In Bed With Lord Byron

at
everything
. You are a Renaissance girl, but cooking is not your strong point.’
    After that, I let Anthony cook. I was hugely jealous, and hugely delighted, at what a wonderful cook he was.
    And no doubt, at this very minute, he was cooking his absolute speciality for Matilda: a simple but delicious roast chicken with glorious crunchy carrots and thick gravy – oh, and his
classic crème brulée for desert with that lovely skein of burnt sugar on the top.
    As I poured my tin of tomato soup into a pan, I couldn’t help thinking wistfully about his roast potatoes. Oh well . . .
    I ate my soup whilst watching the news.
    I wondered if I ought to phone up one of my girlfriends, Emma or Chloe or Clare. The trouble was, I’d kind of let our friendships slide over the last year. That was the thing about my
relationship with Anthony – for all our commitment-phobia, it had been so intense, so all-consuming, I didn’t really have anyone in my life except for him.
    I put on a video:
2046
. I’d watched it before with Anthony and told him it was my favourite film in the whole world. To be honest, I was slightly bored by it. Had I only ever
enjoyed it to wind him up? After twenty minutes, I found myself switching off.
    I had a bath. I dried my hair. It was still only nine p.m. What had happened to time? Clearly its winged chariot was in first gear and the driver was on sedatives.
    I trawled back into the living room and stared vaguely at the bookcase on the other side of the room. I loved reading and found it hard to resist walking past a Waterstone’s without
popping in and buying a book. My tastes were totally diverse; I loved books that entertained me, books that stretched my mind, books that created worlds for my imagination to soar in, books that
made me laugh and cry. I’d once sorted the whole case into alphabetical order, but now it was a tip, books stacked up in unsteady piles, competing for space with old magazines, the shelves
cobwebbed with dust.
    I know! I thought. For once in my life I will deal with all my horrible mess. I’ll have a spring-clean!
    I kept the TV on, vaguely aware of its gossip in the background, whilst I pulled all the books off the shelves, yanked on my Marigolds and set to work with a sponge and a bucket frothing with
Fairy Liquid. After about two minutes, I started to think: God this is boring.
Come on, Lucy, this is fun,
I argued back,
fun, fun spring-cleaning.
Then my eyes dropped to a pile of
books. Hey, look,
Perfume
. I hadn’t read that in ages. And oh –
Birdsong
. And what was this?
    It was a thin volume, entitled
The Idiot’s Guide to da Vinci.
It had a jazzy cover and a cartoon of an elderly Leonardo on the front, white hair cascading around his face, still
beautiful and graceful even in old age.
    I remembered that Sally had bought it for me one Christmas. She wasn’t very good with presents, and I had to admit, I thought the book would be naff and superficial. But it was a whole lot
better than cleaning. I dipped in. Its style was chirpy and colloquial and it skimmed over things, but it was fun. I flicked through randomly and read:
    The word Renaissance means ‘rebirth’ and it applies to a new age, a golden era when medieval ways were cast aside. It was as though the human spirit was born
     again. People suddenly woke up and started wanting to know how the world worked. There was a spirit of enquiry in the air as people got into art, science, history and nature.
    What a thrilling time it must have been, I thought. Utterly gripped, I flipped on a few more pages:
    The Renaissance began in Italy and one of its stars was, of course, Leonardo da Vinci. Leo was a strict vegetarian and loved animals. He was also very charismatic –
     there is no doubt he would have been a favourite with the ladies.
    Suddenly I felt a wave of nostalgia, a desire to leave behind TV for blank canvases, to hear lute players rather than yet another manufactured boy band, to swap my jeans for
beautiful silk dresses embroidered with birds and flowers.
    Letting out a sigh, I put down the book and carried on cleaning.
    That night, I played the going-to-bed game again. My short list came down to:
    1. Daniel Day Lewis
    2. Gareth Gates
    3. Leonardo da Vinci
    No prizes for guessing who won . . .
    By lunchtime the next day I still hadn’t had a text from Anthony. I felt slightly depressed and itchy with intrigue, but whenever I got close to texting him to ask how it
had gone, I found