In Bed With Lord Byron

dressed with bone pins and a ribbon.
    That had been the tricky bit. The woman in the illustration had teased her hair into tiny curls that wafted gracefully around her ribbon. But I had the type of hair that was impossible to do
anything with. For work, I just tied it back; for going out, I had to apply about half a bottle of hairspray to tame it into submission.
    I had dug out curling irons from the bottom of my wardrobe and produced a head of satisfying ringlets. But by the time I had attempted to pin them up, they had drooped into tired waves. Then the
pins kept bloody falling out – every time I moved I heard a
chink
. Still, I just about looked the part.
    Once again, I was about to take an adventure in my time machine. This time I was going to visit Ovid.
    Not for a love affair.
    My row with Anthony had left me feeling sulky and tired of men. I just wanted to
talk
to someone. I needed to sort out the blur in my head, to help me understand what I really felt about
him. My feelings for him were so confused, it wasn’t even a case of not seeing the wood for the trees; I couldn’t even see the trees, just twigs of confusion, woody whorls of doubt and
suffering.
    I wanted to talk to someone who knew about men and women and why relationships were so complicated. And while I did have some doubts about Ovid’s ability to help me, at least he
thought
he knew his stuff. And heck, he was going to be a lot more entertaining than going to some modern-day counsellor. At least Ovid would be witty, and glamorous, and sexy.
    Besides which, the thought of those lovely relaxing Roman baths was also deeply appealing. If the worst came to the worst, at least I could have a makeover and come back beaming with good
health.
    Famous last words . . .
    A roar of voices so loud they nearly deafened me. A cocktail of foreign smells. I tried to separate them out: sand, sweat, blood, meat, excitement. I opened my eyes and found
that I was sitting on a hard bench, with a soaring view over an arena. My head swam and a wind blew a faint shower of sand into my eyes. My hands flew up to rub them. Then I reminded myself
fiercely:
No, Lucy, DO NOT ruin your eye make-up after spending an hour and a half putting it on.
    I blinked the grit away and finally drank in my surroundings. When I realised where I was, my heart leapt with excitement.
    I was sitting in an amphitheatre, facing a sandy arena. There were crowds of people, and across the arena the Emperor was sitting on his throne, all white-bearded and fancy-toga-ed. God, it was
like something out of
Gladiator
.
    I glanced round. The benches were crowded but not packed; I was sitting alone on mine. Before getting into the time machine, I had examined several pictures of Ovid. Now, however, it was
impossible to recognise him, for all the men looked similar, sporting beards and long, flowing hair, wearing sandals beneath their togas. The women, meanwhile, seemed to have all dyed their hair a
similar shade of burnished red-gold, curled in ringlets that fell about their shoulders, or pinned up on their heads in tiers of curls. Many were carrying parasols to protect themselves from the
burning sun; some waved fans made of peacock feathers. My book hadn’t mentioned that touch – damn. Now I was going to roast.
    Oh well, I thought, if I can’t spot Ovid I may as well just enjoy the games for now.
    The arena below was empty and the crowd was hungry for blood. They stamped their feet and took up a refrain.
    Anthony had once taken me to a football match. He’d taken a while to adjust to footie after being a big baseball fan back home and he’d decided the team he wanted to support was
Manchester United (I suspect because Beckham was the only player the Americans have ever heard of). Now, sitting in the arena, I suffered a sense of déjà vu. It’s strange, I
thought, for one amused moment, how history never really changes. Yes, the details do but not the fundamentals. Dress everyone in jeans, exchange sand for grass and it could be 2005.
    A man came stumbling into the arena. He certainly didn’t bear any resemblance to Russell Crowe; he was as scrawny as a sparrow. As a lion came roaring in to fight him, I felt sorry for
him. He didn’t have a chance.
    Nobody else seemed to feel any sympathy, though. Their cries were disturbingly barbaric.
    ‘Excuse me, may I sit here?’
    I glanced up, shielding my eyes from the dazzle of the sun.
    ‘Um, yes,’ I smiled.
    As the man sat down