In Bed With Lord Byron

shriek and dashed into the living room. He was sitting in the
time machine, his eyes wide.
    ‘Lucy, the machine’s eating me!’
    I rushed over.
    ‘It’s not going to eat you, it’s just . . . ’
    ‘Turn it off, turn it off!’ he sobbed tearfully. ‘Turn it off!’ He jabbed buttons randomly; the date blinked out and then reappeared. Then, as though in slow motion, I
saw his finger heading for the green button. I yelled, ‘
NO!
’ and dived into the machine to stop him. But it was too late. Blackness swirled and glittered with beads of green and
red light. Then our world turned upside down and we found ourselves in another time, another place.
    We were in India. There was no mistaking it. We were staring at the Taj Mahal. I’d only visited India once before, with Anthony, eighteen months back and we’d taken
a brief trip there.
    I noticed with great relief that the tourists milling about were wearing modern dress. It seemed that we had kept the same time, just sidestepped the place. Which was just as well, given that
neither of us had taken speaking potions.
    It was clearly midsummer. The heat lay thickly in the air, prickling my pores, and beads of sweat welled up all over my face and body. But the intensity hardly seemed to matter when we were
standing in front of one of the most glorious wonders of the world. In the midday sun, the dome and minarets shimmered and gleamed a radiant white. I thought of those famous words by the Bengali
poet Rabindranath Tagore:
The Taj Mahal is a teardrop on the cheek of time.
I felt the building was achingly sad, every curve of perfection echoing the desperation of Shah Jahan in trying to
capture the lost beauty of his dead wife.
    I looked down at Adam, who was staring round with big eyes. I grabbed his hand.
    ‘Don’t worry, Adam. We can go back right now. Only not a word to your mum, OK? I’ll give you five pounds,’ I added.
    But Adam didn’t seem to have heard me.
    ‘This place looks cool,’ he said, and ran off.
    ‘
Adam!
’ I pounded after him.
    I suddenly became aware of a tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties, who was watching me with an amused look in his eyes. His English dress and pale skin suggested he was a tourist. I
slowed down slightly, giving him a raised-eyebrow ‘Kids, hey?’ expression. He winked at me. I blushed, surreptitiously wiping sweat from my cheeks. Then I realised that in my
distraction I’d lost sight of Adam.
    ‘He’s over there,’ the man directed me helpfully.
    ‘Thanks,’ I cried breathlessly. I ran over towards Adam, but he spotted me and dodged away. I changed direction and lunged at him, but the little bugger jumped aside at the last
minute, and I found myself grabbing at air. And then my legs were flying up and the Taj Mahal’s reflection came up to meet me and shattered into a thousand pieces.
    As I emerged, spluttering, from the ornamental lake, a military policeman came running up.
    ‘It’s not my fault!’ I gasped, wiping water from my eyes.
    ‘Oops.’ Adam had stopped his games and was now eyeing me sheepishly, trying to hide his laughter. Then he erupted. ‘Oh, Auntie Lucy, you look like a drowned rat!’
    To cap it all, a couple of American tourists passing by stopped to take photographs.
    The policeman waved his arms and shouted at me to get out of the water.
    ‘Stop yelling at her and help the poor woman out.’ It was the dark-haired tourist who came to my rescue. He extended a hand and I grabbed it tightly as he hauled me out. A small
puddle formed around my feet. He drew out a handkerchief and gently mopped my face before passing it to me.
    ‘Thanks,’ I said, touched by his kindness. I grabbed Adam’s hand and gave him a look that clearly said, ‘Be quiet and behave.’
    ‘Are you OK?’ the stranger asked. ‘Where’s your hotel?’
    ‘Um . . . our hotel . . . yes, well, it’s not really been my day,’ I confessed. I could feel the sun arrowing down on to me, drying my wet clothes. ‘We woke up this
morning and found that our passports, money and luggage had been stolen! We think it must have been, um, this dodgy guy who’d been hanging about the hotel. When we complained to the manager,
he just booted us out without any sympathy. So we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere!’
    ‘That’s terrible. Did you contact the police?’
    ‘Well . . . we . . . ’
    ‘They’re useless, aren’t they? I expect you ended up in a queue for ten hours. You poor thing – we