What will you do now??
The advent of the mobile phone has made safe calling a lot easier to organise. No longer do you have to take a friend along to meets to shadow you, or make calls from pay phones at pre-arranged times. But ease of use also brings along a few stumbling stones as well. Poor signal reception, dead or flat batteries, phones out of ear shot in handbags - all these things can stop a safe call from being received. Be sure to discuss with your friend beforehand what action is required if the safe call and back-up plans fail to make contact
So what do you do if you make your call and the person you are acting for doesn't answer?
Time is the most important thing here. You don't have the time to sit and wait for half an hour and try again. The person you are acting for may be in trouble or may have not have heard the phone, you have no way of knowing which so you must err on the side of safety.
There are two options immediately open to you.
Firstly, you can telephone the meet venue and ask the owner/landlord if he could get a message to the person, give his or her name and a brief description.
Secondly, you should have the mobile number of the perosn they were meeting. Phone and ask to speak to your friend. Here the okay/not okay message can be passed across to your friend.
If you are told by a landlord that your friend has just left ask for details. How long ago? Was s/he alone? Did s/he seem ok?
If you fail to make contact after those two options then things need to get more serious. You should have already discussed with your friend what action is required if all attempts to contact him or her fail.
If you have to go to the police you will need to be prepared to answer a lot of questions about the meet and about your personal involvement as well - be prepared for this eventuality.