As Geoff sat in the tearoom at Harrods waiting for Hilary to arrive he couldn’t stop thinking what his mother would have thought. She’d always taunted him that he would still be a virgin at 40. Yet here he was at 39 with a chance of converting the cyber passion he had already indulged in, twice, into real passion.
“You spend all your time playing those silly games, you’ll never meet anyone” she constantly nagged.
“It’s called the Knight’s Quest and it trains you to make tough decisions and moral choices,” had been his stock reply. His character, Sir Geoffrey de Belvedere, had been on the highest level quests and faced dragons and ogres. He had rescued Lady Hilary of Kensington from her dungeon and she had invited Sir Geoffrey to her castle for a night of unbridled cyber lust – twice.
But where was she? Geoff checked his red bow tie again, their agreed costume. He was in good shape for a man of his age and she wouldn’t be too disappointed to meet him in the flesh. To pass the time he glanced at his copy of Games Master Monthly, another disturbing article about online grooming. That was the trouble with the internet; you never knew whether the person you were chatting to was young or old, male or female. Then a terrible thought struck him. What if Hilary was a man? At that precise moment in ambled a middle-aged man with a comb-over wearing a leather jacket. He looked over at Geoff and smiled. Geoff feigned a coughing fit and dashed for the exit, nearly knocking over the pretty woman behind.
“I’m so sorry” Geoff said.
She looked at the red bow tie, smiled and replied “Not to worry, my castle’s just round the corner, Sir Geoffrey.”