It was a nice warm summer’s day and Pat was driving along the country road with not a care in the world.  He was fancy free but at the same time was feeling just that little bit lonely.  Why was it, he wondered, that the fates were against him all of the time?  Nothing ever seemed to go right in his love life, a quick flirtation here and there but nothing serious.  No one seemed to find him attractive after the first date or so, or was it the other way around?  He found that the women that he dated just too un-exciting and unsatisfying.  Perhaps he was too demanding.  He liked and enjoyed sex but his partners all seemed to him to be just doing it like robots – just because they wanted to be thought with it and not because they really wanted to.  He’d been married once and had two children but that had gone sour and there had been a messy divorce and the children, although grown up, were still living with his ex-wife and her partner.

Driving along he saw the figure of a girl standing by the side of the road and, as he approached, she moved forward and started to thumb a lift.  On going closer he saw that she was not exactly black but a very sunburnt brown and a real beauty at that.  He did not hesitate but drew up alongside of her, wound down the passenger window and said, “Hi! Where are you going?  I guess that you’re after a lift, aren’t you?”  

“Thanks!” replied the girl.  “Yes please!  Are you going as far as Bristol? I think that I have lost my way.  I’m very much a stranger to these parts.  I only arrived just recently from Africa where I was born and brought up.  My father was a Colonial Officer in the old days and stayed on after Independence!”

“Hop in!” said Pat.  “Somehow I did not think that you were a West Indian- you are too light for that, although I must say you are very nicely sunburnt.  We have a lot of them over here just now and to get someone from Africa is a pleasant change, especially someone as pretty as you and you looked so forlorn that I just had to stop and ask if you wanted a lift.”

“Thank you!” smiled the girl.  “It’s not often I get compliments like that, you have really boosted my ego!  I like you already, saying things like that.”

“Anything to oblige,” said Pat, always the perfect gentleman, and went on to say, “Haven’t you got anyone with you?  No boyfriend to show you the way?  Even in this country it is not very safe for a beautiful young girl like you to be walking on a lonely road like this all alone.  You never know what might happen- especially if you try to hitch a lift.”

“I’m all alone.  I came over here because of a dream that I had.” The girl told him.  “It came to me that the person who I really need is over here in the U.K.  I know that he will be kind and considerate, someone who needs me and can love me in every way – and I mean that physically too.  I’m sorry!  Am I embarrassing you?”