Chapter 39

Rory

By the third week in May Rebecca had put me under pressure. At her second attempt she had passed her driving test. She had obtained her provisional licence shortly after her seventeenth birthday and gone to the same driving school where I was learning. Despite the intensive nature of the course and taking two to three lessons per week, she failed the first time. I think it was largely due to a case of nerves. This meant that since she was older than me by those few months she had passed her driving test first.

Early in June I suggested to Rebecca that she should take a break from her exam studies and we should visit mum and Phil again. She agreed that this was a good idea and in the first week end of the month we set of for Lancaster. When we arrived mum and Phil came out to greet us and there were hugs and kisses. As we settled ourselves into our bedroom Rebecca remarked that mum was looking really good.

"I think she has put on a little weight she said and it suits her." she said.

I have to confess that I did not notice much difference from usual. I was soon to discover that Rebecca was right and there were other reasons for the fact that my mum seemed to be blooming.

As we settled around the dinner table mum looked up from the soup which was our first course.

"I have something to tell you both," she said rather nervously.

Rebecca and I looked up at her expectantly, no pun intended, wondering what kind of news we were about to receive.

"I am four months pregnant," she told us blushing a little.

"Four months," Rebecca exclaimed, "why have you not let anyone in on that news sooner?"

"We wanted to be sure that the baby was developing as it should and the first three months is the most likely time to miscarry," Phil told us. "Then we wanted to know the sex before spreading the good news. The last scan was just a few days ago and they are about ninety percent sure it is a little girl as they could not see any dangly bits,"

"Wow! Congratulations," I said, "So after all this time I am going to have a little sister."

"It certainly looks that way," my mum replied. "I hope you don't mind being foisted with one at this late date?"

"Mum Rebecca and I are delighted for you and Phil," I told her. "Hearing it like this it seems a bit unreal right now, but if she lives up to the beautiful young women our families have produced I am sure when she arrives on the scene it will be another woman who will lay claim to my heart."

Everyone laughed at this remark, but ever since I had heard that mum had stopped taking the pill and was trying for a baby I had been giving it some thought. I felt that because I was so much older, now that we knew it was a she, I could be there for her and be someone she could turn to with her questions and problems. I had made a promise to myself that I would try to play an active part in her life so that she would know me well enough for me to be that kind of person for her.

"Are you going to let everyone know that there is a baby on the way now that you are past the stage where you were most likely to miscarry?" Rebecca asked.

"We certainly are," my mum said with a smile. "We were going to phone you and let you know first. When you said you were coming down here, however, we decided to wait and tell you face to face. We will phone Ruth and David after dinner,"

Rebecca.

Rory seemed delighted with the news that his mother was pregnant. When I first told him that she and Phil were trying for a baby he seemed a bit apprehensive about having a sister who was going to be so much younger than he was. Now he seems to have come round to the idea of it and is looking forward to being a big brother.

I think hearing other women, especially one you are close to speaking about the fact that they are going to have a baby has affects on the hearer. I felt a bit jealous because Rory's mum could just go ahead and have a baby because she wants one so I think it must make the other woman a bit broody. In my case because I have been in a relationship with Rory for quite a long time, I found myself wishing we were in the same position.

I shook myself out of these thoughts for I knew I was not really ready for motherhood. I decided that this was something we would come to in the future and I would enjoy being a mum when the time was right. Meantime I would just go on delighting in sharing my body with my man. That was just as well. When we were alone in the bedroom later that evening I decided to find out how Rory was feeling about the news.

"You seem to have come round to the idea of having a sister even though you so much older," I said to him. "You did not seem so keen when you first heard your mum was trying for a baby. What made you change your mind?"

"I was never really worried about it," he said, "and having thought about it I feel it will be nice to play a part in my sister's life. We can be there for her when she feels she needs to talk to someone or needs some kind of help. If we seek to play a part in her life and she gets to know us as a brother and sister in law, then we can try and make sure she does not see us as authority figures but as someone she can turn to when she needs to. I think I would really like that."

"Now that you point out that aspect of our possible relationship with her, I think I would like that too. She would have the best of worlds, a big sister and a big brother to whom she could come for advice," I told him

"I hope that happens if we see her often enough," Rory said with a smile, "it might also give us some practice for the time when we start a family of our own."

"If you are so keen for that kind of practice," I told him with a giggle "I will let you be the one who volunteers to change her nappies. I am quite keen that husbands should take their fair share of that part of child rearing."

"I will be quite capable of dealing with that aspect of her upbringing," He said loftily, "Especially as it will not be too onerous a task since mum will be doing most of it even when we are there with her. The difficulty may well be seeing enough of her in her early years to bond with her so that she comes to see us as friends. We will spend the greater part of these years in Saint Andrews if all goes well with our first choice application."

"That may well be true," I replied, "but don't forget we have fairly long breaks at Christmas and Easter, and we can spend half the time with your mum. Even if we are working part of the summer break we will be near enough to visit your mum often at the weekends. So we should not have too much difficulty bonding with your sister,"

"Yes, you are right," Rory told me, "but talking about bonding, I think we should maybe practice some close bonding with one another right now," he said with a grin."

"If you have in mind what I think you have," I said with a smile, "I am open to that kind of bonding."

With that Rory pulled me to him and kissed me passionately and I melted into his arms. I never tire of his advances and it always seems to me that giving me pleasure is his first priority because somehow that makes his pleasure more enjoying and fulfilling. Because of this, I feel that I have been truly blest in my choice of partner. This is just another way in which getting to know him has been an eye opener and something I never suspected when I first approached him to be my tutor.

Rory

When we returned from our visit to my mum's Rebecca became preoccupied with the rest of her exams and I was winding up my stint in the inspection department and wondering how I would get on in IT. I felt I would probably know more about computers even than the man in charge, and wondered how much of my skills I should reveal, especially in relation to my ability as a hacker. Since having Rebecca as my girlfriend and being financed by David for things that we needed for our studies and much of our daily living, I had been desisting from my previous criminal activities.

If I hacked into anywhere now it was just to see what was going on. As I thought about this, I decided to have a look at the set up in the IT department. Out of habit, when I had been with David when he was on the computer I had noted some of his passwords which would give me easy entry and let me have a good look around. There security was good but I could get through it and there were one or two areas which could be strengthened, but it would be difficult for me to point them out without giving away my abilities. Indeed I was just about to find out that it was not just in the work place that my secrets were in danger.

One evening when Rebecca had been out with Marjory and Jessie, I had broken into the network at MacFarlane enterprises and was rooting around in its finance department when suddenly Rebecca was looking over my shoulder. It seemed that Jessie had a bad cold and was feeling miserable, so they had cut short their evening. I had been so preoccupied with what I was doing, that I had not heard her come in. The documents I had opened were clearly MacFarlane's and she recognised them."

"What are you doing?" She asked, "And how did you get into those documents, has dad asked you to look at them."

I nearly jumped out my skin when she spoke as I had not even realised she was there or how long she had studied them over my shoulder. I quickly realised that I had no option but to tell her the truth.

"No, your dad has not asked me to look at them," I told her. "As I am going to be working in the IT department I decided I would have a look at their set up before I start."

"But if dad did not ask you to look at them, did he give you the passwords," She asked.

"No!" I said again. "I really don't need passwords if there is any system that I want to look at." I told her. "I can usually find a way in if I want to. In this case it was fairly easy because I knew some of your dad's passwords. He is not always a careful as he should be when he is working at home."

"Are you telling me that you can hack into other people's computers?" She asked. "Could you get into mine?"

"Yours would be easier than most," I told her, "since you have some of the passwords you use most often pinned to the notice board above the desk. I am guessing that you also have a list of them on your computer and even if you have encrypted them it would not be too difficult to find out what they are."

"How often do you break into other people's computers?" she asked looking shocked.

"Not very often nowadays," I told her, "but before you made your deal with me and we became a couple, I did it a lot. I was a real computer addict and spent a lot of time on line. I had very clever on line buddies that spent even more time than me on their computers and I learned a lot from them."

"But Rory, that is dangerous. What if you had been caught and prosecuted?" Rebecca asked in alarm.

"A really good hacker will make sure that doesn't happen. If like me he is only in there because he wants to see if he can do it and does not do any damage there are ways to do it without anyone being aware. You always have to be on the lookout for trip wires that will let them know someone has been into their system," I assured her.

"But if you are not doing anything when you are in their system why do it?" she wanted to know.

"Because you can," I told her. "I suppose it is a bit of an ego trip knowing that you can break through their system's security and besides, at that time I was thinking of a career as a computer safety consultant. If you could show them that their system was vulnerable and that you could fix it, then that would be a good sales pitch."

"How good is our businesses system if you can break into it?" she wanted to know.

"It is pretty good," I told her. "It would have been a lot harder if I had not known some passwords that would get me into the system in the first place. That let me use some programmes I have invented or been given that makes it easy for me to get in or return if I want to."