Your Perfect Year(123)
She had asked him not to confront his father with it, that it would be the end of him. Because, she assured Jonathan, Wolfgang Grief was only too aware, deep down, of his guilt. And he regretted it a hundredfold, even if he’d been unable to show it to his son. No one had ever taught him how to deal with emotions, just as he in turn had been unable to teach Jonathan. Ineptitude, indeed. But not malice.
Jonathan didn’t know whether to believe any of it. Whether he could believe it. Whether he wanted to believe it. But ultimately, what difference did it make?
So he sat in the taxi and thought about it all. About what was to be done now. There was a lot—but one thing at a time. So much time had passed that a few weeks wouldn’t make much difference. It all needed to be thought through and tackled calmly.
So calmly, that no sooner had Jonathan N. Grief arrived home than he was on the phone to Leopold.
“Jonathan?” his friend said sleepily. “What do you want? It’s after midnight. I have to be up early tomorrow morning!”
“Listen to me, hobo,” Jonathan said. “You’re leaving your job at the café tomorrow.”
“I’m doing what?”
“Leaving your job!”
“Why should I?”
“Because from now on you’re my CEO at Grief & Son Books.”
“Jonathan?”
“Yes?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Not a drop. I’ve never seen more clearly in my life.”
“But how’s that going to work?”
“We’ll see how. Don’t worry, I’ll make perfectly sure it’s not too stressful for you. And that you have plenty of mineral water with lemon in your office.”
“You’re out of your mind! I can’t.”
“Selling things is the same, whatever the product. If you can do scrambled eggs, you can do books.”
Jonathan hung up without giving Leopold the chance to argue further. Fine. One thing done. And on Thursday morning, as soon as the shops were open, he would go out and buy a diary.
A Filofax, a particularly nice one, leather-bound, for the following year.
68
Hannah
Monday, December 24, 12:28 p.m.
Silent night, holy night . . .
Hannah glanced surreptitiously at her watch. She and Lisa were running through one classic Christmas carol after another with the charges, who had been dropped off at Little Rascals at ten by stressed-out parents dashing off to do some last-minute shopping and put up Christmas trees.
The kids were having fun, but Hannah was having a day from hell. She only had to think of the “Christmas spirit” and she felt ill.
This was her first Christmas in five years without Simon. Granted, he had never been a big fan of all the fuss surrounding the holidays, considering Christmas to be a purely commercial invention of the retail trade (although they always gave each other a gift), and saying that Hannah’s weakness for bratwurst hot dogs and mulled wine at the Hamburg Christmas markets was an incomprehensible departure from her otherwise excellent taste, an extravagance that simply wasn’t necessary on top of all the stress people had at that time of year.
For that very reason, she had urged him in the diary to accompany her to one of the markets—at least after Christmas, since many of them were open until New Year’s Eve. She’d wanted to try to convey to Simon the special, romantic atmosphere of the muted lighting and seasonal music.
Well, it was taking a lot of effort for Hannah to come to terms with the seasonal music. Another Christmas carol from a screeching child’s lips, and she would probably lose it.
But it was almost one o’clock; she could survive the last half hour. That was when they were due to shut up shop, and she could leave all the hearty cheerfulness behind. At least until December 31. On New Year’s Eve, they were due to open the whole day for parents who were, as ever, taken by surprise when the date came around, as if it didn’t every year, and had to dash out to get nibbles for parties and a supply of fireworks. Hannah and Lisa planned a day off on January first, and then it would all take off again on the second. Yes, Little Rascals was going well, there was no denying it.
But once again, Hannah’s tears were flowing freely. She hadn’t noticed until Lisa gently brushed her cheek with her hand that she must have begun to cry sometime during “O Christmas Tree.”
It was only natural that her waterworks were at the ready. The man who had effectively been her fiancé was dead, and to add insult to injury, she had a good dose of lovesickness. Well, not such a good dose; she hadn’t known Jonathan long enough for that. And she was ashamed to even think the word lovesick, given that Simon hadn’t been dead for a year yet. It was more like . . . a small but very concentrated, painful feeling of melancholy. A feeling of being abandoned. Betrayed by the man she had thought to be something special, if only for a brief time. Someone fate had delivered into her hands.
Stupid fate! Even the mail service was more reliable!
“Will you be all right?” Lisa asked shortly before two as they were tidying up after finally bundling the last little child into the arms of cheerful parents. “At Christmas, I mean?”
“Yes, of course,” Hannah replied, sniffing and wiping her nose with her sleeve. “When the festivities are over, I’m going to lie down under my parents’ Christmas tree and sleep until New Year’s.”