In Bed With Lord Byron

reply.
    ‘What are you writing?’
    A long pause.
    ‘A letter. To Lady Oxford. A love letter. I have realised that younger women are not for me; I prefer a more mature woman.’
    Bastard. Bastard. Bastard bastard bastard. In my fury, my desperation for attention, I blurted out, ‘I came here in a time machine. I came all the way back from 2005. For you! And you
treat me like this! You use and abuse me and then discard me after one night!’
    That got his attention. He swung round to face me, frowning.
    ‘A time machine? Are you, by any chance, related to Lady Caroline Lamb? Madness runs in her family.’
    ‘Oh yeah? You think I’m mad. Take a look at this!’ I thudded my \mobile down on his desk. ‘It’s a portable phone. You don’t even know what a phone is, do you?
It’s a way of communicating. We don’t need silly letters any more.’
    Byron picked it up and turned it over with a snort. Then, to my chagrin, he started scribbling again.
    ‘So you’re just going to sit there and write?’ I snarled. I was horribly aware that I was being totally uncool; I was behaving like all the others he had tossed aside, and it
was only repelling him further. But I couldn’t help it. My heart was bleeding.
    ‘I think,’ said Lord Byron, without looking up, ‘that you should go.’
    And that is how I found myself, several days later, on a boat heading back to Dover. In the ensuing row I had cried that aside from the fact that he’d ruined my
reputation, I had no money, and he immediately passed over a wodge of notes. As I stepped into the carriage, he kissed me goodbye with regret in his eyes, muttering apologetically, ‘Man is
half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or swim.’ All very profound, but the words did little to soothe my broken heart.
    I wasn’t sick on the boat this time; I just felt despondent, like a damp dishcloth, watching the grey waves swirl around the boat. I kept telling myself that I had, after all, had my first
ever
one-night stand – after all, the one with Anthony didn’t really count, did it? The trouble was, after my so-called one-night stand with Anthony, I’d felt as though I
was left washed in a sheen of his loveliness, whereas my night with Byron had left me feeling as though he had scraped a layer off me, leaving me reduced, inadequate, unsatisfied. Perhaps, I
thought, one-night stands are just overrated: cool in books and mags and on TV, but in real life draining and bad for the soul.
    It was only as we were approaching the white cliffs of Dover that I realised I had left my mobile with Byron. I couldn’t even text Anthony; my last link with real life had been severed.
How on earth was I going to get back to reality?
    v) Keats
    I used much of the money Byron had given me to pay for a room in an inn for the night. Fearing men might prey on me, I avoided the raucous-sounding bar and went straight to bed.
The next morning I woke up to the sound of birdsong. I thought of Anthony and how I was used to waking up beside him. He liked to sleep on his front and his face would be pressed into the pillow,
and he’d feel me staring at me and open his eyes and groan and then kiss me. I felt full of longing and loneliness; my bed felt huge and cold and empty without him.
    I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide under the covers but I told myself to jolly well get a grip. I had a bath and it was then, lying in the lukewarm water, that a plan came into my mind. A
way to help me get back home
and
wind bloody Byron up. Feeling a bit more cheerful, I dressed quickly and spent the last of my money hiring a carriage.
    It took many hours to reach London; finally, around two o’clock, the carriage deposited me at my destination. Luckily the driver had known where to take me, declaring, ‘You’ll
find him at the home of Charles Brown.’ Now the door opened and an earthy-looking man with brown hair and a kind face eyed me up and down.
    ‘I think you must be Mr Brown,’ I said. ‘My name is Lady Lucy Lyon and I am—’
    ‘Oh yes, do come in. Keats has told me all about you. We were about take lunch; perhaps you’d care to join us?’
    Keats had told him all about me! How flattering. I was seriously chuffed.
    The house was small and poky after the grandeur of Byron’s castle, but it was very warm and homely.
    Keats was delighted to see me; he spent about five minutes stammering a ‘H-h-he-hello,’ which was very sweet. He seemed to sense that something was wrong, for as