Learning curves by Gemma Townley Page A

students were; as soon as you had a group of people in a lecture theater they reverted to teenage humor.
    “Someone turn that sentiment into a social influence,” he said with a sigh. “What about you?”
    He was looking at Jen, and she reddened again.
    “Um, how about rates of marriage?” she tried. “And demographics—how many people are having children at what age, that sort of thing.”
    “Good. Why?”
    “Because if there are lots of people married or in relationships who don’t want to have children, condom use will go up.”
    “Excellent. Thank you. And finally, technological. Anyone?”
    Alan put his hand up. “New developments like the male pill,” he said seriously.
    “Good. Anything else?”
    “Vibrators,” Lara said quickly.
    “Explain?”
    “Well if they’re good enough, women may not need sex with men anymore. . . .” She got a little round of applause from the few women in the room.
    “Interesting idea,” the lecturer said, “which we won’t explore now—I’ll leave that to you, shall I? Now, when you’ve done your PEST, you need to—” He was interrupted by the door opening. Jen looked up and froze. Her heart started pounding and she could feel the blood drain from her face.
    “Mr. Bell!” the lecturer said, immediately straightening his posture and looking far more formal than he had five minutes before. “What a nice surprise. Would you . . . um . . . like to have a seat?”
    George smiled broadly. “You just carry on, Julian,” he said affably. “Thought I’d just take a quick look at this year’s intake if it’s all right with you.”
    “Oh, absolutely. Yes. We were just doing the PEST analysis,” the lecturer said, obviously flustered. “On a . . . manufacturing company.”
    George nodded and started walking to the back of the lecture theater.
    Jen looked around desperately, then dropped a pen on the floor and dived down after it. This was one risk she hadn’t foreseen. And it could be the end of everything. Shooting a look at Lara, she hid under her desk and held her breath.
    Lara looked at her curiously, evidently confused, and Jen tried to indicate that she was trying to hide, which she did with a series of hand gestures that frankly could have meant that she was hoping to travel to the moon one day. Still, Lara seemed to get the message and quickly deposited her coat over Jen.
    “Mr. Bell?” she asked sweetly, turning round to face him. “What’s your take on the wacky world of condoms?”
    Daniel grinned as he flicked through Jen’s assignment. Bookselling. She’d done it on bookselling. Was she trying to tell him something?
    It wasn’t bad, either, he thought to himself. It was certainly more interesting than any of the other things he’d read that day. Management reports, financial statements, supply chain strategies . . . Why was it, he wondered, that the better you were at something, the less you got to do it? He’d been a great bookseller. And what had happened? He’d been promoted and promoted until he didn’t do any bookselling anymore. Didn’t get involved in promotions, in buying decisions, any of it. He just got to sit around talking to his chairman about cost efficiencies and to his finance director about whether to put a bookstore in Mall A or Mall B.
    What should he write, he wondered. “A very interesting assignment with some good, original ideas”? No, that was way more complimentary than anything he’d written on any of the other assignments he’d marked so far. He needed to be consistent. But “Good. Interesting ideas” seemed somehow too curt.
    She was bright, obviously. And her ideas
were
interesting. Maybe he’d wander down to Bell some time this week, bump into her, and give her verbal feedback. Over coffee or something . . .
    He frowned. She’d probably be totally freaked out. Fuck it, maybe she was actually interested in bookselling. Maybe that’s why she’d been so keen to talk to him, so keen to ask him about what