In Bed With Lord Byron

at his place. But this was
my
place, and I wanted it to be messy. Messy was my middle name; messy was
me
.
    I tried to stamp my irritation down. I didn’t want to row just before dinner and ruin the whole night.
    Then, as he wiped a sticky blue trail from a shampoo bottle, I noticed his hands were shaking slightly. I frowned and flicked him another sidelong glance, my antennae prickling. There was
definitely something a bit shifty about him, something on his mind that he was keeping secret.
    ‘So where are we going tonight?’
    ‘Oh, just The House.’
    The House was
the
new restaurant in town. All the celebs were being snapped there. The waiting list was meant to be something like five years and meals cost something like a million
pounds.
    ‘Wow,’ I said breathlessly. ‘I mean – that’s amazing. Thanks.’
    ‘That’s OK.’ He laughed thinly.
    Suddenly my previous irritation felt mean and petty. After all, he was only trying to help clean up. That was Anthony – always so considerate.
    ‘Are you all right, honey?’ I asked, touching his cheek.
    ‘Sure, why wouldn’t I be?’ He came up behind me and gently kissed the back of my neck. I waited for the icicle-down-the-spine shiver, but all I could feel was . . . actually, I
felt as though soggy ice cream was being trickled down my spine. I shuddered and closed my eyes, fiercely telling myself to find a better metaphor. I was bandying about hopeless images involving
snowballs and feathers when fortunately he moved on from my neck, turning me round and kissing me on the lips. His hand slid up my skirt.
    ‘I’ve only just got dressed,’ I whispered.
    ‘Well I’ll help you put it all back on again afterwards,’ he whispered back.
    We carried on kissing. I closed my eyes again. I knew that at this stage my hands should be sliding towards his trouser belt, but I kept them on his back. I was searching for a flicker in my
stomach, holding out my desire like kindling, desperately hoping for it to be set alight, but it was useless. His hand slid a little further up my skirt and I had to bunch mine into a fist to stop
myself from pushing him away. Tell him you have a headache, I told myself frantically. I mean, for goodness’ sake, having sex with a man when you don’t want to have sex with him is
basically a lazy form of rape. You’ve read all the books! It’s your body! What would Germaine say if she could see you now!
    But he’s your boyfriend,
a small voice pointed out,
and you’re supposed to want to have sex with him.
    So just keep going, I concluded. Sex had been hit and miss over the last few months and sometimes I had found myself taking a long while to get going. Just hang in there, I instructed myself,
and it will come – so to speak.
    I squeezed my eyes very tightly. Still not even a pulse. I pointed out to myself that I was thinking too much. Sex required the unbridling of the mind from thought; I needed to allow my senses
to take over, to become abstract. I let my hands flow up through his hair and it struck me that the thickness was just how I’d imagined the
Daily Telegraph
guy’s would feel.
Suddenly I pictured him, Nigel, kissing me, and desire flared in a blue flame. I ran my hands down to Anthony’s trousers, caressing him, only to find that he was entirely flat. I wondered
idly how big the
Daily Telegraph
guy might be by comparison . . .
    Lucy
, a voice that sounded like my mother’s berated me,
what are you thinking?
    ‘Er, maybe we should wait till after dinner. Wouldn’t want to miss our booking.’ Anthony breathed out and pulled away. ‘I’d better, ah, go and feed Lyra.’
    I saw the shame on his face and realised with alarm that his Flat Stanley was something he was very conscious of. He left his anxiety behind him like steam in the air. I reapplied my lipstick
and now it was my hands that were shaking. What if he had been thinking the same as me? What if it had all been a chore for him too? I couldn’t remember a time ever when he hadn’t been
instantly hard from just a kiss. What if he had been touching me and thinking, ‘
Oh God, Lucy is such a foul kisser, and she really is so flat-chested – how come I never noticed
before? And God, I just want to get this over now before dinner so I don’t have to sit through my meal thinking about the hassle of it later on
. . .?’
    Or, worse, what if he had been fantasising about another girl? During the early stages of our relationship, Anthony had