In Bed With Lord Byron

my hair, half trying to gently prise me away from his leg.
    He lifted me up and peered into my face. I tried to smile and appear normal, but it was impossible. He pulled me into his arms and gave me a hug, stroking my hair and shushing me as though I was
a little girl. I clung to him tightly, crushing his rib cage against mine, revelling in the feel of his heartbeat. He waited patiently for the sobs to retreat from my body and my breathing to
soften, then he pulled back a few inches. I stared at him through blurry, bloodshot eyes. It’s all right, I told myself, over and over. It’s all right. We’re here, in the present,
and he’s safe. He’s alive.
    I stared into his eyes and pulled him into another hug. Anthony hugged me back, then pulled me down on to the sofa next to him.
    ‘Lucy, you’re scaring me,’ he said in an intense voice. ‘What on earth is going on?’
    ‘It’s just . . . just . . . ’ For a moment I was gripped by an urge to tell him the truth, to relive everything we’d shared. But if I told him, the desire, the temptation
for him to use the machine again would be irresistible. It wouldn’t make any difference if I told him he had died; he would still ache to try it out. I knew the pull it exerted over me. I
looked up into his eyes. He gently stroked a strand of hair back from my face. A beat passed between us. Suddenly I became acutely conscious of his body: the curve of his lips, the strength of his
jaw. The air around us seemed to gather like invisible thunderclouds before a storm. My tears were dry now, my stomach hollow, but I felt flushed with the desire to make love to him, to cancel out
his death with the ultimate life-affirming act, and then to fall asleep nestled naked in his arms, his skin warm against mine.
    He leaned in closer; I stared at his lips. I saw them move . . .
    ‘Lucy?
Lucy?
’ He snapped his fingers in front of my face.
    ‘It’s just – it’s just PMT,’ I concluded with an embarrassed laugh.
    ‘But you never get PMT,’ said Anthony, looking unconvinced, stroking my hair again. He knew that I didn’t cry that often, and bursting into tears for no reason just
wasn’t my style.
    ‘I’m fine,’ I said, patting his knee. ‘That’s the main thing.’
    I got up to go and he pushed me back down.
    ‘Lucy, don’t shut me out,’ he said with a flash of anger. ‘Something’s up. OK, you don’t have to tell me what it is, but don’t fob me off. I’m
your best friend, for God’s sake.’
    ‘I’m sorry – I’m really sorry . . . ’ I felt tears prick my eyes again, and then he put his arm around me, pulling me in close, and sighed. ‘Sorry, I’ve
set you off again. I didn’t mean to snap.’
    I finally managed to gain control of myself, packing a lid down on my grief and sealing it back in my heart.
    ‘Really – I’m fine. You’re right – something happened, but I can’t talk about it.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    I nodded, staring at my knees.
    ‘Well, remember, you can call me any time, OK?’
    I actually wanted him to go at this point. I wanted to be alone; I wanted to have a hot bath and just cry and cry and cry until my body was dry and withered and waterless. But he insisted on
staying, cooking me some tomato soup and then making me watch a comedy video with him to cheer me up. I remained quiet the whole time; I had to, to stop myself breaking down again. I kept wanting
him to stop being so unbearably kind, because the more wonderful he was, the more I realised what I might have lost.
    I couldn’t sleep that night.
    I couldn’t even play the going-to-bed game. It seemed too trivial. I thought of all the people out there who had lost someone they loved. I felt a wave of compassion and found myself
praying to God for all their souls.
    I was just dropping off to sleep when some dark-edged fragment of childhood memory, of a movie I’d once seen, rose to the surface. I blinked awake, my heart throbbing.
    It was one of those silly horror movies in which a man had escaped Death. He’d been meant to get on a plane and had missed it at the last minute; the plane had crashed, killing fifty
people. But the man, having slipped out of the noose, found that Death kept trying to lasso him again and again. It had been comic in places, for Death appeared as a figure in a grey cloak,
wielding an axe, green eyes flickering with vengeance, following his poor unknowing victim about, scattering accidents like confetti. But the point