P) Tired of waiting.

She sat on a high stool with her arms resting on the tacky surface
of the once polished bar.

Jill Adams, thirty-five, spinster of the parish. What the hell was
wrong with her? She picked up her glass and swilled the dregs of the
lager round in an aggressive whirlpool. Almost an hour she had sat
there; alone, feeling ridiculous and wearing the air of having been
stood up like cheap perfume. Five more minutes and she was going to go
home and stroke the cat, who loved her regardless of her extra pounds,
greasy skin, warts, bad breath, smelly feet or what ever the hell it
was about her that stopped her from finding someone to love.

Jill was the poster girl of average, average height, weight, and
intelligence. Basic education extended for two years at college,
regular job working in the office of a middle sized retail company,
owner of a little four door hatchback. She was a size fourteen with a
small round face, green eyes, and mousy brown hair that glinted with
the aid of products in the sunlight. So where then was the blue-collar
husband and the two point four children that she should have?

She'd had relationships, several of them. Three one night stands, two
long term live in lovers and a fianc? with an aversion to alters and
confetti. David had eventually fizzled off to live in Peckham, leaving
Jill with a mortgage that was suffocating her and a white cat who
tortured voles for sport.

Why then, with her track record had she expected this date to amount to
anything different?

Joe had been courting her on the Internet for months. They had begun,
as most Internet friendships do with a shared interest. One night Jill
had managed to navigate her way through the correct ensemble of keys to
get into a banger racing chat room. The computer still represented
itself as a mysterious and magical beast that lurked intimidatingly in
the corner of her room awaiting its opportunity to pounce and embarrass
her at any moment. She struggled with the strange abbreviations,
couldn't make sense of the keyboard-assembled pictures, and emoticons
and found the text running away with her until she was red-faced with
humiliation and the exertion of trying to keep up.

Joe_90 "A/S/L Banger Girl?"

Almost before she had the chance to ponder what the strange question
meant the text was gone to be replaced by some flirtatious remark by
someone already established in a conversation.

"Hey Banger you got me on ignore, or what?" It was Joe_90 again.

And so it had begun. They talked for two hours about their love of
watching derelict cars flying round a course before wrapping round each
other in a mangle of multicoloured metal. Jill had apologised profusely
about her naivety when it came to computer literacy, and Joe explained
what 'LOL' meant and used it often.

After two hours Jill typed that she had to leave as she was up early
for work the next morning. Joe_90 had come back at her with a sad face
and persuaded her to stay online a little longer. Joe talked her
through going private and five hours later she signed off to get her
shower and prepare for work. That had been the first of many all night
conversations. They talked easily and happily about any subject that
arose. Gradually as trust was established they shared their life
stories, Joe had suffered some hard times too and Jill felt their lives
intertwining a little bit more every time they spoke.

They swapped phone numbers, and Joe had become flirtatious for the
first time. Jill was nervous, her voice soft on the phone, again they
talked for hours and then in mid sentence as Jill was explaining how
and when to prune back clematis, Joe interrupted her and expressed a
desperate need to kiss her.

Jill didn't know what to say. Until that moment their friendship had
not hinted at anything other than the most platonic, though she had
found herself thinking about Joe more and more often. She bought small
gifts, books that they both wanted to read she bought two copies of, A
bottle of Joe's favourite cologne, some home-made buiscits that Joe
wanted to try, and she hugged the soft toy sent in return to her chest,
happy in these infant feelings of love.

Their phone conversations became more and more intimate, Joe always
taking the lead and guiding Jill into erotic or flirty conversations.
Jill would hang up with her face crimson with a mixture of shame and
excitement. Never in her life had she been so brazen, never before had
she even for a second considered doing anything like that. Three months
after their first contact Jill told Joe that she was in love.

They arranged to meet at a banger event, Jill was devastated when Joe
cancelled just an hour before they were due to meet. Family problems,
sick mother, couldn't leave. It all sounded to Jill like a convenient
excuse not to meet, and the next time she spoke to Joe she was
cool.

She drank the last of the now warm lager, and here she was being stood
up again. She was so tired of waiting to be loved. Some people went
through their whole lives without finding happiness, was she one of
those people? She had been willing to change her entire way of life for
Joe, nothing would ever have been the same again, but she'd have
blindly followed wherever Joe led her, because that was what being in
love meant to her. Her family disapproved of course, her mother wailed
and her father had forbidden Joe to step foot inside the house. People
met at the village dance under heavy chaperone in their day, they
didn't understand about the Internet and people like Joe. Jill was
cursing herself for being so eager to proclaim her love to family,
friends and all asunder, Now she would have to admit that she had been
wrong. Joe had said they should keep it quiet until after they had met,
Jill knew why now. Joe had never wanted to meet her at all; she was
just a plaything, one more in a probable string of Internet romances.
Tears stung her eyes as she scraped the stool backwards and rose from
the chair, she could feel the cold stares of the other customers and
she just wanted escape and fresh air.

A slender hand tapped her on the shoulder and she turned round.

"Jill?"

The voice was laden with question, but they had swapped many photos and
there was no mistaking the smiling face in front of her.

"Jill I'm so sorry the traffic was terrible and then I couldn't find
the place. Forgive me?"

Joe's photo didn't do her justice, she was beautiful, with open brown
eyes that pulled Jill's gaze into them. Jill was shy and didn't know
what to say. She had never been in this situation before, now after
months of being so sure about this huge change in her life she was
anything but. The weight of Joe's hand bore into her shoulder and she
was aware of the heat emanating from it. Jolene leant forward and
kissed Jill lightly on the cheek. It was an innocent kiss, the kind
that two friends meeting give all the time, but Jill felt her face
reddening, surely all the people in the packed pub knew that she was
about to set sail on her maiden voyage of lesbian love.

"Tell you what," Said Joe, "Let's get the hell out of here and go for a
walk, you can show me all the sights that this repressed little town of
yours has to offer." Joe sensed Jill's discomfort and Jill was grateful
to her. It was going to be all right.