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straighten her neck and raise her head, but it was almost as if her head was too heavy for her neck and shoulders. I’d never seen her look so unhappy. I looked past her … but Dad wasn’t there. Gib was. And he was looking everywhere except at me.
    ‘Victoria, are you all right?’ Mum asked.
    ‘I’m fine,’ I lied, running my hand over my face. Mum frowned but said nothing.
    ‘Mum, where’s Dad?’ I asked.
    ‘Gib, don’t lurk behind me. Come inside so I can tell you both together,’ Mum said.
    Reluctantly, Gib came into my room. Mum sat next to me on the bed. Gib sat next to her.
    ‘Your dad is …’
    I watched Mum trying to get the words out.
    ‘Your dad is being held at the police station tonight. He’ll appear before a magistrate tomorrow morning. Hopefully, he’ll be released on bail so he’ll be home tomorrow evening.’
    ‘But what happens if he’s not released on bail?’ I couldn’t help asking.
    ‘Let’s cross that bridge if and when we get to it,’ Mum said firmly. ‘Now then, you two – bed!’
    Her lips smiled as she spoke, but her eyes didn’t. For once Gib and I didn’t argue. I cleaned my teeth and waited until I could hear no one on the landing before dashing back to my room. I didn’t want to see Mum and I certainly didn’t want to see Gib.
    Before today I would never have believed it possible to feel so miserable. And my head was killing me.
    Where was Dad? Locked up in a police cell somewhere – all by himself. I switched off my light and got into bed, sitting up. Was Dad asleep now? Or was he doing the same as me, staring into the darkness? I lay down on my side. Fresh tears ran across the bridge of my nose and down to the pillow. I didn’t think I’d sleep for a second, but once I closed my eyes, I was out.
    When I awoke, my room was pitch black. I felt snug and warm and sad. Then I remembered why. I lay still and listened but the house was totally silent. The kind of deep silence you only get when it’s really late. I turned over to lie on my back and pulled the duvet up around my neck. I still had my headache and my nose was bunged up from all that crying. I stared into the inky darkness of my room and wondered again how Dad was. I was sure that, if they’d only let him, he could find out who had put that money into his bank account and why. Dad was good at that sort of thing. That’s why he was the Computer Auditing Manager at the bank. He always said that programming was like solving a good detective story. You had to put the pieces together so that they fitted like a jigsaw, and if you had bugs or mistakes in your program then you had to hunt them down – just like a detective. That’s why I liked programming and computing so much. Because I liked puzzles. That’s where Dad and I were so alike.
    If only I could write a program to get me out of the trouble I was in at school! Or better still, write a program to find out who’d taken all that money from Dad’s bank. Next to this business at Dad’s bank, my school problems seemed trivial. How about an all-purpose program to solve both of our problems? The idea made me smile, but my smile didn’t last long.
    Yeah! I thought sadly. Give Dad a couple of days and he could solve this puzzle – no problem.
    Only Dad wasn’t here.
    But I was
…
    I sat up in bed at that thought. And the more I thought about it, the more I kicked myself for not having thought of it sooner.
I
could find out who put that money in Dad’s account. Why not? Dad’s PC was downstairs and I knew how to set it up so that I could dial into Universal Bank’s computer. I even knew the passwords for Dad’s two accounts – although Dad didn’t know I knew – so logging on would be no problem.
    ‘Yeah, why not?’ I said to myself.
    For the first time in what seemed like ages I actually felt better. Dad was always telling me that there was no way to do anything on the computer at Universal Bank without leaving some trace of it somewhere