In Bed With Lord Byron

gentlemen and ladies. The gutters steamed with horse shit, and rats wriggled in and out of piles
of rubbish. I crossed the road and went to look in the window of a draper’s shop, though I was merely gazing at the reflection of the street, forcing myself to remember. There . . . there . .
. right in the middle . . .
that
was where the time machine had deposited me.
    I waited for the road to clear, for a few carriages to rattle on. Then, my heart thudding, I walked into the middle of the road. Nothing. I couldn’t see anything.
    Remember,
Keats’ voice echoed in my mind,
remember the power of the imagination.
    I closed my eyes, my forehead burning in concentration. My heart swelled to bursting as I begged the machine to appear.
    I opened my eyes oh-so-slowly, and as I did so, I saw a glint of metal. My eyelids flew open and my heart leapt.
    I looked around fearfully, expecting pointing fingers, shocked voices. But everyone just carried on walking and talking. It was as though the time machine had been sitting there all along, in a
parallel dimension, waiting for me to shift the angle of my vision and spot it.
    Then I heard someone shouting. I turned and saw a carriage heading towards me. The driver was panicking, waving the reins madly and yelling at me to move out of the way.
    Now people in the street really did stop and stare.
    For a moment I froze. I saw the horses thrashing and kicking up in confusion, hoofs tumbling towards me. Then my body kicked into gear and I dived into the time machine, yanking on my
seatbelt.
    Now, what date, what date to put in? My mind was blank with panic. Then I spotted the date and time I had left England recorded in green digits on the screen. I typed them in again, and pressed
the green GO button. There was a wild
whooshing
, and I hung on tight and said goodbye to 1813.
    vi) Home sweet home
    As you can imagine, being home was very odd at first. I had left just before dawn and I arrived back just before dawn. Like the children who visit Narnia in
The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe
, I found that time was unchanged in the present. But what had seemed familiar was now strange: the sound of cars instead of hoofs, the thrum of an aeroplane passing
overhead, a proper toilet instead of a hole in a wooden board. Worse was the feeling of jet-lag. According to my clock, it was 3.46 a.m., but in reality I’d been away for four weeks, two days
and five hours. I had treated time like an elastic band, stretching it out of its normal shape and then pinging it back to me. I felt exhausted, my head muzzy and my heart confused. I collapsed
into bed, Lyra curled in a purring ball by my head, and slept for fourteen hours straight.
    I was woken by my doorbell ringing. Feeling sluggish after so much sleep, I blundered over to the door only to find Anthony standing there.
    ‘Hiya.’ His hands were shoved into his pockets in tight balls and stubble crawled in a black forest over his chin. ‘You sent me a text saying Lyra needed feeding. Are you
planning to go away?’ Suddenly he noticed my appearance. ‘What
are
you wearing?’
    ‘Uh?’ I realised I was still wearing my ballgown. ‘Oh, I was just trying this on. I was just about to get into my jeans.’ Because time has reverted back to normal, my
dress looked exactly as it had when I’d first put it on.
    A beat. We looked at each other. The pain of our break-up had subsided to a soft ripple that now rose to the surface, raw and acute.
    ‘Well – I was wondering if we could have a chat,’ he said in a tense voice.
    ‘I . . .’ I really wasn’t in any sort of state for ‘A Chat’, as it was clearly going to be, but I had a frightened feeling that if I turned Anthony away now, our
friendship would be over for good. ‘Uh, sure, come in. I’ll just change.’
    In my bedroom I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, crumpling up my ballgown and tossing it into the bin. I felt shaky with nerves and hunger. It seemed like forever since I’d eaten.
    In the living room, Anthony was pacing up and down so hard it looked as though the carpet might soon disappear.
    ‘Lucy . . .’
    ‘I’ll just make some tea,’ I procrastinated hastily.
    In the kitchen, I removed my favourite shiny pink mugs from the drying rack. I took a box of Earl Grey tea down from the cupboard, rubbing my thumb over the gritty texture of the bag. I watched
the boiling kettle puff up happy clouds of steam; I watched as the simmering water hit the tea bag, effusing