Free Call of the White by Felicity Aston Page B

have been. I immediately apologised for eating in front of her and pushed my food to one side, feeling awful. Sandra didn’t seem to mind, but I still felt guilty for not being more sensitive. She handed me an envelope of papers and a copy of the schedule she had prepared for the next five days. She ran me through what I was doing, where I should be and who I was going to meet. I didn’t need to think a single thought of my own; Sandra had it all covered.
    The Singapore interviews started early the next day in a classroom at the British Council. The first candidate was an army officer who had written eloquently in her application form about her belief that there was a significant need in Singapore for positive female role models. During the interview she spoke in such a soft voice that I could barely hear her. Her job involved being in charge of large groups of soldiers on a daily basis, which seemed totally at odds with this painfully timid woman struggling to keep her nerves under control.
    Later followed a woman who had been a member of the Singapore Women’s Everest Team, who, from the moment she sat down, gave the impression that she had already assumed I would offer her the place. She seemed to see the interview as a rather tiresome formality. She casually passed me copies of glowing references written by former expedition teammates. The references described a very different person from the one sat in front of me and I wondered if her manner was due not to arrogance but a supreme confidence that was backfiring. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take the word of a reference, I had to make the decision based on what I myself had seen and in this case I had made my decision before she had even left the room. Later that evening when I called to thank her for coming to the interview, but break the news that she hadn’t been selected, she was angry. ‘But why?’ she demanded. ‘I am the perfect candidate.’ I tried to respond fairly but her attitude riled me. It didn’t help that I was still smarting from an email I’d received from an applicant who hadn’t been asked for an interview:
    To say I am deeply disappointed is an understatement. It was a very crushing revelation for me not to be shortlisted. So I reviewed what went ‘wrong’. I looked hard at your comments on the successful ladies and realised perhaps your semi-finalists weren’t altogether the ‘ordinary’ women I was led to believe is what your expedition is looking for. I can’t help but wonder if I should have just written a scripted application to yourselves and thereby given myself a better chance?
    This wasn’t the first critical email I’d received from an unsuccessful applicant but I was working so hard to make the expedition as open to as many people as possible that I found the suggestion that there was a conspiracy behind my choices particularly frustrating.
    There certainly wasn’t anything false or scripted about the two women I had selected from the Singapore interviews. The first, Sophia, carried her inner confidence as visibly as a neon sign. She was a busy mother of three with two demanding jobs and it was clear that she didn’t have the time or the inclination for any nonsense. She arrived for her interview in a casual tracksuit and I got the impression that it was just another item on her to-do list that she was squeezing into a typically manic day. She was petite but wiry, with defined muscles on her arms, a physique that was explained by her part-time job as a kick-boxing and aerobics instructor. When I asked Sophia how she felt about leaving her children for two or three months, she waved the issue aside. ‘When I filled in my application form my eldest daughter said to me, “Mum, it will be a miracle if you get chosen.” I want to go on this expedition to show my daughter that miracles do come true and that it is OK to dream big. The important thing