Cornettos. ‘Be quick, they’ve almost melted.’ He hands me mine and sits alongside me.
‘Cheers.’
The only noise for a while is the sound of us rescuing drips off our melting cones with our tongues. The syrup in the sugar hits my blood and I feel it rejuvenating me, kicking me back into myselfness.
‘What did you need to print off?’ I ask, once we’re done. I hold out my hand and take his sticky wrapper.
‘It’s cheesy, but I reckon it will cheer you up.’
‘Not like you to be cheesy, Matt.’
His eyes laugh behind his glasses as I return from the neighbouring bin. He is a proper wotsit, it has to be said. He once showed me the Valentine’s Day card he’d spent two weeks making for his boyfriend. It was a hand-sketch of all his favourite things. Though it would’ve been more romantic without the butt-plug.
He gets out a stack of papers from his pocket, unfolds them, and rustles them like a newsreader. ‘I just thought, after another tough shift, you could do with some affirmation about why we do this.’ He coughs as I sit down, and starts to read off the page:
‘Dear Are You There, thank you so much for your reply. I was feeling really lost and scared, but now I feel less alone and like I know what to do next.’ I resist the urge to roll my eyes at how … Disney this all is, because I don’t want to hurt his feelings, and I let him move onto the next page. And that’s the one that gets me.
‘Thank you Are You There. Your service has helped me realise that I was, in fact, raped – which still feels weird to be typing. I rang Rape Crisis, as you suggested, and they’ve been brilliant and I have a counselling session set up for next month. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t found your charity. I already feel a bit like me again.’
My throat tripwires. The edges of my heart melt a little. ‘OK, OK, OK,’ I say. ‘I get the point, Oprah.’
‘Are you sure? I’ve got loads more. I’m in the middle of compiling the user satisfaction survey to help fundraising with our bid for Comic Relief.’
‘I get the gist, thank you. I really am fine.’
‘She says, with the vein still bulging in her forehead.’
I laugh and scatter some of the ducks that had started edging towards our feet in the hope of cone crumbs. ‘I honestly am fine.’
‘I know you are. But it helps to be reminded of why we put up with the harder bits of this job.’
I reach over for his sheet and reread it under the glaring light of the sun. Getting feedback is quite rare in our job and we’re trained to cope with this. Because we’re an online service, you don’t get to see or hear the impact you’ve had very often. Ninety per cent of the time you send off your advice and never hear anything ever again. It’s a shame because the feedback is what gives me the high. I used to read and reread these comments when they came through, letting them pour balm over my wounds, but now they’re losing their impact a bit. I get that Matt is just trying to help, but when I look down and see what this girl has written, I don’t feel soothed that I’m helping so much, more angry that she had to go through this in the first place.
I hand it back to him. ‘I do hate men,’ I tell him.
‘God, tell me about it.’
‘Obviously you don’t count.’ I have to admit Matt does not fall into that bracket. Some men have levelled up. They’re rarer than vaginal orgasms, and most of them are gay, but some of them are good.
He grins again. ‘Remember what they said in training. If you worked for a charity that deals with victims of dog bites, you’d start to believe that all dogs bite. Whereas, the truth is, at least four dogs have walked past us since we sat at this bench, and not one of them has bitten us.’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’
‘Don’t forget, I can always take over your shift.’ He lifts up his arms, stretching to reveal sweat marks under his shirt. ‘Ready to go back?’
It really is filthy hot out here, but I want to stay out a little longer. I shake my head. ‘I’m going to have five more minutes, if that’s OK?’