Pretending: The brilliant new adult novel from Holly Bourne. Why be yourself when you can be perfect?(4)

‘I’m sure,’ I tell him.

He must believe me because he puts his headphones back on. Matt can’t handle the office’s choice in radio station. Essentially, if a song isn’t written by some sad bloke tormented by low self-worth and memories of all the exes who got away, Matt doesn’t want to listen to it.

I return my phone to the top drawer without even thinking about it, Simon’s message temporarily forgotten. I plug in my own pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I know it’s Friday, and it’s fine that everyone wants to listen to Magic FM, but I can’t read about sexual violence to Wham!. I put on Piano and Rain, log in to the charity’s inbox, and wait to see what horrible thing a man has done to a woman today.





It’s bad, my shift. I mean, it’s always bad, but I’m almost gasping as I read through this message in the charity’s inbox:

Message received: 15:34

Was it rape? He is my boyfriend. I don’t understand. Did he mean it?

Matt’s checking on me more than he’s letting on. I sense every one of his head twitches, feel his eyes dart towards my face.

I stand up suddenly. ‘My round for tea. Anyone?’ I announce in an overly-chirpy voice.

He pulls his headphones around his neck. ‘No tea for me. You OK? Honestly April, I’m happy to do this shift if you’d rather not.’

‘I’m fine!’ I collect my mug and make a thumbs-up/thumbs-down motion to Katy to see if she wants in. She shakes her head. I act like the day hasn’t shifted entirely, like my life doesn’t feel like a shaken snow globe. ‘Tea coming right up,’ I mutter to myself.

I stand in the grotty kitchen, gulping down the tea without tasting it. I’m in the office. I am safe in the office. I am in the present moment. God, this office is a shithole. When I was little, I imagined an office with men in dry-cleaned suits and silken ties and women in power heels with perfect manicures. People would shoot up floors in a sleek, glass lift and have meetings overlooking the London skyline. That is not what a charity office looks like, especially a charity office in a never-ending financial crisis. Since the cuts, we’ve had to relocate again. We’re now uncomfortably snuggled above a high-street estate agent. Twenty of us share a unisex loo where everyone can hear everything and there’s no window to let the smell out. There are no freshly cut flowers at reception or state of the art touchscreen thingamajigs – just an office rota for who’s answering the phones this week and some old lumpy computers we got cheap from an office sale. Oh, and too many desperate young people needing help and not enough of us to help them effectively.

I make myself go back to my chair, then I reach into my clogged handbag and rummage for my lavender oil. I dab it onto my wrists and inhale deeply to further ground myself in.

‘Honestly,’ Matt interrupts again. ‘April, I can take over.’

I look up and smile at his concerned face. Matthew is one of the few things about this job that doesn’t totally destroy my faith in men. ‘You are lovely,’ I tell him, because he is.

‘Ice cream afterwards?’

‘More than lovely.’ I take another deep sniff of my scented pulse points and read through the email message again. I start taking notes, making sure I’ve caught everything, all the fragments of her story and her pain. Then I minimise the window and double-click on my ‘template answers’ folder, pulling up the Word document entitled ‘Raped By My Boyfriend’. Because being raped by your boyfriend is so commonplace the charity has a template answer for it. I tweak the template that contains all the important phrases about it not being her fault, and there being no right or wrong way of dealing with this, and ask her if there’s someone she trusts whom she can talk to. I signpost her towards specialist organisations that can help her further. I offer hope that, in time, she will be able to make sense of this and not let it define her, or her life. I slurp from my cup and check my reply for typos. Then I put the cup down, have one final read-through, and press send. My breathing’s not quite right. It stays lodged in my diaphragm like a lump of wet clay. My computer beeps sharply to inform me my reply’s been received. I picture it arriving in this faceless girl’s inbox – wherever she is in the country. I imagine her refreshing her screen, waiting for this reply, and now it is here. I hope it helps. I picture her feeling soothed by it, less alone. Her crying, but a good sort of crying, a cry that leads you to the start of a hard, but right, path.

I’m helping I’m helping I’m helping, I say over and over to myself, and let the thought seep in, spread out, and calm me down again.

Matt again. Looking over my monitor. ‘Just read through your answer,’ he says. ‘You got the tone spot on.’

I sigh and hang my head back, staring up at a loose ceiling-tile. ‘Cheers buddy.’

‘Just say when, re the ice cream. The rest of the inbox is pretty standard. You’ve got a 23-year-old virgin to look forward to, and someone who wants to know if you can get pregnant from a toilet seat.’

I smile up at him. ‘I can’t talk about my job on my date tonight, can I?’ I ask. Simon is back in my thoughts now that I’ve pushed through the trigger. Hope blossoms through my bloodstream. ‘Not sure if sperm on toilet seats is appropriate date-conversation fodder, is it?’

‘Google it,’ Matt smiles back.