After You

Finn

Alfie,

I've been rejected from university.

I know in the grand scheme of everything that's happened in the last eight months, getting rejected from all the universities I applied for is a really tiny thing to complain about, but I'm really disappointed. Coming home from the inquest to the fifth rejection in a row felt like the perfect way to end a really shitty day.

I shouldn't be surprised. My grades haven't been good since everything that happened and I don't think my personal statement was great either and even Mr Blakemore said it was muddled and needed a few more drafts but we were right at the UCAS deadline so what choice did I have? I sent it and hoped for the best and now I've got no options for university. Willow keeps telling me to apply through Clearing but I don't think she gets it. When I say my grades aren't good I don't just mean like oh no I got a B in this mock exam. I was getting Bs and Cs at AS Level, I'll now be lucky to scrape a D in Biology, and the others are fairly solid E grades.

I'm not angry at you. I mean, even if I was, I have no right to be. Willow's grades have managed to stay up, because she's throwing everything she has into school work at the moment. It distracts her from everything else going on, I suppose. She was your girlfriend so I have no right to say that I'm more affected by your death than she is and that's why my grades are dropping. I just don't have the motivation to study. I don't even think I want to study Biology any more, which is stupid because it's all I've wanted to study since I was a kid. I've never considered other options because I never thought I'd need to.

Maybe I should become a bereavement counsellor instead. I could ask Mrs Linton about it. I know there's more to it behind the scenes than just calling some kids into an office and telling them to write letters to a dead person – she did lots of other stuff in the sessions too, like asking us how we felt and things – but that's the sort of job where you could make a difference, isn't it? You could properly help people if you were a bereavement counsellor. I like the idea of helping people now.

Maybe I'm just clutching at straws. I don't know the first thing about counselling. I'm guessing they want you to have some life experience before you do that. Who's going to want some random eighteen-year-old as their bereavement counsellor? Mrs Linton must be in her fifties or sixties. It's a stupid idea, anyway.

The inquest was difficult. Willow spent most of it in tears, which is unusual for her. She cried a lot at the start, but she's been doing much better recently. I think hearing all the details brought it back. When the coroner said your death would have taken hours, I think everyone was struggling. Willow covered her ears with her hands, she didn't want to listen. I didn't really want to hear it but I felt like I needed to. I need to know as much as I can about what happened to you.

Jacob walked out. I wasn't surprised; the details were pretty brutal, and your parents were in a state. I know the coroner has to go through these things and it's for the best but he wasn't pulling his punches at all. He did say that they could leave whenever they needed to, and I think your mum came close to it at one point, but they needed closure like the rest of us, and to find out why.

I feel bad for Jacob that he left. That was when the coroner started talking about evidence. They turned your room upside down. You didn't leave a suicide note, or even any sort of note giving your final wishes or what you wanted at your funeral. They found books on your bookshelf that were a bit dark – Sylvia Plath, I think they said – but they didn't think this was a factor because you were an English student and loved reading. There were no messages in your phone or laptop to suggest that you were being bullied or threatened or anything like that. The coroner even said that you were popular, you had a girlfriend, you had a good group of friends around you.

I wonder if we were a good group of friends, if you couldn't tell even one of us what you were going through. Can we really call ourselves good friends?

Maybe I wouldn't make a good bereavement counsellor. If my own best friend couldn't tell me what was going on in his life to make him kill himself, why should I think a stranger would want to tell me either?

Finn