Page 41 of Read Between The Lines

He quickly unlocked the bike, also freeing my shiny gold bike helmet which he passed across to me with great ceremony.

‘How about you carry the helmet, and I’ll push the bike?’ he suggested. ‘A classic model by the way, excellent front basket capacity.’

‘All the better for transporting as many books as possible.’

‘Naturally.’

‘We librarians have got to take our perks where we can find them, and one of those is being able to borrow more than the usual limit of ten books at once.’

‘And could a librarian’s friend also get access to those kinds of perks?’

‘They’d have to be a very special friend for that,’ I said without thinking, then immediately felt my cheeks glow as I realised how unintentionally suggestive my response could have sounded.

‘Something to look forward to,’ said Leo, although perhaps I had misheard him. After all, there was a lot of ambient noise from the crowds who were also wandering along Cornmarket Street.

We turned the corner onto the High, steadily making our way back towards my flat on Iffley Road. Tonight we seemed to be walking comfortably in step with each other, Leo obviously still heeding my lecture from the other day and resisting his giraffe striding tendencies.

‘So, what did we learn from tonight’s event? Apart from that you have knight-in-shining-armour syndrome, of course,’ I said lightly.

‘It’s been a long time since anyone referred to me as a knight in shining armour. I appreciate it’s not necessarily a compliment, coming from you, but I think I’m going to take it as one,’ he responded.

‘Sorry. I’m not ungrateful, really, I’m not. But I did believe I was getting somewhere with that Marc bloke.’

‘He certainly thought he was getting somewhere. Didn’t it make you feel uncomfortable the way he was staring at your chest throughout the whole conversation?’

I grimaced. ‘Sure, I felt like pointing at my face and yelling “I’m up here, you know”, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Sadly, it isn’t an unusual experience. I once tried to retaliate by directing all my answers to a creepy guy’s crotch, but it definitely didn’t have the effect I was after. Eurgh.’ I shuddered at the memory.

‘Yikes, sounds awful. Okay, so putting aside Marc’s sleazy behaviour and lack of basic decency, you still thought he might have some useful information?’

‘He was telling me that he’s been a member of the app since it was founded. That’s not as long as you might think, though, as it’s only a year old. I was really surprised. All of their marketing material and the information on their website give the impression that it’s really well established, like it’s been around forever. It was one of the factors that made me feel more confident about joining.’

‘Interesting. So, they’re good at marketing themselves, but it’s a case of style over substance.’

‘Definitely. The barman told me that Dom runs all the events, and he certainly seemed to be doing all the jobs tonight, even though he was pretty laid back about some of them.’ I explained how he hadn’t even bothered to check I was on the guest list when I arrived. ‘Anyway, did you learn anything from your dates? Anything of use, that is?’

‘I assure you I remained entirely professional throughout, despite some of their best intentions to distract me.’

‘I bet,’ I muttered under my breath.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ said Leo.

‘Nothing. Did any of them pour their hearts out to you about being scammed?’

‘As you know yourself, five minutes pass in a flash.’

Thinking of my boring Bryan-with-a-Y date, I wasn’t sure I completely agreed with him about that.

‘I’d imagine a trained investigator like yourself is adept at getting the information you need in less than five seconds,’ I said, deliberately over-egging the flattery.

‘Hmm. I’m good, but I’m not that good. Let me think, what did I learn? Some of the women were gifted their membership for free in return for agreeing for their profiles to be used in promotional material.’

‘Lucky them. Although I’m not sure I’d like the idea of becoming the face of SO Ox.’

‘They did say that they’d had to deal with more than the usual number of creepy messages, and one of them let slip that the app refused to do anything about them and threatened her with losing her membership for making false complaints.’

‘Which is exactly what happened to me.’

Leo nodded. ‘There are definitely issues with the SO Ox system. As to whether any of the women I met had also encountered our fraudster, I’m afraid, despite my best efforts, I drew a blank.’

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