Learning curves: a novel of sex, suits, and business affairs

by Gemma Townley

  She put her pad back down and made her way out of the library. Maybe she should just quit, she thought despondently. Maybe she should do something else with her life, something that was actually going to achieve something. This had been a bad idea from the start, and to stay here was just adding insult to injury.

  But what would she do instead? Go back to Green Futures?

  She walked down the corridor slowly. It wouldn’t be so bad, she told herself. At least she wouldn’t have to finish her internal analysis assignment.

  She headed for the lift and stood in front of it waiting, reviewing her reflection in its warped mirrored doors.

  I’m just going to walk out, she told herself. Go for a walk and clear my head. And if I decide to quit, then that’s what I’ll do. Mum will just have to live with it.

  She heard brisk footsteps coming down the corridor and looked up to see Jack, the consultant from the dinner and the lift, with a colleague she didn’t recognize. She rolled her eyes. That’s all she needed—another stuck-up consultant talking about student protesters.

  But they didn’t seem to notice her as they waited with her in front of the lift.

  “He wants tickets to Indonesia?” one said conspiratorially.

  “Yeah,” the other one said. He was the one she’d argued with in the lift. “Fuck knows why. Wants them delivered personally.”

  Jen frowned, then looked away. She’d made up her mind to go, she told herself. She really wasn’t interested.

  “You on your way up now?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “D’you think this is to do with Axiom?”

  The guy Jen had argued with looked at his colleague with contempt. “I’d never have thought of that,” he said sarcastically, just as the lift arrived.

  The doors pinged open.

  “It’s going down,” said the argumentative one, who shot a look at Jen. “You want this one?”

  Jen frowned.

  “Actually, no,” she said eventually, a nervous smile playing on her lips, “I think I’m going to go up.”

  The two consultants walked briskly out of the lift and didn’t seem in the least interested in Jen, who walked out tentatively and tried to get her bearings. So this was the eighth floor. This was where her father worked, where board meetings were held. She’d been here before, many years ago, but right now it felt like a different lifetime. It looked different now, smaller, and she couldn’t remember her way around.

  She edged along the corridor, trying to look nonchalant, like she had every reason in the world to be there. If challenged, she would say she was lost, she decided. Was looking for the library. Or her tutor. Or . . .

  “Hello, dear. Can I help you?”

  A woman in her fifties was smiling at Jen. She smiled back. “I, um, was looking for the loo, actually,” she said immediately.

  “Just over there, dear. In the corner.”

  Jen looked over at the large LADIES sign and smiled awkwardly. She wandered over, but just before she walked in she took a sneaky look back and saw the two consultants walking into a large glass-fronted office on the opposite side of the floor. A room she recognized. She saw a man stand up to greet them. And the man, she realized with a start, was her father.

  “We’ve got the tickets, Mr. Bell. So, who are they for?”

  George stared at Jack in a way that told him this was a question that he shouldn’t be asking. Jack looked away awkwardly.

  “Peter was saying that Green Futures were out in force at the Tsunami dinner the other night,” his colleague chipped in quickly. “Apparently your, um . . . Harriet . . . Ms. Keller . . . she was talking a lot about Axiom to people. Hinting that Bell might be implicated in the . . . uh . . . corruption allegations. Just . . . thought you’d want to know.”

  George stared at him, then back at Jack, and they both shrank back.

  “Thank you, both of you,” he said gruffly. “And just for the record, the day Bell Consulting starts to worry about gossip is the day that hell freezes over. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Bell.”

  The two consultants left, and George made his way back to his desk slowly. Was Harriet up to something? Should he be worried? He shrugged. She was always up to something. There was no point becoming alarmed. Harriet loved nothing more than gossip, a story. She knew nothing, and he was confident that it would stay that way.

  He could never quite fathom how someone as intelligent as Harriet could be so utterly silly at the same time. He still remembered the day she’d walked into his office, a mere secretary, and had told him that the paper she was typing for him was all wrong and that she had a much better idea. He’d fallen for her right then and there, bowled over by her confidence, her insouciance, and, of course, her idea which, it turned out, was brilliant. But the very next day he’d heard her telling someone just as urgently about trees being more spiritual than human beings. She was scattered, George thought to himself. She’d never think about one thing long enough to work it out. She was hardly a threat.

  It was amazing, George reflected, that she’d managed to run her own firm for so long. Amazing that her coworkers were able to work around her changing moods, her butterflylike attention span.

  Well, at least he was out of it. At least he wasn’t married anymore. What a marriage that had been, he thought ruefully. How exhausting.

  And yet . . . he’d enjoyed some of it. The bits with Jen, mostly. Jennifer Bell, his daughter. He’d been so proud of her, had such high hopes.

  He turned and stared out of the window. Life was full of compromises, he thought sadly. Full of tradeoffs and you-scratch-my-back deals. Did anyone really get what they wanted? Had he? He’d hardly seen Jen even when they were a family. He’d always been so busy, building his empire, building a future. And then she was gone, and he realized he barely even knew her.

  Still, he told himself, turning back round to his desk. No point crying over spilled milk or wondering about what might have been. Much better to just get on with the job in hand.

  George sighed. He sometimes wondered if he’d have been a better father if he’d had a son. Someone he could talk business with, play sports with. Women were so . . . complicated. Even now, even at his age, he found women hard to fathom. They wanted to talk all the time, started arguments from the least little thing. To George the world was a simple place of black and white. But all the women he’d known seemed hell-bent on turning it into a mass of uncertain, moving gray. He got up, walked to the door, and leaned out.

  “Emily, why are women so complicated?” he asked his personal assistant.

  She ignored him, as always. “Mr. Bell, sir, I’ve got Mr. Gates on the phone. He’s wondering if you could pop over sometime this week.”

  “Okay. Put him through, will you? And, Emily, a coffee would be great. Get me a macchiato?”

  “You mean a decaf macchiato,” Emily said matter-of-factly, and ignored his grimace.

  George marched back to his desk, picked up the phone, and put all thoughts of Jennifer out of his head.

  From across the floor, Jen watched him beadily, then slowly made her way back down to the seventh floor.

  Harriet Keller looked around her carefully. She needed somehow to capture the energy of the old days. Get Green Futures back on the map. And hopefully, this presentation would do the trick, would get everyone excited again.

  “So you see,” she said energetically to the fifty or so Green Futures employees congregated in the meeting room, “we have to use passion. Understanding. All around us, corporations are realizing that they can’t ignore the community anymore, can’t ignore global warming and poverty. We will continue to stand up for integrity, for love. And in doing so, we will change the world.”

  As she went to sit down, she nervously listened to the applause. Harriet needed applause, needed praise and validation, and she knew it. It wasn’t something she was particularly proud of. She was well aware that it was a weakness, that she sho
uldn’t care what people thought, but the fact was that she cared hugely. Nothing motivated her more than the adulation of others; nothing spurred her on more than the opportunity to prove herself—or, more often, to prove someone else wrong. She’d only started this firm to prove to her bloody ex-husband that she could, and what a triumph that had been. But now that particular motivation wasn’t as compelling. And these days she didn’t seem to be as interesting to the press, either. She sighed, then smiled as she saw Paul walking toward her.

  “What did you think?” she asked immediately, trying to sound chirpy and confident.

  He looked at her seriously. “Very, very good,” he said. “I found it very . . . inspiring.”

  Harriet’s eyes lit up and she smiled gratefully. “Oh, you’re too kind, Paul, really. So you think it was okay?”

  “It was much more than okay,” he said immediately. “You should not doubt yourself so much.”

  “Oh, I know,” Harriet said with a sigh. “But it is so very tough at the top. Really, it is. Everyone wants so much, and trying to balance my time—it leaves me exhausted. Particularly when Tim keeps telling me we should be spending less all the time. I can’t run a business without spending money, Paul. I just can’t.”

  “Everything will be fine,” Paul said serenely. “You worry too much, Harriet. Have more confidence in your ability.”

  Harriet took Paul’s hand. “Oh, Paul, I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re the only one who really understands me, you know. The only person who understands what I’m trying to achieve, who can see the dimensions in which I work.”

  Paul smiled, looking a little embarrassed. “I do my best,” he said simply.

  “Next week,” Harriet said suddenly, “we should have a party. Something to get people excited again. What do you think?”

  Paul nodded seriously. “I think it is a great idea. I will, unfortunately, be away, however. I have to see a client in Scotland.”

  Harriet looked crestfallen. “You have to go? But what will I do without you?”

  “I will only be gone a few days. I think you will be okay. I know you will.”

  Harriet nodded stoically. “Yes, I will,” she said with a little smile. “With your support, Paul, I know that I will.”

  She made her way back to her office, humming softly and planning in her head a party for Paul’s return. She would invite all the journalists who’d interviewed her over the years. She’d make another little speech. Maybe allude to Bell and the corruption allegations. Show the world how important she and her firm were in upholding truth and justice and . . . Harriet’s humming stopped abruptly when she saw that Tim the number cruncher was waiting for her.

  “Harriet, I need you to go through the accounts with me,” he said immediately.

  Harriet waved him away. “Tim, I really don’t have the time at the moment. I thought I employed you to look after the finances for me?”

  Tim sighed. “I’m an accountant, not a magician, Harriet. The fact of the matter is that we’re hemorrhaging cash at the moment and we need to make some cuts somewhere.”

  Harriet frowned, then remembered Paul’s words. She needed more confidence in her ability. How right he was. If only Tim would see things in the same way.

  “Tim, what is Green Futures’ mission?” she asked, looking at him closely.

  He frowned. “Holistic business, holistic growth,” he muttered.

  “Precisely. And growth takes funding, Tim, you know that. Perhaps there’s more money going out than coming in right now, but I believe that we are doing the right thing. Do you believe that, Tim?”

  Tim looked at her uncertainly. “Of course I believe in that, but if we lose much more money we . . .”

  Harriet put her fingers to her lips, and Tim stopped talking. “We must invest to grow,” she said softly, remembering the words that she’d used for her first Financial Times interview. “It is precisely because companies are so concerned with profits and the bottom line that corporate disasters continue to occur. Have faith, Tim.”

  Tim nodded and left her office, and Harriet sat down at her desk. He had sent her three e-mails, all tagged URGENT, and she deleted them one by one.

  Focus, she reminded herself. Tim can look after the figures—I need to focus on the bigger picture. And on organizing this party. Pleased that she had a plan of action, she smiled and picked up the phone.

  Tim walked wearily back to his office.

  “Not a good meeting?” his assistant, Mick, asked in a deadpan voice.

  “What do you think?” Tim said, his voice that of a defeated man.

  “So she didn’t think the one-and-a-half-million-pound black hole was a bit of a worry?”

  “Didn’t get a chance to tell her, did I?” Tim said. “She told me that focusing on the bottom line led to corporate greed.”

  Mick raised his eyebrows. “So we’ll be going out for a nice expensive lunch on expenses, then?”

  Tim sighed. “I don’t see why not,” he said, putting down his files. “If everyone else is going to spend money like it grows on trees, I don’t see why we shouldn’t either.”

  7

  Jen pulled her coat around her more tightly and watched her breath become steam in the cold autumn air. This had better be important, she thought to herself irritably as she looked at her watch for the second time. Her mother had insisted that they had to talk and had then suggested this clandestine meeting in the park. Like they were working for MI5 or something.

  She frowned. Maybe she was being unfair. Maybe her mother really had got hold of some important information and was being followed. Big corporations didn’t like to be found out. They could both be in danger.

  Jen laughed at herself. Too much late-night television, she thought, shaking her head and scolding herself for allowing her mother’s hysteria to get to her. Harriet lived for excitement, for the appearance of danger and mystery. What she’d do if she ever faced any genuine danger, Jen didn’t know.

  She looked at her watch again. She had a lecture that afternoon with Daniel and she wanted a prime seat, toward the front. If she was late because her mother couldn’t keep her own appointments, he would not be impressed.

  “Darling, you’re here!” Harriet was breathless, clutching coffee in her hands to warm them up.

  “I’m surprised you’re calling me ‘darling.’ Shouldn’t we have code names or something?” Jen said with a little smile.

  Harriet looked like she was considering the idea, then caught her daughter’s expression and sighed.

  “Really, darling, I don’t know why you have to be so difficult. Now, isn’t this nice?” She sat down on the bench next to Jen and looked around. “I do love the autumn in London, don’t you?”

  Jen looked at her curiously. “Are we here to talk about the weather?”

  Harriet shook her head and turned to Jen, her eyes shining. “No. I’ve got some news.”

  Jen felt a little thrill jolt through her. “Me too. I was on the eighth floor the other day, and these guys were bringing Dad some tickets to Indonesia.”

  “He’s going to Indonesia? When?”

  “I don’t know,” Jen admitted. “But I’ll try and find out. So what’s your news?”

  “I’m going to have a party!”

  Jen frowned. “That’s it? You get me on a park bench to tell me you’re having a party?”

  Harriet looked at her daughter despairingly. “A new-beginnings party. It’s important, Jen. I was talking to Paul and it made me realize that I’ve allowed myself to get too caught up in the day-to-day stuff of running a business. I need to look beyond that, go back to my core mission. To be a beacon! I’m going to invite the press. I’m going to put Green Futures back on the map!”

  “With a party?” Jen said flatly. Why am I surprised, she asked herself irritably.

  Harriet’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, Jen. With a party.”

  “Tim said you had some cash-flow issues. Can you afford a big party?”


  “Tim should think before he opens his mouth. Look, Jen, I don’t need advice on how to run my business from someone who thinks the world is run by spreadsheets. I thought you of all people would understand . . . Paul’s going to Scotland next week and I thought you might like to help. . . .”

  Jen looked at her mother in amazement. “You really didn’t bring me all the way here to talk about a party, did you? Because your precious Paul has suddenly realized he’s got other, more important things to do? Mum, will you look at yourself? This is crazy. I’m meant to be in lectures. I thought you had something important to tell me.”

  Harriet looked at Jen with wide eyes. “I see. So Green Futures isn’t important to you? I suppose you’re far too busy doing your MBA. ”

  “Which I wouldn’t be doing if it wasn’t for you and your big ideas.”

  “Well, if you’re not interested in my big ideas, then I really don’t know what I’m doing here,” Harriet said in an injured voice. “I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Jennifer. I’m just doing my best, you know. Trying to hold everything together, as always. . . .”

  She stood up and Jen sighed. That was Harriet’s favorite card that she always used to win any argument— the “I’m a single parent and lone entrepreneur and am single-handedly trying to save the world” trump card that she could never beat.

  “You’re doing more than your best,” Jen relented. It just wasn’t worth arguing with Harriet, dealing with the long radio silence, the quivering lip, and the long, drawn-out making-up session in which her mother needed not just the last word, but all the ones before it, too. And anyway, it wasn’t really Harriet’s fault. Jen’s irritation wasn’t directed entirely at her.

  “I’m just frustrated that I’m not doing better myself,” she said with a shrug. “I’m not sure I’m the best spy ever . . .”

  “We all do what we can, Jennifer, and no one can ask any more of us,” Harriet said with a little smile, sounding much happier. “Now, I’d better go and start the planning for the party if I have to do it all on my own. It’s going to be such a lot of work, but I know it’s going to make a big difference. Let me know what you find out about your father’s Indonesian trip, won’t you?”