In Bed With Lord Byron

computers; his flat was simply full of them. On my first night in the block, he’d invited me in for a drink and
had drunkenly confessed he was a virgin, which I thought was rather sweet.
    ‘Hey, I heard you last night!’ Dave cried.
    ‘So did I,’ Mrs Evans muttered.
    ‘I’m sorry?’ I flushed. Oh God. After my going-to-bed game had failed to induce sleep, I’d been practising my fake orgasms so I’d be all ready for my date with
Anthony this evening. I kept forgetting how thin the walls were. Whoops.
    ‘Those vocal exercises!’ Dave cried. ‘I mean, they did keep me up, but you have a great voice.’
    ‘Oh, oh, right. Yes.’ I ignored Mrs Evans’ grimace and shrugged lightly, as though Pavarotti was my middle name. ‘I just find that “o” sound really loosens
the tongue, and . . . ah.’ The lift, thank God, pinged. ‘Well, I can’t stop, I’m
really
late for work.’
    By the time I reached the Tube it was nine thirty. I managed to squeeze into the last untaken seat. Commuters with newspapers ruffled them, frowning; those without stared at their shoes.
    Getting off the Tube, I checked my watch. Nine fifty. Oh shit, oh bugger, oh bogger, oh clogger. Time to do some running.
    I worked in a very odd-looking building. It had only been built a year ago, a huge skyscraper with a hundred or so silver-plated windows that gleamed like mirrors. I know this may sound overly
romantic, but I secretly found those mirror-windows rather fairytale-ish, as though godmothers and witches and Cinderellas might secretly hover in the lifts practising magic, or a window on the
twentieth floor might one day open to let out a long Rapunzel plait.
    It was its outrageously priapic shape that had deterred a lot of serious businesses from taking up leases. Most of the floors had curling ‘TO LET’ signs in the windows and my boss
rented two rooms on the otherwise empty third floor. As I dashed up the stairs, I nearly collided with a delivery man struggling with a parcel: a huge cube covered with brown paper and string like
some monstrosity a Father Christmas on drugs might have conjured up. Seeing my boss hovering furiously in the background, I hastily offered to help him with the parcel, ignoring his gentlemanly
protests. We heaved it up and into the main office; my boss looked incensed. She was a rather terrifying woman – tall, built like a Viking warrior, her face ugly and yet rather beautiful in a
noble, intelligent way, framed by a fizz of strawberry-blonde curls. The delivery man handed her a clipboard, saying, ‘Please sign for this.’
    ‘What the hell is this? Did you order this, Lucy? Did you, Lucy-who-also-happens-to-be-an-hour-late?’
    ‘No!’
    She was
always
doing this. She would come into my office in a flap asking me to order a long-arm stapler or a back issue of
New Scientist
from March 1787 or whatever; then by the
time they arrived she’d forget she’d ever asked and blame me.
    ‘It’s from a Dr Schwartzman in Stockholm,’ said the delivery man.
    ‘Oh. Oh, fine, then,’ she snapped, scrawling her flamboyant signature across the page:
Dr Kay Merrick,
her ‘k’s flying like kites across the page. ‘Lucy,
this is the third time you’ve been late in a fortnight. I have already given you one warning.’
    ‘I know,’ I quavered. As the delivery man left, he gave me a sympathetic wink, as if to say, ‘My boss is just as bad,’ and I felt a little cheered and winked back.
‘It’s just – there was a problem with the Tube.’
    ‘Then leave earlier!’
    ‘I know, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping – I’m really sorry . . .’
    ‘Well take some sleeping pills!’ she roared.
    ‘But—’
    ‘No, Lucy. No more buts. You’ve had one warning as it is. Get your notepad and come into my office.
Now!
’ And she disappeared with a terrific slam of the door, the glass
tinkling in the frame.
    Right. Notepad. I went to my desk, searching through its ravaged landscape, its undulations of in and out trays, its oceans of paper and islands of paperclips and pens. My hands were shaking
slightly. If she’d asked me to bring in my notepad, then surely she wasn’t going to fire me? I finally found an HB pencil with a reasonable point and a pad half detached from its
spiralled teeth. Then, in a flash of horror, I remembered hearing the story of how she had fired her last PA, by inviting her into her office and then dictating her own letter of dismissal in order
to save time