In Bed With Lord Byron

any moment.
    OK, I told myself, you know this thing can’t possibly,
possibly
work, but all the same, you cannot go back to the nineteenth century wearing a Hello Kitty nightshirt.
    I dashed to my wardrobe, flinging aside old shoe boxes and boots and handbags until I found the musty-smelling carrier bag. Inside was an ivory ballgown which I’d worn to a fancy dress
party and always kept just in case. I pulled it on, my hands shaking as I fumbled with the lace in the bodice, then ran back into the sitting room.
    I was about to dive into the machine when I thought:
mobile
. I really ought to take it, just to be safe.
    I raced into the kitchen, grabbed the phone, then ran back into my bedroom, where I found a white evening bag and shoved the mobile into it.
    Back in the living-room, I slid into the machine. It shook so vehemently, I worried that it might collapse. I adjusted the date: 17 April 1813. Not too long after Lord Byron had finished his
affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. He would have been twenty-five and at the peak of his fame.
    I was about to press the green button once more when an instruction flashed up on the screen: TAKE SPEAKING POTION.
    Speaking potion? What on earth . . . ?
    Then I noticed a small box poking out from under the seat. Inside were a dozen or so small vials containing green liquid. I uncorked one, sniffing it suspiciously, then, feeling rather like
Alice in Wonderland, took a few sips. Well, I didn’t seem to be dead yet, nor did I seem to be getting any bigger or smaller. I downed the potion and slammed my fist against the green button
before I could chicken out.
    There was a long silence. Nothing happened. I glanced around. Yep, my living room was still here. I bit back a smile, feeling absurd, and was picturing myself telling the whole anecdote to
Anthony and having a giggle over it when suddenly the machine began to roar . . .
    Five minutes later, I found myself lying in the middle of a cobbled street, dawn breaking overhead, with a throbbing ache in my temples.

Chapter Two
    Lord Byron (and a brief flirtation with Keats)
    It may be profligate – but is it not life – is it not
the thing
?
    L ORD B YRON , IN DEFENCE OF
D ON J UAN

i) Stranded
    I wish I could offer up a glamorous description of time travel. I wish I could tell you that there was a kaleidoscope blur of colour, the wind rushing through my ears at a
screaming pitch as I clung to the violently vibrating machine for dear life. But it wasn’t like that at all. That was perhaps the most disorientating thing about the whole experience. When I
was nine years old, I fell off my bike and suffered concussion. I remember that when I woke up it was as if no time had passed and I had simply been asleep, vaguely aware that I’d lost twelve
hours somewhere. Travelling in the machine was the same: complete black-out, and then disbelief, and then
what the fuck
. . .
?
    As I came to, I was vaguely aware of something hard and damp curving into my cheek. It was dark. I was lying on a cobbled street. I could hear a babble of voices, a rattling noise, and then a
more insistent and more troubling sound that seemed to be getting closer and closer –
clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop
. . . I raised my head and—Screamed. The horse lunged at me.
I closed my eyes and curled into a ball, waiting for the hoofs to strike me. I heard the horse whinny; another scream flew from my lips in echo. Then footsteps. I was still too shocked to move. I
peered through my shaking fingers and saw the bottom half of a man: a pair of breeches and shiny boots. Then a warm hand touched me on the back and a deep voice said, ‘My dear lady! The
carriage nearly hit you!’
    ‘Is the fair lady hurt?’ another, quieter voice enquired.
    I looked up. A large, portly man was staring down at me with shrewd blue eyes. He had the most ridiculous pair of white sideburns you’ve ever seen; in my hysteria I held back choking
laughter. By his side was a thin, rather gangly but also rather dandy young man with big blue eyes and a nervous, twitching face.
    Oh my God. It can’t be, I shouted inwardly, this can’t be.
    ‘Are you injured, my lady?’ the man with the sideburns enquired.
    No.
No.
The time machine can’t have worked, and yet it
has
worked. Unless this is a dream. Yes, it must be a dream. I closed my eyes, feverishly willing myself to wake up.
When I opened them again, the two men were still looking down at me.
    ‘My lady, I think you have taken