“You didn’t have to come,” Barnaby said.
“You are carrying fast food into a royal palace where my great-great-great-great-grandmother Victoria was born. Of course I had to come. Someone needs to witness this desecration.”
James appeared from the corridor in joggers and bare feet, his reading glasses pushed up into his hair. He perked up at the sight of the bags. “Is that Five Guys?”
“It is Five Guys,” Barnaby confirmed, already pulling out foil-wrapped burgers and distributing them across the table. “I got a bacon cheeseburger with extra pickles for you. Cajun fries, large, to share. And a vanilla milkshake.”
James sat down and unwrapped his burger, clearly delighted by this break from palace food. “What are we celebrating?”
“The collapse of British civility,” Vidal sniped, even as he picked up a chip and scarfed it down.
Barnaby settled into the armchair opposite, tucked one leg beneath him, and grabbed three Cajun fries from the shared carton before anyone else could establish territorial claims. His face was bright in a way that Vidal’s thunderous expression made all the more conspicuous.
“I have big news,” he said.
Vidal’s jaw tightened. “So do I. Barnaby has officially abandoned all hope of human connection and requires an emergency cock intervention before his arsehole fossilises.”
James tipped his head back and laughed, even as he crammed a handful of fries into his mouth. “Noted. Now, Bash, before you respond to Vidal’s not entirely unfounded statement, what’s your news?”
“Brookridge received a donation,” Barnaby said. He picked up another chip and bit into it, letting the Cajun spice settle on his tongue before continuing. “Four million, three hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds. Given anonymously!”
The room went still. James’s burger hovered an inch from his mouth. “I’m sorry. Did you say four million?”
“Four million, three hundred and twenty-five thousand!” Barnaby could hear the grin in his own voice and didn’t bother suppressing it. “Greg told me in the break room yesterday. He thought there’d been a clerical error when he saw it come in, and so he spent twenty minutes on the phone with the bank confirming the transfer was real before he even told me about it.”
James set his burger down. He wiped his hands on a napkin with careful movements. Vidal had gone quiet.
“We can replace the prefab,” Barnaby went on, because the plans had been building behind his skull for hours and the pressure of containing them had become physically uncomfortable. He wanted his plans for the future out in the world. “We can set up a proper indoor school, with heating, that’s fully accessible! I’ve got my layouts sketched. And obviously, they’re not very good, but I can sort that out…”
He was talking too fast. He knew this because James had gone soft around the eyes, the look that usually preceded a big hug.
“I can finally do up Brookridge the way I’ve always wanted to,” Barnaby continued, his voice dropping. “I’ve been seeing it in my head all these years, and now I can make it all real! I can get more people involved…”
He looked up and caught the glance that passed between James and Vidal.
It lasted just half a second. James’s hazel eyes moved to Vidal’s dark ones across the coffee table. Vidal’s expression shifted: his theatrical pout dissolved, his eyes went bright and liquid, and his chin developed the faintest tremor.
“What?” Barnaby asked him. His hand went to swipe at his mouth, in case he had a smear of sauce there that Vidal was judging him for.
“Nothing.” Vidal’s voice was thick. He waved a hand and turned his face toward the window, blinking rapidly. “It is my allergies. Your English pollen is aggressive.”
“It’s March.”
“Yes, butclimate changehas thrown the state of the world off. Don’t interrogate me, Bash. I have diplomatic immunity in all things.”
James picked up his burger again. He took a measured bite then said casually, “So the donation was entirely anonymous?”
“The donor requested no contact.”
“Through which mechanism? A charitable foundation? A solicitor’s trust? Direct bank transfer?”
Barnaby frowned. “Yes, direct transfer, Greg said. Why?”
“No reason.” James reached for a chip. “It’s just that direct transfers of that size typically come from individuals rather than institutional donors. Foundations prefer grant agreements with reporting obligations. A direct transfer suggests someone who already trusts the organisation’s governance and doesn’t need oversight built in.”
“Or someone who wants to stay anonymous and chose the simplest route.”
“Also possible.” James’s tone remained perfectly conversational. “Four million, three hundred and twenty-five thousand is an interesting figure, though. It’s not round enough to be arbitrary. If you wanted to make a splashy gesture, you’d give five. It’s a number that’s been calculated against something specific. A budget, perhaps. A set of known costs.”
