Finding Mr Perfectly Fine

‘Have you found a good profile?’ Francesca pipes up from across the room and I hush her, my eyes darting over to Kevin’s closed door. She casually comes up behind me and looks over my shoulder, pretending to look at some work. Adam glances at me with narrowed eyes, but doesn’t get up, and I’m glad.

‘Ooh, he’s a bit of an all right, isn’t he?’ she whispers. I show her his message, unsure of whether or not I should share my picture.

‘Do it!’ she hisses. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

Sure, I reply back and then go through the options until I figure out how to ‘un-blur’ my image so he can see what I look like – in good lighting, with my spots and lines edited out.

MO:You’re gorgeous.

ME:Thanks

MO:Do you want to meet up?

ME:Um, can we talk a bit first? I don’t really know that much about you.

MO:Well you liked my profile .?.?.

ME:Mostly because you’re taller than me.

MO:Mostly?

ME:Well, you’re all-right looking as well, I suppose.

Oh my God! Have I flirted with a random stranger online? A blush creeps up my neck as I eagerly await his reply, completely forgetting that Francesca is standing right there.

MO:I’ll take that as a compliment.

‘Oooh, look at you!’ she teases, going back to her seat. ‘Our Zara has graduated to the first base of online dating,’ she tells Adam.

‘What the hell is first base?’ he demands, a look of disgust on his face.

‘Flirting via messages, duh,’ she responds, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. They start bickering and I ignore them and look back at my phone instead.

And that’s how I find myself drawn into a never-ending text conversation with a total stranger. Call me a late bloomer, but it’s the first time I’ve experienced anything like it. I was never the type to go on chatrooms as a teenager or speak to randoms over MSN Messenger, and boy, do I regret it or what? I was completely missing out.

We message each other throughout the rest of the work day. Not every second – I do some work and I think he does too – but every so often, my phone pings and my heart lifts just a little. We chat on the bus home, throughout dinner, and while I’m watching TV with Nani. She’s too engrossed in the Hindi drama she’s watching about an evil daughter-in-law trying to murder her mother-in-law, to realise that I’m paying more attention to my phone than the show.

Now, snuggled up under the covers in the middle of the night, I’m finding the whole experience oddly liberating and I wish I had done more of this during my youth. This guy doesn’t know me. He doesn’t have my number or my email address. The anonymity is refreshing and I find myself slipping into the romance and anticipation as I lose my inhibitions with each cheeky innuendo, anxiously awaiting the next message to come my way.

I find out that MrMoneyMaker is in fact called Mo, aka Mohammed. He’s thirty-one. An investment banker. Bengali. Lives in Cambridge with his mum, who’s a widow. But aside from all the important stuff, he also writes well, which surprises me given his badly written profile intro.

Adam texts me at some point that evening, asking me how it’s going with Mo, but I’m too engrossed to reply. At four in the morning I decide to call it a night.

ME:Mo. I need to sleep

MO:Can I join you?

ME:Er .?.?. – no!

MO: dream of me then, beautiful. Night x