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.