Ctrl-Alt-Delete (Hagar Trilogy Book 1), page 6
Jenny suddenly came to realise she didn’t understand men at all.
She thought she knew how to make them happy in bed; she’d read a book on it once, she knew some preferred football or more likely rugby if you lived down this way. Most of them preferred a night out with the boys, talking the same old nonsense about their cars, their new gadgets, violent films she didn’t think were any good, but that was about it.
She could cook well, she listened, she was loyal. Maybe she was just too goodie two-shoes? Too predictable, too dull. She needed some thrills in her life. Maybe she just wasn’t nasty enough? Mmm, now there’s a thought.
‘I like doughnuts,’ said Judith. Jenny had to laugh.
Judith had been keeping on at her all that week, and as they chatted about men again whilst listening to the hum of the city Jenny made a decision. She would try the Internet if that’s what Judith suggested, she was an IT genius after all and could probably help her do it. She had to do something so why not that?
They talked some more about how Jenny could rescue her self-esteem and more importantly find a gorgeous, hunky new man to replace ‘the bastard’.
‘OK, Jude what do I have to do?
‘Well, give me some details and I’ll sign you up to a few sites, OK?’ said Judith.
Judith knew Jenny wasn’t that pie-hot on the old computer so offered to type for her.
‘How about Bebo, Facebook and MySpace for starters, Jenny?’
Jenny just stared out across the bustling cityscape, she didn’t want to pay to get e-mails from sad, horny old men, nah, there must be a better way she thought.
‘Come on lovely, you have to try something? You’ll be closing up soon if you don’t!’ Judith grinned.
Bloody hell thought Jenny, they say the quiet ones are the ones to watch. Judith was starting to become quite daring in her role as self-appointed match-maker. Funny little thing that she was.
As the afternoon dragged on Jenny finally got a text back from her friend Rachel.
‘grt idea lv, wl chk wht im up 2 an txt bk sn’
It took Jenny a few moments to translate but fingers crossed she’d have a good old chat later. Ah, the miracles of modern technology she thought. Jenny smiled and went back to her printouts.
She stopped for a moment and glanced across the office. Judith had her head down and was engrossed in various computer programs as usual.
Fifteen
Adam was suicidal. His wife was gone and if he wasn’t careful she might not come back. What would they say in the IT department and worse still what would they say in Pensions? He’d never find another wife there if Mandy told the girls why she’d left him. And what on earth would his mother say when she found out on the council rumour mill? His life seemed over.
He’d probably lose the house too as Mandy’s mother also worked for the council, but in ‘Legal’, and she was a right evil cow. She knew all those fancy Jewish lawyers down Cardiff too. The ones that charged you a thousand quid on account just to talk to them and then fifty quid or more for every letter they sent or phone call they made. His mind was racing. If only she’d speak to him or reply to his texts, he might be able to save his wretched marriage.
Adam had already phoned in sick to work the next day. No-one answered so he left a message at ten past eleven. He’d moped about the house all day, then sent some more begging texts to Mandy. She wasn’t answering. This was serious. What had he done wrong?
The boys in the office would be getting ready for the pub. No-one did any work in IT on Fridays and all the phones were on answer machine. Phil had recorded a set of half a dozen messages and alternated them each week. In fact he had a special spreadsheet so he knew which ones he’d used most often so he always kept the excuses fresh.
This week’s rotation said there was a catastrophic failure of servers in the main IT building. Next week it would be a staff shortage and on odd occasions, usually in the summer months though, he threw in a wasp attack recording which had unfortunately cleared the office of all staff until the fire brigade had arrived and removed the offending nest. The advantages of working near the park I suppose.
Whatever the message relayed to the rest of the council who had the audacity and, let’s face it, sheer cheek to suggest the IT department actually do some work on a Friday, rest assured the messages all had a line about resting assured that the call was important and that every possible effort was being made… yawn.
A luxury of working for the council most definitely. You eased yourself in gently with no work on a Monday, in order to recover after the weekend, and you eased off Thursday after lunch. Adam also liked to wind down for holidays so this meant every October he started thinking about when best to stop work for Christmas and of course every school holiday he also went slower than his normal snail pace.
Not that he or Mandy had kids of course but just that some of the other staff did and so looked forward to their holidays if they were on term time contracts. Adam didn’t like to think anyone did less work than him and although he didn’t smoke he also had about six or seven monitor breaks in the day when the smokers wandered outside to slag off someone and get their fix of nicotine.
But stuck in the house alone, his head in the clouds, he was lost. His car magazines were scattered everywhere on the living room floor, Mandy had probably kicked the pile over on her way out last night. He felt sick to the core so turned to his usual solace. He plodded up the stairs, to the spare room, and logged on to his PC.
His heart was racing and his armpits were sweaty and smelly. Stress had kicked in big time. He e-mailed Mandy’s work address although he knew she would have rung in sick herself, unless she wanted to go and spill the beans to the other office girls. Adam hoped not.
He checked his Facebook account. No-one had asked to be his friend for weeks and he’d asked everyone he knew that worked in the council, even the ones he didn’t know or didn’t like. Then Adam thought about last night and his chat with that blonde girl. Maybe she would take him in? Slowly a small but recognizable feeling started to stir in his loins. He logged on to ‘SexChat’ again and quickly found his saviour. He doubled-clicked her name to chat privately.
‘Hi babe’
‘oh hi, where’d u go so fst lst nght?’
‘oh, sorry, PC crashed’
‘soz luv’
‘…and my missus caught me’
‘I don’t need her anyway’
‘silly cow’
‘wos gonna chuck her anyhow’
‘she can’t cope with me in bed see’
‘really hun?’
‘sounds wonderful’
‘yeh, im so big not many girls can handle it see’
‘mmmm’
‘sounds delicious hunee’
Then Adam got more serious. In his agitated state, he crossed the line.
‘u busy today?’
‘im in treforest l8tr’
‘what time babe?’
‘oh tonite bout 7’
‘mayb 8’
‘u wanna meet up?’
‘I could pop round if u lke’
Adam swallowed hard, even though he’d initiated the meet he was certain she’d say no, but she hadn’t. Maybe she was just a big tease like all the rest but what the hell? Maybe things happen for a reason? Maybe she was the girl of his dreams? He didn’t give much thought to her being the girl of his nightmares, but why would he?
This was happening too fast, his life was in turmoil, he’d hardly slept at all and needed time to gather his thoughts and here was this beautiful bird offering to pop round and do all the things he mistakenly imagined other women did to their husbands that Mandy would never do for him.
Such was his dependence on Internet pornography that he now thought of women only as sex objects. And not just beautiful women, but all women. In fact if a woman wasn’t dressed like a whore and built like one of the porn stars he saw on his computer monitor every night then they were worthless. Peripheral to his main goal of sexual gratification.
Pretty girls were all sex maniacs, and their only purpose was to fulfil his ever more perverse sexual fantasies. The female sex were all just playthings for his entertainment. Any respect he might have had as a youngster had completely been eroded by his web addiction. And like all drugs once hooked it was difficult to get off the gear.
And of course SxySue69 was the stuff of dreams. It sounded too good to be true and normally it would have been. Yes, people did indeed make contact, build up relationships online and even arrange to see each other, but mostly this occurred after a certain period of courtship, if one can call it that, photograph swapping, and plenty of chat, often moving back and forth into the real world via mobiles and web cams.
There are of course many important rules or tips for would-be meetings. And with so many horror stories in the press about people; primarily women, who have met someone, and been hurt or killed, it pays to be careful.
A simple precaution might be to talk to the person you want to meet on the phone, get their number, and sometime later, check it out with directory enquiries. When you do call, either use a pay phone, not your home telephone so as to avoid letting caller-id give your number away, or use the BT 141 option to hide your number.
Potential hook-ups should always arrange to meet somewhere that is public, and not at a secluded place like the dark, shadowy woods down by the river where nobody goes. Make sure you take your phone or better still take a friend.
Stick to your timetable, and try to stay in public areas, until you feel comfortable enough with this person to meet privately.
Adam wasn’t completely stupid, he knew all of this of course, but then he was the man, she was the daring, maybe naïve, young woman. What the hell, he wasn’t going to harm her, he just wanted what all men wanted and finally after months of using the same chat room his perseverance had obviously paid off. Ah well, out of a bad thing maybe…
But he wasn’t thinking straight at all. His guard was most definitely down. Normally he would have had his wits about him arranging to meet up with someone he didn’t really know anything about, but what did he have to lose?
‘u K, babe?’
‘I’m so big rght nw’
‘ooh no, don’t touch it’
‘save it up for me honee’
‘Id like to watch u’
‘where r u now?’
‘will u save it up 4 me’
‘OK, yeh’
‘promise hun’
‘ooh yeh babe’
‘wots yr addy luv?’
Adam knew Mandy would be at her mother's all weekend, she had even said so. He was tired through lack of sleep, not thinking properly, his mind was muddled and confused. He then made the biggest mistake of his life. He hit the keyboard and typed the following twenty four characters:
‘im at no 77 apprentice street’
‘OK hunny, I’ll pop round l8tr and give you a little show if u lke?’
‘Shall I wear my leather boots and cowboy hat?’
‘OMG, yeh babe, can’t wait’
‘bfn’
‘l8tr XXX’
Adam left the PC logged on and went to the bathroom. He showered and shaved, then splashed some aftershave on his face. It stung a little when the liquid came into contact with the scratches Mandy had inflicted on him. He cursed her and said out loud ‘Now, who’ll be sorry, bitch’.
He then made himself a ham sandwich and tried to calm his racing heart. He watched some TV and then went back to his PC to look at the new Vauxhall specs so as not to get too excited and waste the opportunity. Adam surfed and waited, grinning like a cat who was about to get the cream.
Sixteen
Rachel Green was forty-eight and physically striking. She was tall, slim, held herself poker straight and turned heads wherever she went. She saw the missed call and checked the number. Wow, what a coincidence, she quickly hit redial when she saw her oldest and best friend in the whole world, Jennifer Morris, had just rang.
No answer and no answer machine. Typical thought Rachel, still not entered the new millennium our Jenny. She sent a quick text and resolved to try again later.
When the women finally spoke it was like they’d been separated at birth but were now reunited again.
‘Hi love, sooo good to hear from you, what’s been occurring, is that what they say down there girl?’
‘Oh, loads to tell, would love you to come down one weekend?’ asked Jenny with real longing in her voice.
‘Hey, how about right now, just closed a bit of a deal this afternoon, could do with a break from ‘the firm’, will check train times and call you back, later hun, fab.’
Rachel hung up without waiting for a reply or even a goodbye from her friend. It was just as well really, if Jenny had arranged to meet the following week no doubt some more pressing and urgent business would have cropped up and Rachel would have cancelled last minute as she usually did. No reason, just that she lived life fast and made decisions instantly so unless you caught her at the precise moment there was a window in her diary it got quickly filled with work.
Rachel finished early that Friday afternoon for the first time in months. She got her very attractive, but exceedingly gay, male secretary to book a first class train ticket to Cardiff Central and sent a quick text back to Jenny when she knew the arrival time.
‘Everything OK?’ asked Judith seeing Jenny had brightened up.
‘Oh yeh, fab love. My best friend Rach is coming down, can’t wait. Been so long since we’ve seen each other, have to dash.’
Jenny switched her monitor button off as usual and grabbed her coat as a slightly vacant Judith tried hard to disguise her disappointment.
Two hours later Jenny was so excited that she practically skipped all the way down to the city’s main railway station, a beautiful old, Grade II listed building dating from 1850. It had been such a long time and she really needed to see her old school mate, to catch up with the past before the thoughts of her distressing and lonely present and maybe even more depressing future started to overwhelm her.
They met at seven thirty, hugged, kissed and walked home via a trendy new wine bar on Duke Street. They called into the ‘Macky’ on the way home to Jenny’s house, for old times' sake, and tried to talk above the competing noise of the students and The Stereophonics blasting out of the CD player. The track was ‘Last Of The Big Time Drinkers’ and for some strange reason Jenny suddenly thought of Hal Griffiths. Now there was a blast from the past alright.
They picked up a few bottles of wine from the local Spar, and back at Jenny’s house she rustled up a quick bite to eat for the two of them and then laid the whole story on her gorgeous friend. How things hadn’t really been great for a few years, then after Christmas how it all came to a head, then how dreadful Vanessa had behaved and finally the staff room affair.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry love. Hey Jenny, if you’d told me earlier I would have come down and slapped the bitch for you. I’d give him a good kick down in the valleys as well,’ said Rachel.
‘Oh no, you can’t go doing things like that Rach,’ said Jenny, knowing her friend meant it.
‘Anyway, they’re probably well suited, him and his football and she’s a right sporty type too, it was probably my fault.’
‘Hey, no way hun! No-one deserves that shit, don’t be so cool about it, anyway they’ll have their comeuppance I promise you. Wheel of Fortune and all that,’ said Rachel.
‘You a Buddhist now love?’ Jenny giggled.
‘Piss off!’
They gossiped about the old days in the East End, about how much fun they’d had, the nights out, the bands, the wine, the men. Relaxed now, Rachel unclipped her hair and shook her head. Jenny watched as the long, shiny black mane fell down her shoulders. She uncorked a second bottle of New Zealand white and with two large glasses of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc the two, slightly drunk, definitely merry, talkative women were in seventh heaven. After a number of men had been suitably torn to ribbons the conversation turned to one man in particular.
‘Do you remember Hal Griffiths, Rachel?’ Jenny asked.
‘God, yes! What a dish,’ came the reply.
‘Wonder what happened to him eh? Didn’t he bugger off abroad with some tart from your course?’
Yeh, my roommate, remember?’ said Jenny.
‘Opps, sorry darlin’, forgot.’
‘Didn’t you two go out once or twice?’
‘Yeh, once or twice is right,’ she sighed. ‘But he was so immature, he needed to grow up and I told him.’
‘Mmm? Oh yes, I remember. Wasn’t it something like you got lashed up and wrote all over his bed-sit walls how much you loved him?’ said Rachel.
Jenny blushed. ‘Well I had to tell him something, not that he seemed to care much, he just laughed and went off with her anyway.’
‘You think he has by now?’
‘Has what darlin’?’ Jenny was slipping back into her old accent.
‘Grown up,’ replied Rachel.
‘Mmm, wouldn’t mind finding out,’ Jenny grinned.
‘Well, look him up love,’ offered Rachel.
‘Can’t do any harm, if he’s taken fair enough but you never know? Probably still trying to save the bloody whales dear, wasn’t that his bag?’
‘Mmm, yeh he was really into all that, even more than me, how would I start though Rach?’
‘Easy, try Friends Reunited or Facebook init!’
‘How?’ said Jenny.
‘Jesus H Christ girl. Earth to Jenny, there’s this thing called the net in case they’ve missed it down here in the ‘Okie Pinokie’ swamp, bleedin’ heck, pull ya finger out! In the twenty first century we do things differently now, we’ve stopped using bongo drums and bleedin’ smoke signals, log on and Google ‘im.’
‘Oh, I’d be too embarrassed luv,’ squirmed Jenny.
‘He won’t know, will he! Anyway, that’s just for starters lovely.’
‘Rubbish is it dodgy! They even expect it these days, nothing wrong with a few pokes in the right direction I can tell ya.’
