Learning curves by Gemma Townley

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