Lex:that’s the one
Mick:hang on
There was a pause. The three dots pulsed at the bottom of the screen. Lex waited, scratching his jaw. His knuckles were still sore from the heavy bag that afternoon. He needed to tape them properly before tomorrow’s session, but the tape was in his kit bag and his kit bag was across the room. Getting up required effort he wasn’t prepared to expend. Not while he was busy maintaining his dominance of The Tokyo Tumble Tally.
Mick sent a link.
It was a photograph from the front page of a broadsheet newspaper of two boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen, standing on a manicured lawn in morning coats and waistcoats, squinting against pale English sunshine. One was dark-haired and tall for his age, already growing into the jawline that would later grace postage stamps and commemorative coins. The other was blond, narrow, standing slightly behind and to the left.
The caption read:His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and the Marquess of Ashworth at the Eton College Fourth of June celebrations, 2013.
Mick:your boy’s best mates with the king
Lex stared at the photo. He zoomed in. The blond boy was unmistakably Barnaby. He was half-smiling in the photograph, which was more than Lex had managed to extract from the adult version. And next to him, one hand in his pocket, was King James. Fourteen years old. Already carrying himself like someone who knew, on some bone-deep level, that his life did not entirely belong to him.
Lex:FUCK OFF
Mick:yep
Lex:he’s mates with the KING??
Mick:childhood mates by the looks of it. Eton together. there’s more photos if you google it
Darius:does that add points or remove points
Lex:that adds FIFTY POINTS is what that does
Mick:we said cap at a hundred
Lex:THE CAP IS ADVISORY
Darius:the cap is the rules Lex
Lex:FINE. hundred. but noted for the record that this man has a personal relationship with the head of state and that makes him the most protected shag target in the history of organised sport
Mick:the king’s not going to have you killed for pulling his mate
Lex:you don’t KNOW that Mick. these people still own castles. they might still have dungeons. I’m not saying it’s likely but I am saying there’s a non-zero chance
Darius:adding to the tier list now. barnaby ftz blah blah. Eventing. Male (Ambiguous). God Tier. 100 points. note: mates with the actual King of the United Kingdom. note: treadmill runner. note: Lex is obsessed and might actually cry if someone else pulls him first
Lex:I am not obsessed I am STRATEGICALLY INTERESTED
Darius:??
Lex locked his mobile and dropped it on his chest.
He wasn’t obsessed. He wasstrategically interested. There was an important distinction between the two, and the fact that he’d spent the better part of ten minutes trying to articulate it was not evidence to the contrary. It was thoroughness. A demonstration of professional rigour. The same quality that had won him an Olympic gold four years ago in Rio and kept him at the top of the heavyweight rankings for three consecutive seasons.
He was also, if he was being completely honest with himself, a little bit rattled by the treadmill thing.
People didn’t run away from Lex Murphy. People cametowardsLex Murphy. He was six-one, fourteen stone of earned muscle, and he’d been told by three separate women and one very drunk Swedish javelin thrower that he had, and this was a direct quote, “dangerous eyes.” He’d been on the cover of Men’s Health. He had a cologne deal. He had a cock that had made a grown woman say “absolutely not” before changing her mind eleven minutes later. People gravitated to him because he was charming and loud and very, very good at making them feel like they were the most interesting person in the room, even when they weren’t.
Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester had put on headphones when he’d tried it on with him.
Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester had looked at him with those flat grey eyes and assessed him and found him. What? Annoying? Loud? Common?
That last one stuck. Lex turned it over in his head, prodding at it like a bruise. He knew what he looked like to people like Barnaby. He’d met enough of them at charity events and sponsorship dinners: the upper classes, the old-money crowd, the people who could tell within thirty seconds of conversation exactly where you’d grown up and exactly how far below them you were on the ladder. They were perfectly pleasant and immovably certain that the distance between their world and yours was fixed and permanent, not to be crossed even if you were fully kitted out in LV.
