Chapter 24: Doctor Bennett

Monday marked the beginning of the new semester, which meant new modules, new lecturers, and an entirely new timetable of lectures, seminars, and tutorials. The university had a policy that required every student to take at least one module from outside their department each year—it was something to do with a broad balance of education or something—and since I hadn’t done that in the first semester of the year, I had to sign up for one in the second. They called these ‘Electives.’

In the first year, Imogen and I had both completed a basic mathematics module, which we were informed was slightly above GCSE level, but not quite at A Level.

This year I’d looked at a few different modules across various departments. The Physics department offered an Introduction to Astronomy course that caught my eye. I’d always loved looking at the stars. I also considered An Introduction to French Literature, as I had studied French at A Level. But in the end, I opted for the Economics department’s Small Business Accounting and the Economy.

It seemed appropriate given my circumstances.

After all, David had told me I needed to understand balance sheets and profit and loss accounts, along with a host of other concepts that sounded impressive and important.

And who knows, maybe my executive assistant could help me revise come exam time.

After spending the entire day on Sunday relaxing at home with Carly—aside from a now customary Sunday lunch at a nearby pub with my friends—I drove her to Riverbank Studios early Monday morning and returned to campus just in time for my first lecture of the semester, which coincidentally was in my elective module.

Westmouth University comprised five faculties—or Schools, as the university called them. The School of Law and International Politics contained just two main departments housed in two neighbouring buildings in the North-East Quarter of campus.

The School of Biological and Health Sciences encompassed Biology, Genetics, Medicine, and Sports Sciences, spanning three buildings in the South-East Quarter. It also made extensive use of the sports facilities in the South-West Quarter and maintained a partnership with the hospital on the other side of Westmouth Hill Park.

The School of Physical Sciences and Engineering included the departments of Physics, Mathematics, Computing, Engineering, Chemistry, and more, distributed across four buildings in the South-East Quarter.

The School of Art comprised departments such as English, Modern Languages, Art, Drama, and Music, all of which were housed in separate, small buildings clustered between the North-East and South-East Quarters, although Art, Music, and Drama also utilised the Arts Centre on the Grand Plaza, as well.

The final faculty was The School of Social Sciences, which included departments such as History, Geography, Sociology, Psychology and, of course, Economics. It also had a number of smaller buildings clustered in the North-East Quarter.

And it was to the Economics building that I headed for my lecture. It was a fairly modern building, built at the turn of the millennium, but not particularly architecturally interesting or inspiring. At three stories tall, it resembled any number of generic office buildings over in the business park by the river. The only lecture hall was on the ground floor alongside a couple of seminar rooms, and it was about half the size of the smaller of the Law Department’s two lecture halls. In fact, it wasn’t much bigger than one of the larger seminar rooms in the Law Department. At the front, there was a lectern, a projection screen, and a whiteboard, with approximately a dozen rows of tiered seating for the students. I found a seat roughly in the centre of the third row from the front—close enough to easily read anything on the screen, but not so close as to seem too eager.

The room wasn’t even half full at the ten o’clock start time, just before the lecturer entered—probably three dozen people at most. Certainly, no more than forty. This meant there was space for everyone to keep some distance between themselves and others. Clearly, not many people here knew anyone else. A couple of groups sat together talking, and they were probably from the same course, but that was about it. For the most part, it was very quiet as we waited for the lecture to begin.

I heard the door at the back of the room open and shut but didn’t bother to turn around to look, focusing instead on my notepad, where I wrote the date and module title at the top. So, I was taken aback when a sweet but confident female voice, with a slight Liverpudlian lilt, said, “Good morning, everyone. This is module two-oh-one-oh, Small Business Accounting and the Economy. If any of you are in the wrong place, the time to leave is now.”

I looked up as she spoke.

Wow.

I mean, just wow.

Now, look, you need to understand that most of my lecturers up to this point had been quite old. Alright, perhaps ‘old’ is a bit harsh, but the youngest, Dr Kensington, was in his mid-thirties, and he was by far the youngest.

But the woman standing behind the lectern at the front of the room couldn’t have been older than her late twenties, and she was probably closer to her mid-twenties.

And she was stunning.

Just my type, a voice in my head might once have said.

Tall and slender but with generous curves. Blonde hair, which must have been long, because why else would she keep it in a neat, tidy, professional bun? She wore a chic pastel pink blazer over a simple white blouse and a high-waisted navy blue skirt.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

So mesmerised was I by her sheer beauty that I hadn’t even noticed the noise behind me as a couple of people inevitably got up to leave, having realised they were in the wrong place. Or in the right place at the wrong time.

Once those people had left the room, the lecturer smiling kindly at them as they departed, she looked around at the rest of us and then began to speak again.

“My name is Dr Alexandra Bennett. Welcome. The aim of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the accounts and other reports that small businesses are expected, and legally required, to produce, as well as a fundamental grasp of the macroeconomic climate in which these small businesses operate. We will begin by examining the reports mandated by law, alongside those not legally required but deemed best practice. Subsequently, we will learn how to read and interpret these reports and what insights they offer regarding a business’s financial health. Finally, we will explore how to produce these reports ourselves. In the second half of the module, we will shift our focus to the broader economy, examining how small businesses influence it and how it impacts them.”

Frankly, I hadn’t checked who’d be teaching the course when I signed up. If I had, I would have discovered that Dr Bennett—Lexi to her friends—was in her first year of teaching at the university, having joined the staff in September after completing her PhD at the University of Leicester the previous summer. She was twenty-six and already highly regarded in the economics community as a promising young talent.

Although I paid attention throughout the lecture, I don’t think I really took very much of it in. I made notes on autopilot, but I wouldn’t have been able to say what I had written down. Lexi Bennett had a lovely voice, at a perfect pitch—neither too high nor too low. She spoke with authority and confidence, using well-known national companies to illustrate her points, as well as local companies that Westmouth residents might recognise. She even mentioned Porky’s as an example, and since the club was a Limited Company with public financial records, she showed us their latest set of accounts to demonstrate a Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss report.

At the end of the lecture, she handed out a homework assignment, which was quite unusual, to say the least, for the first lecture of a new module—I think only one other module across the three semesters I’d completed so far had done that.