In Bed With Lord Byron

all, actually. I think I might be washing my hair . .
.’
    ‘Anthony!’ I cried hotly. ‘I know you think I’m a rubbish cook but I’ve been practising. I’m really good now, so there.’
    ‘OK, OK. I’m sorry if I offended you,’ he said, more gently. ‘Are you all right, Lucy?’
    ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I said, wearing a smile on my face like a label on a bottle. ‘I . . . I . . . actually . . .’ I paused, fingering the bag with the present again. I
was dying to give it to him. ‘I was just going to add,’ I said, swallowing back a lump in my throat, ‘that I’ve got a present for you. A surprise.’
    Anthony looked wide-eyed.
    ‘But you can’t have it until tonight,’ I added firmly.
    ‘I can’t wait,’ said Anthony, smiling thoughtfully. He frowned slightly, then smiled again. I couldn’t quite decipher what that frown might mean. Suddenly I felt so
churned up I couldn’t bear to be in his company any more.
    ‘Well . . . see you tonight then!’
    We hugged, and then smug secretary called with an important call to put through, so we hugged again and I left the building and managed not to cry all the way down eight floors and not to cry in
the reception area, and I only broke down when I was halfway home, weeping and weeping all the way back.
    Outside my flat, I paused and dug another tissue out of my pocket, blowing my nose miserably. I didn’t want Byron to see me crying; I didn’t want to suffer his
sneers. I drew in a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut, contracting my heart as though trying to prevent any more tears from leaking out.
    Face it, Lucy, I told myself, as I’d told myself over and over on my masochistic journey home: you blew it. You had a relationship with Anthony and you dumped him. You had a chance to get
back together with him and you ran away. And now you’ve blown it. You’ve lost him.
    That much was obvious. Today, in his office, he had been completely confident, his emotions intact, his heart closed against me. He had moved on.
    I opened the front door. No doubt Byron had discovered internet porn by now, I thought. But as I was wriggling my coat off, my heart stopped. I heard voices. Uh-oh. Now what? Had he borrowed the
time machine and gone back and picked up Shelley et al? That was great, just great. My house would be full of Romantic poets ready to rave.
    Then I heard laughter. There was
no
mistaking that laugh; I’d been brought up with it; I’d inherited a diluted form of it.
    I ran into the living room.
    Lord Byron was sitting on the sofa between my mum and my sister. I panicked.
    ‘Um, sorry about this . . . he’s, um, a neighbour and he’s, um, about to go, aren’t you?’
    Sally and my mum stared at me in shock.
    ‘What on earth d’you mean?’ my mum asked.
    ‘Byron’s not going anywhere,’ said Sally.
    ‘You are being rude, Lucy,’ said Mum. ‘We just dropped by to see you as you haven’t been in touch for ages, and then we met your nice friend Byron. I think he needs some
more tea,’ she said pointedly.
    Uh?
    I looked at Byron and he gave me a sly sneer; then, seeing my sister looking at him, he composed his face into a sensitive expression. It seemed that Byron’s knack for putting a spell on
women hadn’t been lost in his passage through time.
    This is insane, I thought. This is out of control. Lord Byron is entertaining my family and I’ve lost Anthony and I need space; I need an empty flat and a hot bath and I can’t deal
with this.
    I stormed into the kitchen, filling the kettle with water, banging cups about, tears pricking my eyes again. My mum followed and took me by the shoulders.
    ‘Are you OK?’ She sensed, with her maternal bond, that I wasn’t.
    ‘Not really,’ I sniffed, staring down at a packet of tea. ‘I nearly got back together with Anthony, but now he’s gone off with another girl.’
    ‘Oh, Lucy.’ She gracefully pretended not to notice me crying whilst surreptitiously pressing a piece of kitchen roll into my hand.
    ‘But still – Byron out there is so lovely, can’t you go out with him? You said you wanted someone artistic.’
    ‘But he thinks he’s
Lord
Byron and he’s not! He’s obviously totally delusional,’ I said hastily, fearing he might have spilled the time-travel beans.
    ‘No, he says he’s a
reincarnation
of Lord Byron,’ said my mum. ‘I used to think that sort of stuff was hocus-pocus, but the way he described it has made me
understand that he’s a very