Twenty-four Seven by Short Stop Press an Imprint of A&A Book Publishing

— Dawn O’Neil, CEO Lifeline Australia.

“Twenty-four Seven really moves. The novel is full of pace, action and realistic characters who are living, scheming and trying to survive in a world few of us know — that of telephone counselling. It’s a great, unputdownable read.” — John Harman, author, ghostwriter, scriptwriter. Twenty-Four Seven psychologist and telephone counsellor Cherie Dexter is on call; not only to clients in distress but also to her aging father Tom, who is rapidly slipping into dementia. On top of the daily chaos, she must fight to keep her business afloat and her hare-brained partners under control. Just when she thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong, it does, and Cherie finds herself embroiled in a life and death situation that puts all her skills and training to the test. Could telephone counselling really be this dangerous? Part proceeds from sales of this book go to support the work of Lifeline.

About the author With a background in psychology, Shirley Eldridge has worked extensively in the welfare sector across Australia. For seven years she delivered suicide intervention programs across WA on behalf of Lifeline as well as trained telephone counsellors and volunteered as one herself. Fiction/Adult/Relationships

ISBN 978-0-9805055-5-9

9 780980 505559

TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN SHIRLEY ELDRIDGE

“Fascinating…an excellent read which I am sure readers will find compelling.”

She didn't know that telephone counselling could be this dangerous.

SHIRLEY ELDRIDGE

TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN SHIRLEY ELDRIDGE

SHORT STOP PRESS An Imprint of A&A BOOK PUBLISHING www.shortstoppress.com admin@aampersanda.com www.aampersanda.com ISBN 978-0-9805055-5-9 First published 2010 Text ÂŠ Shirley Eldridge 2010 All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers. Cover photography and author photos by Abigail Harman Photography Cover and text: Wave Source Design â&#x20AC;&#x201D; www.wavesource.com.au A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry for this title can be found in the National Library of Australia

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Twenty-Four Seven was inspired by my time with Lifeline in both the mid eighties in Sydney and the late nineties, through to 2005, in Perth, where I worked in a variety of roles. Telephone counselling is Lifelineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core business, and the services it provides to anyone, anytime, anywhere in Australia, would not exist without thousands of well-trained, volunteer telephone counsellors. Lifeline has over ten thousand volunteers, more than three thousand five hundred of whom are involved in telephone counselling. Of the one thousand two hundred calls it receives daily, more than forty calls are from people at high risk of suicide. We often see and hear about Volunteer Fire Fighters, Surf Lifesavers and SES workers who all perform fantastic work and save lives. But, because of the confidential nature of telephone counsellorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work, we never get to see or hear about the thousands of lives they save, nor the peace of mind they bring to many of their callers. This book honours all telephone counsellors, past and present, and acknowledges the contribution they make to humanity.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my sister, Dorothy Frei, warmest thanks for sharing your extensive knowledge and being such a caring critic. To my writing guru, John Harman, big mobs of thanks for your support and encouragement. To my good friend, Margo Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Byrne, as we travel parallel paths, thank you for your generosity. To my husband, Barry, thank you for tolerating, without complaint, my prolonged absences when I have my head buried in the computer for days and months at a time. To my kind friends, including my daughter Emily, who read the manuscript at various stages of its development and offered advice, thank you, too. Twenty-Four Seven is truly a joint effort.

CHAPTER ONE

Monday

She heard the phone ringing. ‘Damn,’ she muttered, hurling herself through the front door. She’d abandoned her Mercedes sports in the rain on the circular driveway and sprinted up the stone steps. Sprinting hadn’t helped, she was drenched. She dropped her boutique bags in the foyer and raced to her office. Flopping into the leather chair, she panted into the mouth piece, ‘Hello, this is Cherie from Twenty-Four Seven Counselling, how can I help you?’ She kicked off her sodden shoes, rueful she couldn’t take the time to switch off the outside world and settle down with dry clothes before focussing on the first client of her shift. ‘That stinking bitch of a wife of mine has gone too far this time. I ought to put her and her conniving lawyer up against a wall and shoot them both!’ Charming, she thought, but immediately identified

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the topic. Over sixty percent of the calls the business received were about relationship problems. Without much encouragement from Cherie, the man poured out his situation. ‘Juanita Suarez — that’s her lawyer — advised Ella not to move out. I know what they’re up to. They’re trying to force me out instead. My own fucking property! Like hell I’ll move. I’ll make her regret this. She’s only doing this to aggravate me! I’ll show her.’ Cherie shuddered at the man’s unrestrained anger. As he drew breath, she calmly acknowledged his anger and frustration, not so much with empathy, because she couldn’t find any, but with a rote response from her clinical training. Then she added, ‘It sounds as though you’re feeling threatened by her lawyer’s recommendations?’ His tone mellowed a little. ‘Of course I am.’ ‘So you’ve just found out about this?’ ‘Yes. No. Well, you know, you won’t believe what the bitch has just done. She’s taken a pair of scissors and chopped up all my clothes: pants, shirts, even my Armani jacket.’ He raised his voice again. ‘And my fucking uniforms too! Unbelievable! Bitch! Where does she get off doing this? I’ll cut up more than her fucking clothes… mmm.’ His voice trailed off. Cherie guessed he was considering his act of revenge. He went on, ‘Yeah… maybe…ah, but the stinking cow’s got a lock on her bedroom door now.’ Disappointment echoed in his voice. ‘Seems like you’re feeling seriously agitated at the moment.’ A little off balance herself, Cherie stroked her arm, hoping the soothing sensation she felt would 2

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transfer down the line. ‘What do you reckon prompted her to massacre your clothes?’ She knew her gentle tone, together with her validation of his emotions, impacted on him because he responded by reducing the volume and speed of his voice. Concentrating on his tone, Cherie stared across the expanse of the desk at the blank, timber-panelled wall. When she’d moved in with her father, an early Pro Hart painting hung on that wall. Although she thought the stick figures were clever, she’d removed the painting because it took her attention away from the callers’ tones, where most of the clues to their emotional state were found. More calmly the guy said, ‘She was raving on and on about what she was planning to do. I got really pissed off and started yelling back at her. Well, who wouldn’t? She provoked me, the stupid bitch. I finally lost it.’ Cherie heard the agitation skyrocketing again. ‘Ella would drive anyone to it. I chucked a vase; not at her — it hit the wall and smashed — huh, big fat deal.’ Detecting the sarcasm, Cherie pictured him on the other end of the phone shrugging off his behaviour. She guessed from his confession he had a propensity for violence. She let him continue. ‘Work rang and asked if I’d fill in for someone tomorrow. Well, it’s only a one hour flight and back again, so I said I would. She threw a hissy fit just because it was my rostered time off. The bitch thought I was going to stay home and mind the kids for her for a couple of days. Stiff.’ ‘So, you would rather be doing extra work than be 3

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home with the children?’ When Cherie heard different strands of a story, she relied on her intuition to decide what strand to follow through first. She decided to leave this guy’s physical and verbal violence threats till later. He laughed nastily. ‘Nah, I like being with the kids. I just wanted to stuff up her three days at the health farm with her girlfriends.’ Cherie laboured to find a skerrick of empathy. During her formal studies, she’d learned of a basic counselling concept called Unconditional Positive Regard. Defining it was easy. Practising it was another matter. In most instances, she managed to feel positive regard for her clients by separating and rejecting, when compelled, their negative behaviours so she could respect them unconditionally. Occasions such as this one, though, challenged her ability to isolate the goodness of the person from their behaviour, and so, this time, she failed on all counts. Checking out the obvious, she said, ‘What’s stopping you from moving out if the situation is so bad?’ ‘I was advised not to leave. And besides, why should I? It’s my house. She can bugger off.’ ‘You were advised?’ ‘Yeah, Phil, my mate. He’s my lawyer too.’ ‘What did Phil actually say?’ ‘Something like, “Joshua, you need to hang in there, mate, or you might lose the house to her.” That, I’ll tell you, was a wake-up call.’ ‘Uh-huh, and does Phil have any idea of the animosity and aggression in the house?’ 4

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‘It’s only just getting bad.’ ‘And you mentioned children?’ He had two: Simon and Michelle. ‘I told the bitch I’d do whatever it took to make sure she doesn’t get custody. That worried her. You should have heard her threaten me…Threaten me!’ He sounded indignant. ‘She actually told me I’d better reconsider.’ He took a deep breath before adding, ‘I know who needs to fucking think again, and it’s not me.’ Cherie was tiring of listening to his swearing and name-calling. He spoke more like a truckie than an airline pilot. No, that wasn’t fair to the truckies she knew at her father’s transport business. They could teach this bloke a thing or two about self-restraint and manners. She’d been taking notes, and now had Joshua’s family mapped. ‘So, you want to fight for custody of Simon and Michelle? How do you think they’re coping with what they’re witnessing?’ He told her the children hadn’t witnessed Ella chopping up his clothes, nor their yelling match, although they had seen the discarded clothes in the front yard when they came in from school. ‘I told them their crazy mother had gone berserk before she took off. I took photos of what she did, so I’ve got proof she’s a nut case and a lousy mother,’ he snarled. ‘What can you do to keep the children protected?’ Cherie knew this man and his needs should be the centre of her attention, but she couldn’t help visualising the confusion and fear little Simon and Michelle must have experienced when they encountered the ugly aftermath 5

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of the altercation. Cherie felt obliged to force Joshua to consider their wellbeing. She wondered what his wife must be like since he judged himself the better parent. She shivered. The air conditioning was drying her out. Her assistant had brought in a towel and draped it across her shoulders that were not only damp but knotted up with tension. She longed for dry clothes, along with a massage to release the stress. Standing up, she stretched, rotated her shoulders, and walked around the coffee table and chairs, noting the wind was abating, the rain easing to drizzle. When she opened the window, she was overcome by the pungent perfume of the wet gardenias growing against the ivy covered bricks. Her jaw unclenched momentarily when she closed her eyes and breathed in nature’s gentleness. ‘Ella’s just too smart,’ Joshua continued. Cherie snapped back to attention. ‘She’s trying to set me up. I can see it. I’m going to have to think of a way to get even without affecting the kids.’ This was not the direction Cherie intended him to take in protecting his children. Although she’d deflected his attention from himself and towards his children, he brought it right back to his feud. She understood his need not to be dispossessed of them, but she couldn’t comprehend his non-negotiable attachment to his house. Surely it was their house? While she stood by the open window, mindlessly watching the rain droplets run together on the angular leaves of the liquid amber tree, slip off the edge, and plop heavily onto the ground, she asked for clarification. 6

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She heard the malice in his voice being replaced by pride. ‘You’ve gotta see this place to believe it: sandstone, with gables and turrets; the works. A real piece of architecture.’ He went on to explain how he’d acquired it. ‘My uncle died a couple of years ago, and I was the closest rellie. He had a son, but he died of leukaemia. That was my good fortune.’ His voice changed. ‘But I should never have let Ella move in here in the first place. A big mistake.’ ‘Surely the next generation will be your two children?’ Cherie reasoned. ‘In the meantime, that bitch isn’t going to get her hands on it. Can you imagine me seeing her with some bloke living in my house here with my kids? Not fucking likely. I’d kill her first.’ He sounded convincing. Cherie wanted to test the depth of this couple’s relationship, although she doubted there was even a morsel of respect between them to be retrieved. ‘What began the fighting between you and Ella?’ After several seconds passed, he recounted, ‘She did. Just after Simon — he’s the youngest — was born, I needed a break from things. That was about ten years back. I went off for a bit…Just for a couple of months,’ he explained, as though his actions were perfectly normal for a new father, ‘but when I came back, it was never the same. She’d changed. She never made an effort after that. I kept telling the stupid bitch I simply needed time out to clear my head. It made me realise just how much I missed them and loved them all. But she turned nasty.’ 7

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‘Then what?’ ‘We just sort of hung together for the sake of the kids. But no more. No more. She blames me all the time for everything. She never really tried to understand me.’ Cherie sat down, leaned back in the chair and stretched again, before hooking her feet under the carved legs holding the castors. She pivoted from the blank wall in front of her so she faced the window. She was astounded by Joshua’s lack of insight into the cause of their marriage collapse. More than astounded. How could he be so dense? She found herself slipping into a dangerous judgemental mode. Sitting bolt upright, she tried to shake off those thoughts. Regardless of what the text books said about Unconditional Positive Regard, she realised her personal experiences overrode all else. She’d known a few deceitful males who lacked a conscience before this one on the end of the phone, and it was confounding her judgement. Sure, Joshua had the right to be aggrieved about his slaughtered clothes, but as for the way he abandoned his family and expected to simply resume family life when he returned, well, how could she possibly explain its unacceptability to him if he didn’t get it? Grimacing, she clenched her jaw, chastising herself for again becoming critical. At this point, her role was to identify the main issue among the many he’d raised. Glancing down at her notes with circles around names, lines and arrows denoting connections, and with events having underscores and more lines, she summarised what she’d heard to date, using all the names he’d given. She finished off her summary by confirming what 8

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she deemed to be the primary need. ‘It sounds as though you’d like to find a way to keep the family home and claim custody of Michelle and Simon, while you move towards your separation with no more violence?’ she posited. ‘Yes, that’s it. So, how can I do that?’ After she successfully verbalised the issue, clients often assumed she held the solutions for them. She could understand why, although that wasn’t how counselling worked. In her view, calling what she did counselling was a bit of a misnomer because if there’s one thing she didn’t do, it was hand out solutions. After she completed step one with Joshua, which was collecting his story, she accomplished step two, where she defined the issue. She preferred to use the word issue because she hated the negative connotations of the word problem. It was now time to guide him, with questions, to his own solutions. From a practical perspective, advancing the current situation seemed to depend on the recommendations of the two lawyers, coupled with the time taken to bring about action. She saw the dilemma. Each lawyer worked to optimise the outcome for their individual client, yet the needs clashed. From an emotional perspective, which was the area of Cherie’s speciality, this client needed help to find an appropriate outlet for his anger, even though he’d been well provoked. The most worrying part was that he was still angry and wanted revenge. ‘What do you do for exercise?’ ‘I work out at a gym. Why?’ 9

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She knew physical exercise helped work off aggression, so they developed a short-term strategy together. First he would organise something to wear to work tomorrow. Following that, he’d go to the gym before meeting a friend for dinner and talk about anything but the home situation. ‘Do you think you can avoid alcohol tonight?’ She was concerned its effect would change the emotional dynamics for him where the outcome could result in an escalation of his aggression. ‘I don’t drink.’ Her relief was tainted by a touch of scepticism. Was he lying? But, until her clients proved otherwise, she believed them, even this one. They further agreed that, before he left the house, he’d make time to sit with the children, and tomorrow, after work, he would get a lock for his door. ‘And will you promise if you feel provoked in any way, and have an urge to act on it, you’ll ring us back? Whoever answers will find me if you ask for Cherie.’ She set an appointment for a follow up call the next evening on the non-emergency counselling number. She planned to help him manage one day at a time. As soon as she hung up, Lillian, her assistant, appeared in the doorway dressed in her plain grey suit adorned only with a strand of pearls. From her gnarled fingers dangled the results of Cherie’s shopping trip. ‘Well, what have you bought?’ ‘I’m dying to show you, Lill. A stunning suit and a pair of shoes. I’d better enter this data and find some dry clothes first. 10

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Lillian shook her head, casting her eyes downward over Cherie’s dampness. ‘You need to take better care of yourself, Cherie, dear.’ Cherie paused for a moment to recall how good she’d looked in the new suit, before she returned to the keyboard. Reducing the last client’s vicious outbursts to a set of numbers in boxes with brief notes attached felt cold and impersonal after sharing such emotional turmoil. Lillian would collate the data, as well as perform some statistical analyses, for the next monthly meeting from all of the twenty-three telephone counsellors. Knowing there were at least two other counsellors on shift in their own homes, Cherie busied the phone line before carrying the damp towel and soggy shoes through the entry foyer and down the hallway toward the back of the house. She opened the security door leading into the open-plan family, dining and sitting area where a glass roofed atrium adjoined. The burnt caramel aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted from the kitchen on her right. She opened her mouth to greet her father, who was standing facing the far wall, but was surprised into silence when she saw the paint brush in his hand. He turned to acknowledge her. ‘Hello, Cherie. It’s a good colour,’ he exclaimed, turning back to admire his work. ‘Yes, Dad, but the wallpaper doesn’t really need painting.’ She spoke calmly, but her tone belied her internal state. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Mrs Johnson, where are you?’ she called upward 11

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into the stairwell. ‘Coming, Cherie.’ Turning to her father, who, unaware anything was amiss, had resumed his painting, Cherie tripped on Chloe, their old blind poodle, sniffing around her ankles. Why was everything and everyone in this house so damn old? Struck by a wave of guilt, she bent and stroked Chloe slowly and repetitively from head to tail, ignoring her father’s handiwork, while she waited for Mrs Johnson to take control. ‘Oh my goodness, Mr Dexter, look what you’re doing.’ Mrs Johnson approached him with her hand extended. She wouldn’t call him Tom, even though she belonged to his generation. Her eyes were wide in amazement. ‘And a great job too, Mr Dexter,’ she said, adapting to the situation. Her movements were gentle as she dislodged the paint brush from his fingers before picking up the paint tin from the tiled floor. ‘Now will you come with me?’ she invited. ‘I need help to clean up out in the garage.’ As he followed, grumbling and protesting, he cast a disapproving look at Cherie. On her way through the laundry door, leading directly to the garage, Mrs Johnson turned. ‘I’m sorry, Cherie. I was sorting some of his old work clothes. He’s so quick.’ Cherie smiled her forgiveness. Mrs Johnson spent forty hours a week, including weekends, with him. With patience and respect, she understood and catered for his needs better than Cherie. In return, Cherie’s father was usually compliant with Mrs Johnson, which was not always the case with Cherie. 12

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‘I’ll remove all the paint from the garage when I put my car away, Mrs Johnson.’ Cherie moved her Merc during the day so her father could tinker with his tools and garden equipment in his workshop at the back of the garage. For his safety, she’d already removed the electrical tools. Cherie followed them into the garage and soaked a rag with the mineral turps her father was using to clean the brush under Mrs Johnson’s guidance. Returning to the scene of the vandalism, she scrubbed the yellow splotch on the cream embossed wallpaper till it paled to lemon. Maybe she could conceal it with a painting. She heard the sound of hammering coming from the garage. Good. He was occupied safely once more. After Cherie threw the rag in the bin, she washed her hands, but they still reeked, and her nails were wrecked. She was proud of her hands and her long elegant fingers. Her friends constantly complimented her on them. How, she wondered, was she going to find time to have the nails repaired? And where had that yellow paint originated? Nothing in this house had ever seen anything so bright, even during the new office renovations. Her own apartment, now being rented out to help pay off her mortgage, flew into her mind. That was it. After she’d highlighted a feature wall in the kitchen with her favourite colour, she’d stored her paint and brushes in her father’s garage. Glancing at her watch, she decided to abandon the quest for dry clothes. She’d been away from the phone too long. Punching in the numbers on the security pad on the door leading back to the office, she thought about 13

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how much both the house and her own life had changed to cater for her father’s needs. She’d moved home four months ago to supervise his care, after converting the formal lounge and dining areas to office space. His study, on the opposite side of the entrance foyer to the original formal living areas, became her office. Back in that office, she reinstated the phone line, attaching the earpiece ready for the next call, before walking, barefooted and dishevelled, into Lillian’s office, which she shared with a part-timer, Vanessa, another antique employee. The state-of-the-art equipment was about the only concession to modernity, although it was concealed behind timber panelled facades so the room remained as conservative as the rest of the period house. When Cherie entered, Lillian turned slowly, and, with her hand pressed into the arch of her back, straightened up from her search for a file in a lower cabinet drawer. ‘How’s the arthritis, Lill?’ Lillian smiled. ‘I knew it would rain long before the clouds gathered.’ She pointed to her swollen knuckles. ‘A better predictor than the weather forecast.’ ‘It must be painful.’ Lillian shrugged. ‘How’s Mr Dexter?’ She’d been Tom Dexter’s right hand for years before his forced retirement. Cherie was grateful Lillian and Vanessa agreed to work for her within the home environment after experiencing the luxury of the high rise city office with all the trappings. She trusted them. They were more at ease with the counselling software programs, communications systems and rosters than she was. 14

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‘Dad’s out in the workshop building something,’ Cherie replied, keeping to the basics. After an episode a few weeks ago when her father dug a hole in the middle of the lawn and filled it with screws, Lillian almost cried. Cherie shrugged it off, along with other mishaps. But she knew Lillian liked to remember her original employer as a powerful business man with a positive public image. When Cherie told Lillian one morning last week, ‘You should have heard the noise Dad made last night crunching the shells along with the pistachio nuts when he forgot to remove them,’ she expected a smile from Lillian, or at least a comment on the strength of his teeth. Instead, Lillian patted the tears from her eyes, shook her head and said, ‘Oh, Cherie, that’s so sad.’ It dawned on Cherie that Lillian simply couldn’t reconcile her father’s current actions, depicting him as a man progressively and rapidly losing his abilities, with the mining and transport magnate Lill so admired. After the nut incident, Cherie decided to limit the reports on her father to save Lillian from becoming upset. Besides, she needed Lillian to concentrate on the details of Twenty-Four Seven Counselling and not family dramas. ‘You really need to change your clothes, Cherie, dear.’ Cherie smiled. ‘Yes, Aunty Lill. Can you divert the line to my mobile and I’ll take it upstairs with me.’ But the counselling line rang before Lillian had a chance to act. Cherie grimaced on her way to her office to answer the call. Lifting the phone she heard distress and confusion. Agonisingly, and with effort, she was able 15

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to extract the story, piece by piece. The task was akin to constructing a jigsaw puzzle without knowing the subject or where the random pieces, thrown in one at a time, fitted. She jotted notes on her pad, which, when she numbered them chronologically, read: “female, fortyish?, in phone box, can’t return to her apartment, raped two years ago at another apartment, tried to enter latest apartment five minutes ago, hallway blacked-out, suffering a flash-back”. The woman recounted the rape at Cherie’s invitation. Cherie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up when the woman said, ‘I knew he was planning to slit my throat with the knife. I could feel the blood trickling down my neck where he held it. It had an old wooden handle, like a fishing knife my father use to have.’ Her terror pulsed down the line while she relived this fully-refreshed two-year old fear. Cherie wanted to reach down the phone line and wrap her arms around the woman. At times such as this, she missed the face-to-face counselling sessions she’d facilitated in the clinic she ran prior to establishing the phone counselling business. It was extremely unlikely, though, that this woman would ever have walked in off the street, even if there’d been an available appointment. Sitting opposite the clients had permitted Cherie access to all the visual cues from which she could deduce, through expressions and body language, more of what was actually happening. The words a client used were such a miniscule component of the interaction. Now, apart from the words she 16

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heard on the phone, Cherie could rely only on tone, pace and volume to guess emotions, although this woman, thankfully, was easy to read. After completing the jigsaw, Cherie helped the rape victim find some coping methods. ‘I want you to think of a place you’ve been where you’ve felt completely safe and relaxed,’ Cherie suggested. After a while, the caller recalled, ‘The beach in front of our holiday house when I was a child. It was always warm.’ ‘That’s great,’ Cherie said. ‘Now I want you to do something for me. Close your eyes. Go to that beach in your mind. Feel the warmth, feel the familiarity. You’re safe there. Stay as long as you need. Soak it all in. Tell me when you’re ready to come back.’ Cherie waited. The woman’s voice was calm. ‘I’m feeling better. I feel such an idiot now.’ ‘You’ve had what’s called a flashback. You might have more. If it happens again, I hope you’ll be able to use the exercise.’ Cherie invited the woman to call again for follow up. She declined. A movement at the front door caught Cherie’s eye. She smiled as she absent-mindedly signalled good-bye to the knobbly fingers waving like stunted octopus tentacles when Lillian walked out. A flood of warm, sticky, post-rain air rushed in through the open door. The sudden change in temperature gave Cherie goose bumps. After terminating the call, she looked at her watch. It was nearly six o’clock. She pulled the keyboard towards her, intending to enter the latest caller information, when the phone rang again. 17

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Picking up, she went through her usual spiel. Child-like nervousness spoke, ‘Can I talk to someone…about…you know…something?’ Cherie’s voice carried warmth. ‘Sure you can, but before we begin, I’m wondering if you listened to the prerecorded message when you rang? You know, about the cost of this call?’ Cherie heard the child’s bewildered, ‘No?’ ‘Does anyone know you’re calling?’ ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Well, this call can cost lots of money, and it will show up on a phone bill. I don’t want you to get in any trouble.’ ‘What can I do?’ The child was crying. ‘I found this number on the fridge.’ ‘I’ll tell you what we can do: I’ll give you the number of Kids’ Help Line. It’s free, and it won’t show up on the bill. You’ll be able to talk to someone closer to your age. That might be more comfortable for you.’ Cherie passed on the number and wished the girl well. Although she didn’t specialise in children, she would have managed the call had a parent been present and approved of it along with the cost. As it stood, she didn’t want the business to attract adverse publicity through ripping off the parents of innocent children. When she finished on the computer, she became aware of the world away from her work as she heard the familiar rattles and clatters of a meal being prepared in the kitchen. She sighed, contemplating what the next encounter with her father might bring.

— Dawn O’Neil, CEO Lifeline Australia.

ISBN 978-0-9805055-5-9

9 780980 505559

TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN SHIRLEY ELDRIDGE

“Fascinating…an excellent read which I am sure readers will find compelling.”

She didn't know that telephone counselling could be this dangerous.

SHIRLEY ELDRIDGE