The Crocodile Nest Read Online Free PDF Page B

out of that, she wanted to use her son’s name.
    ‘What does it matter?’ she asked, beginning to get annoyed. ‘Nobody’s going to use this computer except you and me.’
    ‘It’s not just this computer. You can access the bank account from anywhere. Which means so can anybody else, if they have your access number and password.’
    ‘Oh!’
    ‘You need something that no one can guess. Something that doesn’t make any sense except to you.’
    It took a while for her to come up with a password that she felt she could remember. They entered it and, after another phone call to the bank, Beth had access to her account.
    That’s when Luke got a shock. He’d figured that Beth was rich, but just how rich staggered him. There were two accounts with more than a million dollars in each. Even her current account contained over half a million.
    ‘The amount just seems to get bigger and bigger,’ said Beth with a smile. ‘I don’t know how I’m ever going to spend it.’
    Luke felt as if he was spying, yet he couldn’t avoid seeing the figures as Beth insisted that they explore all the features of the bank’s website. He’d never done Internet banking before, but itwasn’t too hard to work out. Unfortunately, it took the rest of the time, and he didn’t get to google ‘Hamish Sloss’ before Alice arrived to take him home.
    Beth was in quite a state when he arrived Tuesday afternoon. She’d woken at three in the morning to find there was light in the lounge. Worse still, it seemed to be moving around. She’d lain in bed, too scared to get up and investigate—too scared to move. Eventually the light had gone out, but by then she’d worked herself into such a state that she couldn’t sleep. When dawn came, she finally got up and checked, only to find nothing was wrong. Yet now, many hours later, she was still worrying about it.
    ‘What could it have been?’ she asked, nervously twisting a ring on her finger. ‘Do you think it could’ve been the computer?’
    ‘Did you turn it off last night?’
    ‘I didn’t have to. It had already turned itself off. And I’ve been too scared to touch it today.’
    Luke moved to the computer and pressed the space-bar. A moment later the screen came alive, showing a pop-up window that said the computer had updated itself.
    He turned to Beth. ‘The computer wasn’t off: the screen had just gone blank to save power. It came on during the night to do an update.’
    Beth shook her head slowly. ‘Why do they have to do things like that?’ she complained. ‘Can’t they make it simpler?’
    Luke saw her distress. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘what would be simpler for you?’
    ‘Can’t I just press a button and it comes on, and then press it again and it goes off?’
    So Luke spent the next hour simplifying the system.
    ‘Thanks, Luke,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘I’m sorry if I acted like a stupid old lady. I think I’ll be able to manage now.’
    ‘What do you want to learn next?’ he asked.
    She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Well, I did want to learn how to search for things, but I think I’ve had enough for today.’
    ‘Do you mind if I use it for myself?’
    ‘No, of course not! Maybe I’ll watch you, if you don’t mind. You never know, I might learn something.’
    Luke didn’t mind, and soon he was googling for ‘Hamish Sloss’. Of course Beth couldn’t help but ask who Hamish Sloss was, and ended up with a full explanation.
    ‘So you’re looking for your father?’ she asked when he’d finished. ‘Isn’t that exciting?’ Then she added, ‘And a bit scary, too, I suppose.’
    Luke nodded without taking his eyes off the screen. It was scary. It could be a new start to his life, or it could be a disaster. In the back of his mind was the thought that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to find a man who had deserted his partner when she was pregnant. Maybe he wasn’t such a great person to know.
    In the end, he never found out either