Free Forward Slash by Mark Edwards, Louise Voss Page B

Life Experience
’ and immediately discovered that his last name was Malone. Becky must have done the same, since she hadn’t asked him for his surname in any of their messages.
    The last man on the list, DannyBoy, had a short profile in which he said he was a property investor, never married, no kids. He was the most attractive of the trio – or, at least, the one Amy thought was the best looking: he still had a thick head of hair, and oozed Alpha maleness. His About Me section claimed: ‘Me … Just an ordinary guy, looking for a lovely lady, who might be prepared to put up with me and my sometimes difficult ways … I’m not very difficult, just a bit demanding, impractical, romantic and spontaneous! I don’t have a long list of likes and dislikes or wants and needs … I’m prepared to see how things go with the right someone. I want to love and be loved – not too much to ask, is it? :-)
    Amy read through their Inbox exchanges. His name was Daniel Bentick, and he liked scuba diving, reading, his beloved vintage Jaguar, and experimental theatre. She noted that Becky had claimed to love theatre too, which made her smile. Becky
hated
theatre, unless it was the most commercial of West End musicals. After a few increasingly flirty emails back and forth, Becky had given him her mobile number – but he hadn’t given out his. Amy cursed. The messages stopped after that, their communications having obviously transferred to the phone. He could definitely be the hot date, she thought.
    She went back to Google and carried on reading the search results for Ross Malone. There were literally millions of results, though she knew she would only need the first couple of pages. It would have been more problematic if he was called John Smith, but she knew what he looked like and she knew his profession. There were several men with that name on Facebook, but she quickly spotted him from his profile picture. Unfortunately, he had all his security settings switched on, so she couldn’t find out any more useful details. But he had a page on LinkedIn, the site for professional networking, as she thought he would, and this gave her all the details she needed.
    He did indeed run his own business, providing motivational speakers for events, and on LinkedIn, she found the address of his website, which provided his office address. He also kept a blog, which he updated regularly. Most of it was stuff like
17 Ways to Take Control of Your Life
, but there was some useful personal information in there too. He blogged about his dog, Wiggins, a cocker spaniel: ‘This afternoon when I was taking Wiggins for his daily walk in the park opposite my office …’
    Easy. Thank you, Google. She looked up his office address on a map and immediately found the name of the park – it was called Marble Hill Park, in a place in southwest London called St Margarets.
    ‘Right, Boris. If Becky hasn’t shown up by the end of today, you and I are going for a walk in a different park tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘Let’s see if you can make friends with a dog called Wiggins, eh?’ Boris’s ears pricked up at the word ‘walk’, but when he realized none was forthcoming, he slumped his nose back down onto crossed front paws and sighed.
    Amy moved on to Shaun Blackman. He was harder to track down, but she found him on Twitter and identified him from his avatar. He tweeted several times a day, mostly about his bike adventures. But as she read through his tweets, her heart sank.
    He had been in Canada for the last three weeks, on a trip with his ‘buddies’, fishing and riding motorbikes. He’d got a nice bike for the trip, a Harley, much nicer than the Tupperware BMW he drove at home, and she paused for a few moments to admire it. He’d uploaded dozens of photos of his trip: ‘Me with a large fish, me in front of Niagara.’ ‘Me drinking beer in Vancouver.’ ‘Me and some sexy Canadian girls.’
    She found him on LinkedIn, too, revealing the company he