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 firstplace.” 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.
Chapter Thirty
Barnabywas reading on the sofa at Chester Square with his legs crossed at the ankle and a hardback open on his lap. The house was quiet around him, except for Peregrine banging around in the kitchen on the espresso machine.
The doorbell rang. He heard Mrs Harding’s footsteps cross the hallway. The front door opened, and then a familiar voice that had never, to Barnaby’s knowledge, been modulated in an interior space filled the ground floor of twelve Chester Square.
“Where is he? Don’t tell me he’s in bed. If he’s in bed I will drag him out by the ankles. I have done it before. Ask James.”
Vidal swept into the living room. He was in a camel overcoat thrown open over a white linen shirt, his dark hair pushed back from his face. He carried a canvas tote in one hand and a bottle of Cava in the other. He stopped in the doorway and looked at Barnaby on the sofa with his book, and his eyes narrowed.
“No,” he said. “Absolutely not. You are not doing this. You are not going to sit there looking like a man in a Jigsaw catalogue and pretend you are fine.”
“Iamfine.”
“You are wearingcashmere. You iron your grief, Barnaby. You put it in a nice jumper and you cross your legs and you read a book you are not reading, and you think this means you are coping, and I am telling you now, as someone who loves you, that I am not fooled.”
