Hard at times to realise that behind the “chat names” were real people, people just like you would meet everyday. “Tiny Tim” was a 6 foot 3 ex policeman who bred canaries, “Laughing Cavalier” was a 54 year-old teacher of English as a Foreign Language and quite the dullest person you could imagine. “Penzance Priscilla” was 49 and kept a bed and breakfast place and was always full of funny stories about her guests and kept trying to entice “Laughing Cavalier” to come down for a weekend – goodness knows what she thought would happen.

Ruth – chat name “Blondie” – had never been to any of the room meets that Mandy organised. They weren’t her idea of fun – too many people, most of whom she didn’t really want to know any better.  It was fine, dropping in to the room at night to relax for an hour, after work, with some casual chat and a bit of banter, but 48 hours in Birmingham with Priscilla’s jokes and Cavalier’s long, long, stories, really made no appeal.

Ruth had been married, but that was long ago and far away. He had left her, years ago. It had been a mistake, just as her mother had told her, but she had got past it, gone back to her own name, put him behind her. “Single, not looking” was how she filled in forms on the Net. Anyway she had a good job in sales admin, plenty of “face to face” friends and a reasonable social life and meeting some anonymous stranger through a chat room seemed like a pretty desperate way of finding love.

But “Jack” was different.

It wasn’t romance, she was fairly sure of that. It was something less exciting, but far more comfortable and safer perhaps.

Jack was easy to talk to, he was in the room early, often they were the only ones there, and over the months they had become friendly, at ease with each other, laughed at the same jokes, occasionally whispered a good-natured but rude comment about the antics of the other chat-room folk. Jack didn’t go to any of the room meets either.

“Not my scene” he said.

Their chat was all light-hearted and casual but, somehow, they seemed to be on the same wavelength.

Ruth couldn’t remember now who had first mentioned that the two of them should meet. It just had seemed to come about naturally.

“Sometime when you are down here,” Jack had said, “we should get together and have a meal.”

“That would be nice!” 

Ruth went down South, for a sales conference, twice a year. She usually flew down the night before, because the conference, at the factory in Acton, started at 9.00 a.m. – so dinner with Jack wouldn’t be a problem and she wouldn’t have to make excuses to leave the rest of the group.

But she didn’t push the matter, and nor did Jack.

The Spring Conference happened and nothing was arranged.

It was only when she came back home, and checked back in to Mandy’s, and was asked where she had been, that Jack whispered her and asked: “Why didn’t you tell me you were down? We could have had that dinner.”

Ruth felt oddly guilty.

“Honest, Jack, next time, the Autumn Conference, I’ll warn you in advance, and we will fix something up. Promise!”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

So, early October, she had said, “I’m coming down on the 23rd Jack, still want to have dinner?”

“Great! Italian suit you?”

“Mmm, yes!   But Jack – “Dutch Treat” – I’ll pay my half!”

“No way!  You’re on my patch – it’s my treat, no arguments.”

She didn’t argue – some men, she knew, felt they had to pay – but she would take him something down that he would like, a gift, some sort of equivalent to an Italian meal. He had spoken about whisky – a nice bottle of malt would be appropriate, and round about the right price.

So, here she was, in her hotel in London. Watching the TV and waiting for 7.30 when she would go out into Bayswater and go and meet Jack.

“You know, I don’t even know if that’s his real name,” she thought. “It would be really strange to call him something else after all this time.” With a little flutter in her stomach she realised that actually she knew very little about Jack – he had said something about working in the City. That could be anything. Was this a good idea?

Should she just abandon the idea of the meeting, have a meal in the hotel, and when she next was in chat explain to Jack that her flight had been delayed?

“Don’t be such a wimp!” she chided herself.

“What can possibly go wrong – you are meeting in a respectable Italian restaurant, not a Turkish bordello, you silly woman. You aren’t going to be kidnapped for the sex trade and he can hardly make too outrageous a pass at you with a roomful of Italian waiters looking on.”

Ruth stood up, checked herself in the room mirror, liked what she saw, switched off the TV, and left the room. She went back and collected the gift-wrapped bottle of Glenlivet.  “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on.  Its  your age, m’dear, your age.”

It took ten minutes to walk to the Ristorante Sorrento. The walk calmed her nerves, she was hungry, she was looking forward to a nice Italian meal, perhaps something she didn’t usually have, veal, maybe. And, yes, she was looking forward to meeting Jack. She had to admit that to herself – just a friendly meeting, nothing more than that. But it would be good to put a face to the name, a physical identity to the personality she had come to know over these last couple of years.

Jack had said he would be there early, and he would have a table near the door, and that he would recognise her.

“You always can tell somebody who is expecting to be met,” he had said, “there is an air about the way they walk and look.”

 The sound of an Italian tenor doing something painful to “Come back to Sorrento” drifted through the door as Ruth stepped up from the pavement across the little terrace area that was deserted on this chilly October evening and in to the warmth of the restaurant.

It wasn’t busy. A small group in the corner, three couples, an elderly woman reading a book and eating with one hand, and, sitting near the door, a heavily built man with a shaven head. He looked up as the door opened, glanced up at Ruth, and looked back down at the “Evening Standard” he was reading.

“It must be him,” Ruth thought, “there isn’t much choice.”

She hesitated, he clearly wasn’t responding.

The owner bustled across, menu in hand, “Si signorina?” he smiled.

“I’m meeting a friend here.”

He smiled again, tucked the menu back under his arm, and returned to the back of the restaurant. The man at the table continued to read the “Evening Standard”. She walked across to him.

She smiled and said, “Jack?  I’m Ruth Adejola – “Blondie” to you.”

The man jumped up, surprise, and something else, apparent on his face.

“But….you…you can’t be “Blondie”!

“What, Jack? Because I’m black? I thought you knew – Blondie is just a chat name. Just my little joke. Is it a problem?”

Without a word he pushed past her, and in a moment was out in the street and away into the night.

The owner came back, with a concerned enquiry, “Signorina, is everything all right?”

“Apparently not,” said Ruth. “But if this table is free, I might as well eat, if that’s all right.”

 “Si, prego!”

Ruth sat down, placed the gift-wrapped bottle carefully on the table and folded up Jack’s “Evening Standard”.

“Mmm,” she thought, “somehow I doubt that we will be seeing Jack back in chat.  Now shall it be scallopine limone or scallopine al Marsala?”