Part One
Food shopping and chores done for the day, I logged onto Facebook, not expecting a great deal - application requests, meaningless posts, inane status updates, the usual. Oh, and of course, a poke. There's always a poke, some people are still amused by them! I usually ignore them, but this one had been sent by a name that grabbed my attention - Edwin Johnson.
I just stared at the screen, Edwin Johnson has poked you. My heart actually leapt, I'm sure of it. Edwin, or Ed to his friends, was a guy I'd seen for a couple of verrrrrry intense months after I left university and was in training with the airline where I've worked for over nine years. He was a badboy, a player, a guy with a reputation that occasionally made the local newspapers. We'd met on a night out, through a friend of a friend's boyfriend, you know how it is. I knew he was wrong, that he wasn't boyfriend material, but I was single and looking for fun. And we'd had fun, alot of fun!
Memories came flooding back, many of them of a sexual nature. I snapped myself out of it, telling myself it was years ago. "You're married now, to a fantastic man, a captain at the airline. And you have a great life, a lovely house, a good career." No matter how much I told myself not to, I clicked on the poke and up popped the profile for Edwin Johnson.
The photo was typical Ed, a black and white picture, head and shoulders, dark, brooding, menacing even, and those eyes, intense, piercing. Quickly, I clicked the button to poke back, immediately rebuking myself for not just ignoring it. Almost immediately, a friend request came back from Ed. My stomach suddenly felt knotted. I couldn't add him. My husband would ask questions, my brother knew who he was and would ask questions, bloody hell, my mum would ask questions!
I ignored the request, but I couldn't let it end like that, it was rude. I typed a brief message, a little jokey, thanking him for the poke, but explaining that it would make life a bit awkward if I added him. I clicked send. I should have logged off, but I didn't, I wanted to see if he replied. And he did. In record time! His typing must have improved alot over the years! The reply said not to worry, but to add him on MSN. He didn't ask, he just said, "Add me".
I copied the email address, logged into MSN and added Ed to my list of contacts. A message box popped up immediately.
"Hi Sarah, been a long time"