Face From the Past

The unexpected took a hand today at work. I had a text message from Jackie, who is the ex-girlfriend of my friend Joe. I used to be pretty good friends with Jackie until the unpleasantness of a few months ago. For those who missed it this is the situation in a nutshell:

I used to be very good friends with a woman named Michele. I actually had a really big crush on her. She had a boyfriend, and wasn't really intersted in me. Although we were good friends. However I had another friend, Alan, who also had a thing for Michele and became pretty good friends with her at a time when she wasn't talking to me, due to the fact that she had 'added' a defunct profile of mine on the Bebo site, which I had created months before I had ever met her, and had just forgot to delete. Anyway, I wasn't going out for a few months after I was mugged, and Alan kept telling me not to call Michele for months afterwards. Anyway, it turned out that someone had sent Michele's boyfriend's brother an e-mail saying that Michele and Alan were having some kind of affair, but it was sent by someone using a fake e-mail account in my name. In the end, although I had absolutely nothing to do with it, I haven't spoken to Michele since then, and Alan and I glare at each other every time we meet at work. I was left with a lifetime worth of bitterness and hatred of the human race. The way I see it, I have my friends on the interent and otherwise people just destroy you.

I had a couple of drinks with Jackie and a kind of catch-up. I hadn't seen her since January.