A story from a long time ago...

I first met R2 when she was working in a pub we did a lot of drinking in around fifteen years ago. She was trying to serve about six people all at once and left a pint on the tap, overflowing. Unusually for me, I started teasing her and we exchanged banter. For the rest of the evening, it was R2 that served me when I went for more drinks.

As we spent a lot of time in that bar, R2 recognised us (myself, BW and one other male friend) each time we arrived and soon, we were chatting quite a bit. When R2 was on her break, she'd come down and chat for a bit.

When we started bringing females with us to the pub, they quickly latched on to the "fact" that there was something special between R2 and myself, but it's not something I paid attention to. She was pretty and easy to talk to, but there wasn't a huge spark there. As a friend, she was great and we did talk about quite a few things. She wasn't girlfriend material though.

Still, my female friends (including AM and QC1) weren't to be swayed so easily and they insisted for a fair few months that there was something there, if not from me, then from R2. That didn't bother me as such though we tried to arrange nights out together, only for one or both of us to cancel at the last minute. I don't know if R2 looked upon these as 'dates' or not (though I was unconvinced that she did), but for me, it was heading to a pub with a friend.

One thing I'd pretty much known about R2 was that she had always planned to go off and live in America. About six months into our friendship, she received her green card and it was all go. We tried to arrange one final Saturday night out, but again, that was scuppered by family members visiting her unannounced. I had gone out with QC2 doing some charity-related stuff through work and was telling her all about it. She, like my other female friends, was trying to get me romantically involved with R2. During a chat at my house that afternoon, R2 called, she apologised, and that was that.

Shortly before she left, we met for lunch, ended up chatting for hours and we parted. I gave her a hug and she gave me a kiss. It was more than a platonic kiss, but not exactly a snog. It was only then that my assumption that R2 looked upon me as a platonic friend changed. Maybe she had wanted something more? Or was this a more meaningful kiss because she was leaving? After all, I've done the same with E within the past few years.

When R2 left for America, we swapped letters (this was before the internet really took hold and became popular) for a few years before, not unexpectedly, they became less frequent and stopped. The last I had heard was that she'd received an offer for a new, permanent job, near the World Trade Center using her marketing/finance degree she'd worked hard for. R2 had accepted the offer and was looking forward to the new job.

We exchanged the odd Christmas card afterwards but swapped a little small talk and that was it.

On 11^th Sept 2001, while I sat in my living room with my cousin and watched the live BBC news programme, my first thoughts weren't of the passengers in the planes or the thousands of Americans that worked in and around the WTC. They were of R2, a girl I hadn't heard from in just over three years and hadn't had any meaningful contact within five. Did she still work there? Was she in any danger?

Until Monday, I had no idea what had become of R2 when I found her, by accident, on Facebook. Now I can't decide if I should make contact again. I've had enough trouble writing an email to V, and she's a recent acquaintance from a few years ago. How do I contact a person with whom I shared a brief friendship over twelve years ago?