Loose Connections Read Online Free Page B

Rosemary said. ‘I hope you enjoyed yourself. Might be the last holiday you get for a while.’ 

    Aaron sneaked a glance at the wall clock above the desk. If it was right it was almost eleven o’clock, the short hand pointing at the elegant XI Roman numeral. He’d been here for just over an hour and he’d made sixty quid but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep up the act. He couldn’t take any more talk about pornography or body parts. But if he could keep a dialogue going, he could stretch it to a hundred and twenty minutes. 
    â€˜You know you’ll have to let me go at some point,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with your connection and I can’t figure out the problem while I’m handcuffed to this chair.’ He yanked at the chain between the cuffs, testing the strength of the metal. He wouldn’t be able to break out, but he expected her to hand the key over when she’d got whatever was troubling her off her chest. 
    He was sure he wasn’t in any immediate danger. He could feel the weight of his mobile phone in his shirt pocket. He’d be able to reach it in a second flat. ‘What’s going to happen when your husband gets home from work?’ he said. For some reason he’d never imagined that she was married. Divorced, perhaps, but his colleagues had never mentioned there being a man in the house. Usually, when there was a man in the house, trivial faults like loose wires were checked before a request for a call-out was made. ‘Or when your children get back from school?’ he added, trying to keep the momentum up. The woman’s eyes were glazed. She didn’t seem to be listening. ‘I’m sure there would be jail time for kidnapping.’ 
    â€˜What do I care?’ she said, frowning down into her lap. ‘That would be a holiday, wouldn’t it? Someone could feed me for a change. The taxpayer could take care of the rent. I could do classes, woodwork, creative writing.’ Her voice was composed, her tone level. She didn’t seem to think that she was doing anything wrong. For the first time in a whole hour, Aaron felt a trace of fear deep down in his belly. He glanced around again for a window, knowing there wasn’t one. He missed daylight, and the heating was on full. He was sweating. ‘Listen,’ he said. 
    The woman looked up from her manicured fingernails. 
    â€˜What’s the real problem here?’ It seemed obvious that there was more to all of this than a broken Internet connection.

The Truth

    â€˜What do you mean?’ Rosemary said. 
    She was suddenly alert, sitting up on the desk, her arms clutched around her knees. She wondered if he knew something. Perhaps her Internet Service Provider had kept all of her movements on record. They could intercept e-mails. That’s how criminals got caught. She believed ‘cookies’ was the correct term for the tracking devices stored on a computer’s hard disk. It was a fitting name. 
    She should have been aware of this. She could often detect that Chantelle had been into her office, looking at plastic surgery clinics online. She could type ‘land’ into a search engine and the address of the Landauer Cosmetic Surgery Group would pop up. Once she’d seen a computer programme advertised on an American infomercial on cable TV. The presenter claimed it could make a copy of text typed on any given keyboard. They were aiming it at bored and mistrustful housewives who suspected their hubbies of looking at porn. 
    No! She was being paranoid. She was always being paranoid. Internet Service Providers couldn’t give away any personal information unless it was part of an ongoing criminal investigation. She giggled, her throat dry and tight, her conscience pressing down on her like a vice. She wished she could cut it out of herself like a tumour. She wasn’t doing anything wrong.