by Tom Ellen
She cuts off suddenly, almost breathless. ‘Sorry. God. Actually hearing myself say this stuff out loud makes me realise how selfish and spoiled it all sounds. Talk about First World problems.’
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘Not in the slightest.’ And I mean it. After six years of doing this, I can tell when someone is genuinely suffering.
‘You’re being far too nice,’ she laughs. ‘If you think I’m a dick, you can just tell me I’m a dick. I honestly won’t mind.’
I can’t help laughing too. ‘I don’t think I’m technically allowed to tell you you’re a dick, actually. That’s not really what this helpline is for.’
‘Right. I guess it would go against company policy to tell callers that they’re dicks.’
‘It would almost certainly be frowned upon, yeah.’
We both laugh this time. It’s weird. It feels sort of… comfortable. I’ve felt many different emotions listening to callers over these past few years, but ‘comfortable’ has never been one of them.
‘Maybe,’ the woman says, ‘there’s a gap in the market for a helpline where someone just calls you a dick and tells you to get on with it. You babble on about your so-called problems, and at the end they just say: “Yeah, get your shit together and stop being a dick.” I actually think that’d be quite effective.’
I should really stop laughing so much. I have no idea what this person is going through – maybe she’s deflecting her pain with humour, using it as a defence mechanism to hide how much she’s really struggling. The problem is, she is undeniably pretty funny. I clear my throat and try to be a bit more professional.
‘For what it’s worth, you wouldn’t believe the number of calls we get from people in a very similar position to yourself, who are feeling the exact same thing.’
‘Right,’ she says. ‘So, I’m not a dick; I’m just staggeringly unoriginal.’
‘Exactly.’
More laughter – from both of us.
I hear her take another sip of her drink. ‘God, this is so weird. This is the most honest conversation I’ve had in months, and it’s with someone I can’t see and whose name I don’t even know. What does that say about me?’
‘It says that you’re feeling low and you made the right decision to reach out for help,’ I say, firmly. ‘And as for names, if you like, you can call me Jack.’
She laughs softly. ‘So I’m guessing your name’s not Jack, then?
‘Well, we use “safe names” on this line. It just makes things…’
‘Safer?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK. Well… Can I tell you my name?’ she asks.
‘Of course, if you want to. And if you don’t want to that’s fine, too.’
‘Hmm.’ I hear the rustle of the phone shifting as she moves around. I suddenly wonder where she is. What she looks like. ‘Maybe I’ll give myself a safe name as well.’
‘If you like.’
‘OK.’ There’s a pause. ‘You can call me Pia.’
‘OK, Pia,’ I say. ‘Nice to meet you, Pia.’
‘Nice to meet you too, Jack.’
The computer fades into sleep mode and in the black screen I catch my own reflection – a silly grin plastered across my face. Weird. Can’t remember the last time I saw myself smile.
For a second, neither of us says anything. And then:
‘I broke up with my fiancé,’ she says. ‘Four months ago.’
‘OK…’
Even after six years, I can’t help fighting the urge to say ‘I’m sorry’ in response to a comment like this. The first thing we were taught in training was not to express any opinion or judgement whatsoever when a caller says something along these lines. It makes sense, I guess: somebody calls up and tells you their mum has just died, you say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ and then they tell you that their mum abused them or neglected them or abandoned them. By expressing sadness or regret, you’re making the caller feel worse about the fact that they may have mixed emotions about their mother’s death.
Basically, we’re supposed to stay neutral until we have all the information. Which, in practice, is much harder than it sounds. Still, I manage to wrestle down my natural human instinct to offer condolence and instead say, ‘And how did that make you feel?’
I hear her take a breath as she considers this. ‘I felt awful because I’d hurt him, and he didn’t deserve to be hurt. And I felt bad because my mum and my sister and all my friends thought I was insane to break off an engagement aged thirty-three. But despite all that, I felt glad that I didn’t have to marry him.’
I nod. ‘It sounds like the right decision, then?’
‘Maybe. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like the right decision.’
‘How did you meet?’
Not sure where that came from. I feel a giddy – and slightly pathetic – thrill at having asked a direct question, which strictly speaking we’re not supposed to do on this line. We’re meant to stick to ‘open-ended’ questions – ‘How did that make you feel?’, ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ – rather than digging into specific facts or details. I suddenly hope Carole, Green Shoots’ director, doesn’t monitor these calls, or I’m sure to be in for a strongly worded email.
Either way, Pia doesn’t seem to mind.
‘We met on Tinder’, she says, inflating the last word with about six heavily-sighed Ns. ‘I know, right – how original. But I liked him straight away. And we were good together, I think. He made me laugh and he was kind, and – honestly – when my dad died last year, he was the one who kept me from falling apart completely.’
I swallow another ‘I’m sorry’.
She carries on. ‘I love him so much for that. I always will. But I just wasn’t ever… in love with him, no matter how hard I tried to be. It feels horrible to say that, but it’s true. And when he proposed, I thought…’ She breaks off. I imagine her shaking her head, staring down at the floor. ‘I don’t know what I thought, really. That I didn’t want to hurt him by saying no? That maybe I would grow to fall in love with him. That my mum would be off-her-nut delighted, and it’s not often I get the chance to make her feel like that. Maybe even because all my friends were getting married and having kids, and I didn’t want to be left behind. Pathetic to admit it, but there it is.’
‘It’s not pathetic at all. I get it. So, what caused you to break it off?’
Another direct question. I’m a maverick. A rebel! I’m the James Dean of telephone crisis lines.
‘Well, Dom kept saying, “We should get a date in the diary”, “We should start looking at venues”, and I just kept telling him, “Ah, there’s no rush, let’s take it slowly”. Then, one evening, I came home from work early and he’d left his laptop open on the kitchen table. There was this Word document on there – five pages long… It was his speech for the wedding. We didn’t even have a date set and he’d already written his speech. And it was so… so lovely.’ Her voice quivers and breaks on the word. She takes a shaky breath. ‘He deserves someone who feels the same way. And seeing that speech made me realise: this is real. This will be the rest of our lives, unless I do something to stop it. And then he came downstairs, and I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry him. And his face just…’
She is crying now – little gulps between each word. My neck feels hot suddenly, and I notice that I’m twisting the phone cord so tightly my knuckles are white. ‘He didn’t deserve that,’ she whispers. ‘He didn’t deserve what I did to him. I just feel like such an awful person.’
‘But you can’t…’ My voice comes out croaky, and I swallow hard and start again. ‘Pia, if it wasn’t meant to be, then he will thank you in the long run. You have to remember that.’
‘But it’s been four months and he’s still suffering,’ she sniffs. ‘And I am too. It’s like my life is on pause while everyone else is fast-forwarding. I just keep thinking: Who the hell do I think I am, waiting around for some fantasy person who won’t ever show up? Maybe this is as good as
it gets, so why can’t I be like everybody else, and just… settle?’
‘Look… I can’t say what you should or shouldn’t do,’ I tell her. ‘But from what you’ve told me, I don’t think you’re an awful person. Not in the slightest.’
She sniffs again and says, ‘Well. Thank you.’ And then she lets out a gasp that lands halfway between anger and relief. ‘God, it feels good to actually talk about this. I don’t really have anyone I can speak to about it properly.’
‘That’s what we’re here for,’ I say.
‘What do you think, though, Jack?’ She coughs, and suddenly I can hear the smile back in her voice. ‘Did I make the right decision? I mean, you’re the expert.’
I play along, but I’m smiling too. ‘Not at all, actually, Pia. I’m just a volunteer, and I’ve known you for all of about nine minutes, so I definitely can’t go making any sweeping judgements on your life. The whole point of this line is to listen without judgement.’
‘Oh, OK. I get it… So you’re like a kind of phone Beefeater?’
An extremely inelegant snort-laugh splutters out of me. ‘A what?’
‘Beefeaters aren’t supposed to react, are they, no matter what you do in front of them. I remember my dad taking us to see them when we were kids, and me and my sister would jump about, sticking our tongues out at them, and they had to stay totally composed and professional. So – that’s you. You’re a phone Beefeater. No matter what I say, you can’t react.’
My grin stretches even wider. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’
‘OK’. There’s another weirdly comfortable pause. Then she takes a deep breath and says, ‘Well. I’d better go – there must be other people trying to get through to you.’
‘How are you feeling now?’ I ask.
‘Better than I was when I called. So that’s something.’
‘That’s very good to hear.’
‘Thank you, Jack. It was really nice talking to you.’
‘You’re welcome, Pia. You too. And you can call again, you know. Any time between 1 p.m. and 11 p.m. – someone will be here.’
‘OK, thanks. Maybe I will.’
I suddenly very much don’t want her to hang up. I don’t know why, but I just want to talk to her – to listen to her talk – for just a little longer.
‘Bye, then,’ she says.
‘Bye.’
Then the dial tone is drilling into my ear, and I’m sitting here wondering why my heart seems to be beating slightly faster than usual.
Will
Friday, 4th March
I’m still thinking about Pia’s call at half seven the next morning, as I stumble bleary-eyed onto the Hammersmith & City line.
I navigate the carriage’s complex obstacle course of takeaway trays and discarded Evening Standards and slump down into a free seat. It’s weird – this used to happen all the time when I started volunteering at Green Shoots. Every call I got would stay with me for days afterwards. I couldn’t help imagining the caller’s life in intricate detail; colouring in all the bits they hadn’t told me. I’d picture them at work or at college or at home – nailing on a brave face for friends and family, pretending everything was fine, and all the time holding this secret pain in their chest or their head or their heart, or wherever it was their particular pain was located.
I’d even project the callers onto strangers, people I passed in the street. The woman who barely made eye contact as she served me in Tesco could be the same woman who’d tearfully told me of her husband’s suspected affair the night before. The teenager who barged past me onto the bus might be the same frightened kid who’d confessed he was too scared to come out to his right-wing Christian parents.
It seemed like this incredible – and incredibly strange – privilege; to see into someone’s life for just a brief moment, to have them tell you things they wouldn’t even tell their closest friends. Things they maybe wouldn’t tell anyone.
Better than I was when I called. That’s how Pia said she was feeling before she put the phone down. I think about how she sounded when she said it, and for the first time in a long time, I feel… OK. Like I’m doing something good.
One of our regular callers, Eric, has this tradition before he hangs up of telling me he’s ‘so grateful’ for the helpline and I’m such a ‘good lad’ for doing what I do. From reading the logbook and all the email chains, I know it’s not just me he says this to: he signs off with this same monologue to all the volunteers.
It’s sweet, but it always makes me flinch when I hear it. Because he doesn’t know why I’m doing this. Not really. He thinks I’m a ‘good lad’ – giving up my spare time to help others. He doesn’t know what made me sign up, what keeps me coming back. Occasionally, I get the mad urge to tell him why I really do it. To hear his voice buckle under the disappointment.
But then there are calls like Pia’s, last night, and I think… Maybe I am doing something good. Even if I’m doing it for selfish reasons. Maybe I am making some sort of difference.
Better than I was when I called. I wonder where she is right now.
The Tube driver’s voice crackles suddenly through the speaker, making everyone look up, wincing, from their phones. I look up too, and as I do I catch eyes with two blokes sitting across from me. Their gazes scatter as soon as I notice them. They look at each other, lips bitten, eyebrows raised in amusement.
I feel a horrible churning in the pit of my stomach. I pick up a half-shredded Metro from the seat next to me, holding it slightly higher than necessary to mask my face, like a crap spy in a crap spy movie.
I can hear them whispering over the whirr of the train. This is pathetic. I’m being ridiculous. I’m being paranoid.
But they do fit the exact profile of the 0.0001 per cent of people in this city that might recognise me – i.e. men, maybe a couple of years younger than I am, with shoulder-length hair and wrist tattoos now half-hidden by freshly ironed office shirts. Indie kids all grown up.
The train hisses into Great Portland Street.
‘Sorry, mate. ’Scuse me?’
I focus hard on a ‘60-second interview’ with Paul Chuckle and try to block out the hot thudding in my ears.
‘Sorry? Mate?’
I lower the paper to see them both staring at me. ‘Yes?’
‘You’re not… Did you used to be in a band?’
My throat is dry suddenly. I attempt a smile. ‘Yeah.’
‘I knew it!’ The first bloke slaps his knee in delight. ‘I knew I recognised him!’ He nudges his mate. ‘Didn’t I say it was him?’
His mate just shrugs. ‘I’ve never even heard of him.’
Before everything happened, back when I was a different person, I used to daydream about what it would be like to get recognised in public by strangers. I used to pine for the attention – the furtive glances, spreading smiles, looks of embarrassed awe. Now I realise it just means people talking about you as if you weren’t there – like you’re a Madame Tussauds waxwork, or something.
The truth is: I am the absolute worst kind of ‘famous’ – recognisable only to a tiny handful of people, all of whom probably think I’m an utter knob.
The first bloke turns back to me with a broad grin. ‘I think I saw you lot at Reading in like… 2014?’
‘2015,’ I say, the memory of it flashing into my head. That intern from Universal chopping coke on the airbed in her tent. Powder bouncing everywhere, all of us laughing. So out of it I could hardly breathe. Backstage, Joe, quieter than normal. Me, telling him to stop being so miserable. Telling him we’d finally made it. I remember taking my shirt off onstage, swinging it around my head like the worst cliché of a rock star. It’s still on YouTube, I think. The shame and the guilt heat my whole body instantly.
I need to get out of this carriage.
‘Yeah, 2015, that was it!’ says the Grown-Up Indie Kid. ‘You guys were… all right.’
‘Cheers.’ That’s probably as accurate a summary of our band as you’
ll ever hear, to be fair.
I grip the handrail, ready to stand up. Need to get out of here.
‘So, what happened, then?’ the GUIK asks, waving a hand at my general appearance, as if to say: ‘Why are you slouched on the Hammersmith & City line at half seven in the morning, rather than jet skiing with Bono and Liam Gallagher in the Seychelles?’
The thumping in my ears is louder than ever. I can’t think about this now. I can’t. ‘I just…’ The words congeal in my throat. Joe, backstage, quieter than normal. The memory of it grips me around the neck.
I shake my head. Get to my feet. ‘Sorry, this is my stop, actually. Nice to meet you, though.’ I can feel the sweat prickling on my forehead.
Why won’t this fucking train stop?
The GUIK is up now too, his hand on my shoulder. ‘No worries, man. Can I get a quick photo, though? I’ve got a mate who used to be really into your group – he’ll think it’s hilarious.’
Turn away, head throbbing. ‘Sorry, this is my stop.’ I can just keep repeating that until the doors open. The train bursts out of the tunnel, finally, the signs for Euston Square flashing past in a reddish-blue blur.
I hear him sit back down, muttering, ‘Fucking prick. Who does he think he is?’
The doors hiss open and I stagger out onto the platform, gulping the dirty air. My face is boiling, the blood thundering in my ears. Joe, backstage, quieter than normal.
I never even asked him if he was all right.
I look round as the train moves off to see the GUIK holding his phone up at me, smirking. The camera flash stings my eyes through the window.