AN EAST Lancashire mum who turned to the web for company has been inundated with offers of friendship.

Mikayla Macmillan turned to the Clitheroe Buy and Sell site on Facebook looking for something entirely different than the usual offers of ironing services and bric-a-brac bargains.

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The 28-year-old mother has spent an agonising 12 months – juggling the demands of her eldest child Olivia, seven, while overcoming the grief of losing her son Max at the age of just 17 months to a rare disease while she was pregnant with her youngest child Charlie, one.

She told the world, via internet, that she needed a pal – and Lancastrians proved that a friend in need is a friend indeed. She posted: “I moved to Clitheroe from Burnley in February last year and I didn’t know anybody.

“I was pregnant with Charlie when Max passed away and I had nobody. Nobody spoke to me at school, nobody spoke. It’s easy to make friends as kids but not as an adult, unless you go out drinking, which I don’t.

“I wanted to write something for months but I was embarrassed. But every day was the same, I would go for a coffee on my own with my son then look round the shops on my own with my son.

“I was close to tears so I just did it. I fully expected to be laughed at as desperate but I was desperate.”

She could not have believed the support and responses she received within hours of her desperate plea. First there were tips on family groups or taking a course, then others said they shared her predicament before she was pointed in the direction of bereavement support.

Within days the new band of sisters agreed to meet for coffee, while others said they were only a telephone call away.

But most important to Mikayla was that, far from becoming a laughing stock, her simple post has proved that society isn’t dead in the age of home computers.

Mikayla said: “I always joke to my other half that I’m a Billy no mates but deep down it hurts and I would love some proper girlfriends.

“It was amazing to see so many people felt the same way as me.

“Eight or nine people turned up and they would have been all sat at home feeling the same as the way I felt.”

Her husband Andrew, who is a mechanic, didn’t know what she had done then said his wife had become an “overnight sensation”.

Find the group here http://www.facebook.com/groups/1613866288860996/