In Bed With Lord Byron

may only increase insomnia. Still, like I said, better than counting sheep.
    Sheep. Funny things. Sheep-shagging even funnier. For a moment I was distracted by how and why men bother (another problem with the game – if you’re tired, your mind may have a
tendency to wander down weird, irrelevant avenues . . .). Then I started laughing and shook myself. Back to the game. Time to decide.
    Not George Clooney, I thought. Not unless he agreed to roast the pig.
    ‘So it’s either Lord Byron or my
Daily Telegraph
guy,’ I said to Lyra, whose tongue was rasping against her tail. ‘And I think it’s going to be . . . oh God,
how predictable . . .’
    Lord Byron. I just melted at the thought of his soft Romantic locks, his brown eyes, his haughty tipped-up chin, but at the same time I felt a bit sad and exasperated with myself. Lord Byron was
thirty in the year 1818; I wouldn’t be thirty till the year 2006. It didn’t really bode well for a love match.
    And there was another worry.
    I hadn’t included Anthony in my going-to-bed game. Anthony has been my boyfriend for the last two years and yet he didn’t even scrape the top four. Don’t get me wrong. Anthony
is fine in bed. He is handsome. Sweet. Quite wealthy – he is head of a computer firm. He has a wonderful sense of humour, and doesn’t mind when I make jokes about sheep. He buys me
chocolate and flowers. He makes me laugh. I can phone him any time and tell him whatever teeny thing is on my mind, even if it’s something utterly stupid, like what I should wear to work or
my lunchtime what-to-have-in-my-sandwich dilemma or what underwear I’m wearing (he is particularly helpful when discussing the latter).
    So why had I recently had to start faking my orgasms? And why, the last time we met, did I pretend I had my period? I thought the fizz was meant to go out of relationships after eighteen years
of marriage. If I couldn’t even manage two years without getting bored, what hope was there for me?
    I pictured myself breaking up with Anthony, walking around the idea uneasily and giving it the odd nervous prod. I pictured the look of devastation on his face. Anthony’s mother had left
him when he was five years old, and though he was confident on the outside, in more vulnerable moments I’d seen the fear it had left in his heart. After making love, he never rolled over and
went to sleep. He clung to me tightly and sometimes woke me in the night and whispered, ‘You won’t ever leave me, will you?’ and I’d kiss him and hug him and say,
‘Never – I promise – you’re not only my boyfriend but the best friend I’ve ever had.’ And we’d fall asleep, nose to nose, wrapped in loyalty and intimacy,
a silent pact between us that we would always be there for each other: it was us against the world.
    The thought of breaking up with him suddenly made me feel like crying. I quickly went back to thinking of Lord B.
    Eventually I slipped into the quicksand of sleep and dreamt of chasing Lord Byron through London all night, unable to ever quite catch him . . .
    Of course, I had no idea then that in less than three days’ time I was going to actually end up in bed with Lord Byron.
    But – thank God – life never fails to surprise us.
    Just when you think you have everything in place, it will creep up on you when you least expect it . . .

Chapter One
    Anthony Brown
    In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of what is to come; so with present time.
    L EONARDO DA V INCI

i) Late
    By the next morning, Lord Byron was forgotten. I overslept and Lyra, ever an unreliable alarm clock, woke me by swishing her tail over my face. As I blearily opened my
sleepy-dust-sticky eyes, she retreated to the bottom of my bed, all purrs and wide emerald eyes, as if to say: ‘Oh, I’m
so
sorry, I seem to have accidentally woken you.’ I
rolled over and saw that it was nine o’clock – the exact time I was meant to be in the office. I jumped out of bed and threw on my suit, which I had fortunately ironed and hung over my
chair the night before.
    Friday was normally a hair-washing morning, but there was no time for that. I forked out a plate of tuna for Lyra, locked up and hurried to the lift. Just as the doors were about to close, a
group bundled in: Mrs Evans from next door with her two children, and Dave, the guy who lived in the flat below me.
    Dave was a nice enough neighbour. He was twenty-three years old and loved