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 wasnow 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.”
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 mouthedwhat?
Lex shook his head. He picked up the pads, turned back to Tyler, and said, “Right, lad. Show me that jab-cross again.”
? ? ?
Theycame 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.”
