“I look fit, don’t I.”
“You look presentable. Which is a significant upgrade from looking like a DFS clearance sale.”
The common room had been transformed. The sofas had been pushed against the walls to make space for a camera setup, two ring lights, and a backdrop printed with the Team GB logo and the Olympic rings. A production crew was running cables across the floor, and a woman with a clipboard and a headset was arranging athletes into pairs and trios for the first round of interviews. The British contingent milled about in various states of camera-readiness, clutching water bottles and checking their reflections in their mobile screens.
Lex spotted the interviewer first. She was mid-thirties, sharp-eyed, with the easy warmth of someone whose job required her to make strangers feel interesting on camera. She was working through a stack of prompt cards while her cameraman adjusted the height of a tripod.
“Right,” said the clipboard woman, consulting her sheet. “Murphy, Fitznorman-Bicester, Lee, and Obi. You’re group three. Sofa on the left.”
Lee was a diver. Lex recognised her from the dining hall, compact and quiet. Obi was a four-hundred-metre runner who’dtaken gold the day before and was still walking around the Village like a man who’d been handed the keys to a city. They filed onto the sofa. Lex dropped into the far end. Barnaby sat beside him, crossed one ankle over the other, and folded his hands on his knee.
The interviewer settled into her chair opposite them and glanced at her cards. “Four gold medallists on one sofa, here! How does it feel to be packing a gold medal into your carry-ons?”
“Unreal,” Obi said, which was the correct answer. He went on to say something about the journey and the sacrifice and what it meant to represent his country, and all of it was true, but largely un-interesting. Lex had given the same answer a hundred times himself. It was the verbal equivalent of a screensaver: perfectly functional, pleasant, and designed to prevent anything unexpected from playing out on screen.
Lee nodded along. She added something about her coach, and her family back in Sheffield, and the long-term development pathway that had brought her here. The interviewer smiled and made all the right noises, but Lex could see the light in her eyes dimming by degrees, the way it did when someone in a room knew they were getting content that would be cut in the edit.
The interviewer worked through a few more questions before landing on the one that was clearly meant to loosen them up. “So, what do Team GB athletes actually get up to in their downtime? What does a night off look like in the Olympic Village?”
Lex leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Barns and I do Snack Roulette.”
The interviewer’s eyebrows rose. Beside him, Barnaby went very still, even as Lex’s hand clamped down on his shoulder and shook him a bit.
“There’s a 7-Eleven about a five minutes’ walk from the Village gates. Incredible shop. Easily the best shop I’ve ever beenin, and I include Selfridges in that ranking. Thing is, though, Selfridges has never sold me a sweet potato compressed into a stick and coated in white chocolate, which is a genuine item that exists in the 7-Elevens here and costs about ninety yen. Go on, then. How’d you rate it, Barns?”
Barnaby considered this with the gravity of a man being asked to assess a Bordeaux. “Four out of five lip smacks. Excellent texture. Lost a point for the white chocolate, which was overly sweet.”
Lex nodded solemnly in solidarity. “Every night, I go down there and buy anything that looks mental. Anything I can’t read the label of. I bring it all back in a big bowl, we sit on the sofa upstairs, and we take turns pulling things out and eating them. You don’t know what you’re getting. Could be sakura flavour, which is cherry blossom, and is beautiful. Could be squid ink, which tastes like you licked a biro. Could be a FIRE TASTE EXPLOSION RICE SNACK, which is capitalised on the packet for a reason.”
“And who’s ‘we’?” the interviewer asked, already charmed.
“Me and Barns.” Lex jerked his thumb at Barnaby. “The Marquess here, who, full disclosure, had never been inside a convenience store before this Olympics.”
“That isn’t true,” Barnaby said.
“It is absolutely true. I asked him what he’d bought at 7-Eleven and he told me he’d had the lobster bisque.”
Lee snorted and the interviewer pressed her lips together, visibly fighting a grin.
“They do sell very good onigiri,” Barnaby said, with dignity.
“He Googled that,” Lex said. “He Googled it after I caught him out. But fair play, he’s converted now. He’ll eat anything. He’s got a palate like a hazmat disposal unit. He loves these chilli crackers that made me cry actual tears, and he just sits thereeating them like they’re Rich Tea biscuits. No reaction. Nothing. Face like a statue.”
Lex dug into the pocket of his blazer and pulled out a rumpled packet of sweets. The wrapper was crinkled and slightly warm from being pressed against his body, and a few of the sweets had fused together in the heat. He picked through them and found one still intact, a pale yellow sphere dusted in something powdery. He held it out to Barnaby first.
Barnaby took it. He examined it briefly, turning it between his thumb and forefinger, and put it in his mouth.
Lex distributed the rest of the packet along the sofa. Lee took one with a grin. Obi took two. Lex held the packet out to the interviewer.
“Go on,” Lex said. “In the spirit of journalistic integrity.”
The interviewer laughed, took one, and popped it into her mouth. Her expression shifted almost immediately. Her jaw slowed. Her eyes widened. She pressed her fingertips to her lips and made a noise that was equal parts surprise and betrayal.
“What is that?” she managed.
“No idea,” Lex said. “That’s the game.”
“It looks like lemon. It tastes like—” She paused, clearly searching for the word. “Salt? And… fish?”
