In Bed With Lord Byron

face screwed up in frightened confusion, the letter wilting in his hands.
It was a letter that would change his life for ever, that would drag him, at the age of ten, into an early adulthood.
    I knew that I couldn’t change time. Back in the machine, time would spin forwards and my good deed would be undone.
    And yet, a part of me hoped – however naïvely – that somehow a little of that letter would linger in Anthony’s subconscious, that somehow he would grow up with some
intuitive knowledge of the truth.
    We had just slipped into the time machine when Adam, with the typical contrariness of a child, magically forgot how tired he was and demanded that we go somewhere else.
    ‘Adam, we have to go back and see
Postman Pat
and have some nice orange juice, remember?’
    ‘Oh Auntie Lucy!’ he begged. ‘Please, please,
please
times one hundred.’
    ‘OK, OK,’ I snapped. ‘But we’re not going somewhere where it might be dangerous. We’ll take a tiny, tiny little trip to 1813, OK?’ For I had to admit that I
had been pondering over the last few weeks as to how Byron was doing.
    The time machine whirred and landed, with a jerky thump, on the exact grey cobbled street that I had visited before. Only this time it was a wintry London day and the streets were bustling with
carriages and people. I grabbed hold of Adam so that he couldn’t jump out, insisting he peer through the window. Over the top of his head I suddenly noticed a doorway I recognised.
    Suddenly Hobhouse’s door flew open and out stepped an unmistakable figure.
    ‘Byron!’ I cried.
    What was even stranger was that Byron
seemed to notice me.
I was certain he couldn’t see the machine – but he was staring right at me.
    ‘We have to go!’ I said hastily, tapping in numbers, ignoring Adam’s squeals of protest. I saw Byron running towards us, his mouth moving frantically as though calling out my
name – and then time folded in on itself like a paper rose and twirled and danced and then opened up again.
    Well. Thank God for that. Back in my living room, Adam, whacked by jet-lag, was fast asleep. I opened the door of the time machine and it came off in my hand. Great. My machine
clearly needed an MOT.
    In a brief moment of panic, I checked the clock. But it was still 9.36 a.m. Time in the present had remained still, which was just as well, or Sally would have been freaking out as to where her
darling son was.
    ‘Come on, sleepyhead.’ I picked Adam up and laid him on the sofa, where he slept soundly until Sally came at five to pick him up. Much to my relief, he didn’t seem to remember
anything of the trip.
    ‘So, Adam, what did you do all day with Auntie Lucy?’ Sally asked.
    ‘Nothing!’ Adam replied sulkily. ‘We didn’t even see
Postman Pat
! It was the most boring day ever!’
    After Adam had gone, the house seemed very quiet. I got a roll of masking tape from the cupboard and succeeded in sticking the door back on the machine – it would have to
do for now.
    I was feeling knackered and ready to go to bed, but too many emotions, stirred up by seeing Anthony, were swirling about inside me. The niggling thought came into my mind:
Why not finish off
what you intended to do? Just go back and wipe out what happened. Let Anthony take you out to dinner and
. . .
    Dump me
, I finished silently. That was the one big flaw in my plan. I’d been so emotionally fraught, I hadn’t thought it through properly this morning. Even if I did go back,
Anthony would still take me out to Burger King and tell me it was all over, and it would be worse this time, like a knife stabbing through my heart.
    I couldn’t go back in time and smooth our relationship out, like a kink in a knot. Our problems had to be dealt with here and now, in reality, in the present, between us.
    I jumped up, suddenly alive with determination. I grabbed my handbag, put on some lipstick and brushed my hair in a wind of static. Then I left the flat and hurried outside to find him . . .
    vi) A row
    Anthony wasn’t at home, nor did he answer his mobile when I called. But it wasn’t hard to guess where he was: I knew exactly the place he went when he was upset and
needed to go into hedgehog mode.
    There were only a few lights on in the block on Bedford Road. I counted the floors up and then the rooms along. Yes, Anthony’s office was lit up.
    Inside, the porter made me sign the visitors’ book and then directed me to the lift. How quiet, almost eerie, the