Free Learning curves by Gemma Townley Page B

of a
Scooby Doo
cartoon. He would look at her angrily and say that he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid . . .
    Except she wasn’t about to uncover anything. She knew no more now than she’d known several weeks ago. And she wasn’t a meddling kid anymore.
    What would Gavin do, she wondered, trying to imagine her ex-boyfriend in her place. Much as she hated to admit it, he was pretty good at this stuff; he always seemed to know what to do, always marshalled everyone into helping. Maybe that was her problem—she was so used to following, to taking orders, that she didn’t know where to start when there was no one to tell her what to do.
    She frowned. She didn’t want to be someone who took orders. Especially not from Gavin. She could do this. She just had to get started. Find a way in.
    Jen looked at her list and realized how pathetic it looked. How pathetic she looked. Angel was right—this had been a stupid idea. Unless she was going to actually go up to her father’s office and rummage around in his files, what was the point of her being here? Nothing, that’s what. It was just another one of her mother’s crazy ideas, and she’d been stupid enough to go along with it.
    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,