No happy ending after transatlantic search for love

AN American woman who thought she had found love on the internet told yesterday how she had flown to Britain to search for her man after he suddenly stopped emailing her.

Deborah Distin, aged 34, struck up a relationship with Paul Johnston, from Cheltenham, after meeting him on a “Big is Beautiful” internet dating site seven months ago.

“At the end of January he wrote me a brief message. But then I didn’t hear from him. I got worried. He’s never been out of touch for more than a week and I thought he was down in dumps about not getting a job he was after. So I thought I would come over and surprise him.”

After arriving in Cheltenham she emailed her online lover — who she had never met in person — the “good news”, but he mysteriously failed to respond.

The mother-of-one, in a last desperate bid to find her runaway Romeo, went public and made an appeal for him to get in touch through the Gloucestershire Echo.

The publicity appeared to have worked, when a man claiming to be Mr Johnston emailed the paper.

The publicity shy bank worker said he was “shocked and bewildered” Ms Distin had flown from the US to visit him and insisted they had not been in contact for a year.

“I don’t know why he’s saying these things,” she said after hearing of his apparent snub.

“I’m just wondering now if he has a wife, who I might have upset. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”