Your Perfect Year(6)

“Well, you’re not doing anything else, and you’re on paid leave for six months. Together with your severance pay, the money will last you at least a year. You’re a lucky devil, if you ask me!”

“Lucky?” Simon stared at her in stupefaction.

“Sitting around the house on full pay with the opportunity to write your masterpiece? It’s the stuff of dreams!”

“You know, sometimes your Pollyanna attitude really gets on my nerves. You don’t know what it means to have a crisis-ridden profession like mine.”

Hannah considered it wise to say no more, even if she felt it was a little unjust of Simon to forget so completely how often she had been shattered by the conditions at the daycare centers. And how he himself had until recently liked to tell her how much more responsibility her job had than his, and how unfair it was that she earned so little from it.

She bit down on the remark that maybe it was time for Simon to consider an alternative profession if the situation in the media industry was oh-so-terrible. Because he had a point: she had no idea what it meant to lose one’s perspective on life as well as a job that was supposed to be secure. She was “only” a daycare assistant and had chosen on-the-job training rather than getting a degree—but in its place she did possess an unshakable optimism.

This was evidenced by, among other things, Hannah’s firm conviction that for every door that shut another one opened—often an even better one. But she didn’t say that to Simon, as the most she could expect would be a snarled “Spare me your calendar mottoes.”

No, she was better off leaving Simon to drag himself up from his bad patch by himself. And until he did, he would have to stew in his own juices—or maybe invest in a clown outfit as a precautionary measure . . .

Getting a new job with a newspaper, a magazine, or even an online publication had so far proved difficult. Although he’d applied to them all, including the tiniest outfits, he had received nothing but rejections for weeks. It was hardly morale boosting for him, and it was a cause of quite some tension between him and Hannah.

While she was working away enthusiastically on setting up her new business, Simon’s mood deteriorated with every day he was stuck at home without a job. Secretly, she longed for a return to the early days of their relationship, when Simon had swept her off her feet with his sense of humor, his charm, and his loving manner.

Hannah had met him when he turned up at the daycare center one day to collect his godson. They’d both immediately sensed the chemistry between them, and in the following weeks Simon had turned up rather often to pick up the boy. By chance or intentionally? Probably the latter, as after two months or so, he had asked her if she could maybe see her way to meeting him outside work.

“If I have to wait until I have my own children to see you more often, it could take a while,” he had said. “And that would mean the ideal time had passed us by.” Hannah still broke into a dreamy smile when she thought of the way Simon had asked her out.

She recalled their first date, when Simon had invited her for a picnic on the banks of the Elbe. What a grand affair! The sun had pulled out all the stops on that wonderful day in May, and they had sat at the waterside on his picnic blanket from morning until late into the evening, watching the ships go by and sampling the delicacies Simon had brought in two oversized bags—ice-cold white wine and champagne, fruit juices and water, fruit and cheese, ciabatta, a selection of salads, homemade schnitzel (yes, homemade!), prosciutto, prawns, a range of antipasti—Simon had gone all out to impress Hannah.

He even had the correct glasses, cutlery, crockery, and linen napkins in his bag, and as twilight descended he’d lit two flaming torches. Hannah had felt as if she were at a gala dinner. Well, a gala dinner on the riverbank.

Then there was Simon’s first kiss . . . So shy and sweet, so nervous and trembly; his heart was beating so wildly that she could feel it.

And when they weren’t kissing, he’d talked. He spoke without pause, telling her about his exciting job with the newspaper, about his plans for a round-the-world trip he wanted to embark on one day, and about the great novel he wanted to write as soon as he found the time. He had laughed and joked and told stories, putting Hannah fully under his spell. Such zest for life, such passion, such enthusiasm!

But not long after that day, Simon’s mother, Hilde, had died of cancer, as had his father some ten years before her, and just as he was recovering from the shock, trouble had begun to brew in the media industry.

When his editorial colleagues began having to clear their desks, Simon became ever more uncertain, despondent, and pessimistic, until in the end his greatest fear—that he, too, would be laid off—became reality. Sometimes Hannah couldn’t help thinking he might have talked his layoff into being, so often had he wrung his hands over the possibility.

And ever since then, he’d been at odds with his fate, with his life, and with himself. Hannah could understand it to a point, but at times it got on her nerves, however reluctant she was to admit it. She was convinced that Simon’s attitude was making things worse. He might well have thought it nonsense, but Hannah was sure that a person’s fortune was colored by their attitude: optimists experienced good things, pessimists bad, and the universe would give those who expected the worst what they deserved.

In Hannah’s opinion, viewed objectively, Simon had no real grounds for complaint. He was young and healthy, and he had a roof over his head, enough to eat, and a loving partner by his side—a lot of people in the world were much worse off than that! She really hoped he’d return to his old self as soon as he found a new job.