The girls came to her room early in the morning. The place was still in a mess, because Tony had only just left, to go back to his room and shower before his first lecture; the thin single mattress was still on the floor, where it was easier for it to accommodate two bodies; and the room probably had the stale odour of the air they had been re-breathing all night. She knew from the glance they exchanged, while surveying the bedding-strewn floor, that they were bringing bad news, a rejection; they would have found these slightly sordid details of her private life far more acceptable if they had been on her side.
They imparted the news quite briefly, and of course offered a professionally friendly ear, to help her deal with the pain; and then they left. She had spent the entire weekend in their company, and they had been nice to her in a group-hug sort of way; but now it was just the two of them (and the rest of the group). They did not want Laura. After the weekend’s training, she was well-versed in the processing of loss. She perched on the bare wooden frame of the bed feeling a little puzzled; surely that hadn’t just happened, they had made a mistake, got her name mixed up with someone else’s. She waited for a few minutes, for them to come back and tell her she was in, after all. Then she cried a little bit, while beginning to realise that she felt more humiliated than bereaved. This turned quickly to irritation and anger; why the hell should she want to join their cliquey little club anyway? And who were they to judge the quality of her listening skills? Just because she wasn’t good at performing to a crowd, and role-playing activity made her freeze up, didn’t mean she was unable to listen gently to someone else’s suffering.
Her lukewarm anger dried her tears, and she toyed briefly with being positive about the whole thing, and trying again next term; but she knew there was no point. If they felt she had not suffered enough by now, she hadn’t felt real pain or seen enough of the world, then another two or three months wasn’t going to change anything.
She had wanted to be a Listener, one of those calm, sympathetic voices at the end of a free telephone number, who guided people away from their suicidal thoughts, or steered them through the maze of their sexual identity crisis. They offered a two-day training session, which was really an audition, during which everyone had to expose their own wounds in order to be accepted. She knew now that those who had broken down in tears would have got in; those who had been taken to one side by the course leaders, when things had seemed to get too much for them, they would be in. The boy with the baggy trousers, who she had developed a slight crush on even though he thought he might be gay, who had walked out on the second afternoon and come back looking terribly sober; and Alison, who had a bleached crew-cut and horizontal scars on her wrists – she was a dead cert. And Emma would be in.
It had been Emma’s idea to sign up for the Listeners, but Laura was pleased because she only lacked the confidence to do it herself. Emma put their names down, but they were separated when the group was divided into teams. If Laura had realised that it was a competition, she would have considered their separation to be a good thing, because Emma had divorced her violent alcoholic husband at the age of 23, and retaken her A-levels in order to get a university place. Emma was mature and practical, and humorlessly committed to gaining some free counselling experience.
And what did Laura have to offer? What salty tears could she cry into this pissing contest of pain? Parental divorce at the age of 16 didn’t seem to count; such issues were dealt with in different ways now that we had all left home, and anyway, she hadn’t talked about it much, because frankly she tried not to rake it up too often. Changing schools five times didn’t equip her to advise on feelings of isolation or loneliness, because again, she had learned to cope with that as a child. In fact, having learned to cope with things proved not to be an asset, as shown by the bonding support given to those who managed to cry. The recent death of a grandparent was not enough, either; grandparents are old, they are supposed to die.
No, what she needed was a disastrous relationship (preferably ongoing), or a recently beaten drug habit (not including a fondness for cider). She didn’t even have any gay friends, or the sense to pretend that she did.
Laura heaved the mattress back on to the bedframe, and mentally reviewed the leaders and the applicants who she guessed had been successful. She wondered how a bunch of neurotic losers who had all managed to fuck their lives up by the age of 20 were considered the best people to offer guidance to others, just because they were in the same situation; wasn’t there a use for someone who knew how to cope? Someone who had managed not to be date-raped? Who had miraculously avoided the pitfalls of self-harm and substance abuse? With a slightly acidic laugh, she decided she had better brush her teeth and get on with her life; and resolved never to call the Listeners.