Free Cyber Cinderella by Christina Hopkinson Page A

hoped communicated understanding. I was trapped in a BBC Schools Science program and I understood it no better than the ones I saw in fifth year.
    “So if you get the IP address of a site,” he continued, “you can find out who’s hosting the site and that might bring you closer to identifying its owner.”
    “And the D one, DNA or something?”
    “DNS, Domain Name System. You’ve got your IP addresses, but they’re totally unmemorable as they’re made up of a series of numbers.”
    “Like phone numbers?” I asked in an attempt to involve myself in this conversation.
    “But with periods in. Domain names are made up of words, lastminute.com or whatever, so they’re easier to use. So again, if we find the DNS entry we can get the IP address and then the ISP. Then we might find out who’s registered the URL.” Ivan looked at his watch. It probably had lots of computer data stored in it or something, or a 3D game that he could play across wristwatch networks. “Look, I’m sorry, Izobel, but I’ve got to go.”
    “Right, fine, of course.” I must have looked disappointed.
    “I’m coming into your offices next week—why don’t you show me the site you’re interested in and I’ll see how I can help?”
    I thought for a second. Was IT Ivan really the person I wanted to entrust with the quest for the site perp? “That would be great, thanks so much, Ivan.” I gave him one of those flirty smiles again and contrived to move from hair twiddling to a coy wave bye-bye. “I’ll show you all then.”
    What a busy day and none of it work-related. The best sort of day, the one that would go quickest. Now it was the weekend. And next week, my new friend IT Ivan would sort it all out for me. I felt optimistic for the first time in months.
    George and I never went out on Friday nights; we were too out of drink-sync by then after his mammoth lunchtime session. I was counting on that to delete any memories of Hettie having told him about my forage through his in-box.
    I smiled to myself. I’d done that well. I had eliminated him from our inquiries, whatever Maggie said, and I’d done it with almost professional levels of subterfuge. Now I’d recruited a technical consultant for the investigation. I was good, I was damned good. I swung my handbag in the manner of a sixties starlet trotting down the King’s Road and being whistled at by men in MGs. I was hot. If site stalkie person were looking at me now, which wasn’t improbable, he’d see that he’d failed to crush me. I was strong.

Chapter Six
    T he phone by my bed woke George and me the following morning. Through the hiss of a bad connection I could make out a familiar voice.
    “It’s me, Jonny.”
    “Jesus, Jonny, where are you calling from? It sounds like you’re in Beirut.” The line had the romantic snap and crackle of an old telegraph wire. I could imagine the Foreign Correspondent wearing khaki shorts and a linen shirt holding one of those phones that come in two pieces, in a dusty bar with an overhead fan. Conchita the local whore would walk past and offer her services.
    “Coming into Paddington…” He disappeared again. “We keep going through tunnels.”
    The romance was quashed. He was annoying. Why did he always do this? Ring when actually in London rather than giving a couple of days’ notice? And then expect us all to drop what we were doing and rush to him. He seemed to think that we were those dancing plastic flowers, standing still until he animated us into undulating to his tune.
    “You’re in London. For how long?”
    “I’m only in the UK for a couple of days—what are you doing tonight?”
    I knew the score. I’d reorder my life to meet up with him only to find that he’d also arranged to meet seven other people and I’d spend the evening talking to a poor sap who’d been at school with Foreign Correspondent about how exciting Foreign Correspondent’s life was and how much we all admired him. Meanwhile Foreign