesterday. You take absolute accountability, and make no excuses. If he pushes, you don’t push back. You absorb it. You’re a boxer. You know how to take a hit and stay standing.”
She was in the green room now, which was actually a corridor with a water cooler and two plastic chairs. She’d pulled his head down and kissed him on the forehead before he went in, which she’d never done before. It had nearly put him on the floor.
Chris was already seated. He stood when Lex came in, shook his hand firmly, and gestured to the opposite chair.
He was shorter than Lex had imagined from seeing him on screen, but he had the same calm, watchful stillness that Lex recognised from good referees.
He needed to be careful; this was a man whose job was to let you hang yourself with your own words if you were stupid enough to run your mouth freely around him.
Lex sat. A woman clipped a microphone to his collar and adjusted a light. Someone counted down from three, and then the red light on the camera went solid.
“Lex, thank you for being here.”
“Thanks for having me.”
“You’ve been the subject of a great deal of coverage in the past seventy-two hours, following the leak of what’s been called the Tokyo Tumble Tally, a spreadsheet and group chat maintained by several athletes during the 2022 Olympics, in which sexual encounters were scored on a points system.
Your name appears throughout. Before we get into specifics, I want to give you the chance to say, in your own words, what this was. ”
Lex looked at the camera for a beat, then back at Chris. The chair was deep and soft and wrong for his body. He wanted to lean forward, elbows on knees, the way he sat in a corner between rounds. But Sharon had told him to sit back and keep an open posture.
“It was a game,” he said. “A stupid, cruel game. A few of us, me, two mates, set up a Google Doc where we ranked athletes we’d slept with, or wanted to sleep with, on a points system.
We gave higher points for harder targets.
There was a WhatsApp group alongside it that people just kept being invited into.
We kept score. We bragged. We treated other people’s bodies and their trust like something we could win. ”
“And the name at the top of your list, classified under ‘God Tier’, was Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester, the Marquess of Ashworth.”
“Yeah.”
“A man who is widely understood to be your partner.”
Lex’s jaw tightened. The present tense hit wrong, but he didn’t correct it. “That’s right.”
Chris let a pause sit. He used them the way a boxer used the jab, to control the distance. “How do you respond to those who’ve described this as dehumanising? The language in the messages. How you used phrases like ‘bagged,’ and developed scoring systems based on difficulty metrics?”
“I’d say they’re right.” Lex kept his voice level.
“There’s no version of what I did where I come out of it looking decent.
I ranked people by how hard they were to get into bed, and I posted about it to make my mates laugh.
That’s dehumanising. That’s exactly what it is.
I’m not going to sit here and dress it up as lad culture, or locker room chat, or something that was normal because we were young and stupid and far from home.
It was wrong when I did it. It would have been wrong even if nobody had ever found out. ”
“Some of the athletes named on the spreadsheet have spoken publicly about the distress this leak has caused them. A Finnish swimmer, who was named alongside her nationality and a numerical score, said she felt — and I’m quoting — ‘reduced to a line on a spreadsheet by men she’d trusted.
’ What would you say to her, and to the others? ”
“That she’s right to feel that way, and I’m sorry.
Properly sorry, not sorry-I-got-caught sorry.
I’m sorry I did it in the first place.” He looked down at his hands.
The split knuckle on his right hand was scabbed over, dark against his skin.
“There’s no apology that undoes what it felt like for her to open her mobile and see herself all over a headline like that.
That’s done thought. That sits with me, and the others who took part. ”
Chris shifted in his chair. “Let’s talk about the photograph.”
Lex’s stomach dropped. He kept his face still.
“You posted a photograph of Lord Ashworth to the group chat. He was asleep. The caption read ‘God tier: bagged. 100 points.’ You subsequently deleted it. Can you walk me through what happened?”
Lex breathed. In through the nose, the way Malik had taught him before a fight. Hold for two. Out through the mouth.
“I took the photo after we’d been together.
He was asleep. I put my jacket over him while he slept.
” He stopped. The image was right there, bright and sharp, the way Barnaby’s lashes had looked against his cheekbones, the red and blue piping of the Team GB jacket pulled up under his chin.
“I sent it to the group chat. The caption you read…I wanted the lads to know I’d done it.
That I’d pulled the hardest target on the list. The one that I really wanted. ”
“And then?”
“And then I looked at it. And I looked at him. And I deleted it, because it was wrong, and because what had just happened between us wasn’t something I wanted to share with anyone.
” He paused. “I deleted it after about ten minutes. Someone in the wider group had already screenshot it by then. I didn’t know that until this week. ”
“The Marquess himself has not made a public comment. Are you still in contact with him?”
Lex’s hands pressed harder against his thighs. “No.”
“Are you still in a relationship with him?”
“No.” Lex met his eyes. There was no hostility in it, just a closed door to that particular line of questioning. “I’ll answer for what I did. But I’m not going to talk about him any more.”
Chris tilted his head in acknowledgement of the line he’d laid down.
“You’ve lost significant commercial partnerships over this.
Your Lucozade sponsorship has been terminated.
Adidas have paused their deal. The British Olympic Association is reportedly considering sanctions, and The King’s Trust, where you served as a joint ambassador alongside Mr Fitznorman-Bicester, has yet to comment.
How do you feel about the professional consequences of the Tokyo Tumble Tally? ”
“Honestly? I don’t think about the sponsors.
I know that sounds mad, because my agent’s sat in the next room and she’s worked round the clock to keep my career alive.
I owe her better than me sitting here saying I don’t care about the money.
But I’d give every deal back tomorrow. I’d give the Nike contract back.
I’d give the GQ cover back. All of it.” He paused.
“Because the worst punishment isn’t losing a sponsorship deal or a place on a selection panel.
The worst punishment is knowing what I’ve done to the people I’ve hurt. ”
Chris held the pause. Lex swallowed against everything else he wanted to say, because none of it would bring Barnaby back to him. He didn’t trust himself to speak again. If he opened his mouth now, the apologies would come out in an unbroken stream.
Chris seemed to understand this. He set his notes down on the arm of his chair.
“Lex Murphy, thank you.”
“Cheers.”
Lex watched the red light on the camera blink once, and then go out. The little dot of red that had been holding him upright for the last twenty minutes was just gone, and the room felt colder for it.