Your Perfect Year(62)

I’m grateful for meeting Leopold and the good conversations we’ve had with one another.

He looked at the entry with satisfaction. There! He did have something to be grateful for, genuinely and from the bottom of his heart. And that had nothing to do with the wine, either, even if a loud hiccup escaped as he smiled.

He was about to close the diary again, but he paused and added something:

Tomorrow I’m going to invite him to stay in Tina’s room for the time being. If he accepts, I’ll also be grateful for that, because it’s good to imagine him living in my house.

Jonathan N. Grief set the diary down on the bedside table, hiccupped again, switched the light off, and slid back down under the duvet.

This is going to be great, he thought before his eyes finally closed. A housemate. Why not?





28

Hannah

Three days before:

Sunday, December 31, 11:59 p.m. and 59 seconds

As the first rocket shot up into the Hamburg sky, Hannah didn’t know what to say.

“Happy New Year”?

No, that wouldn’t do.

She was standing with Simon on the small balcony of his apartment, and together they looked out over the Alster at the fireworks being sent up to celebrate the beginning of the new year. He had wrapped both arms around her from behind, his chin resting on the top of her head, and Hannah wished she could stay with him like that forever.

But she knew it wasn’t to be. They had a few more minutes of enjoyment, of losing themselves in the pretense that this was simply a New Year’s Eve like any other—but at some point they would go back inside. And then the hour of reckoning would be upon them both. Except that Simon suspected nothing, and Hannah was terrified. How would he react to her gift?

They hadn’t spoken a word more about his illness since the evening at Da Riccardo. Hannah had tried to broach the subject only once, the following day, but Simon had asked her to leave it be until he felt ready to face the matter again.

Hannah had accepted that; of course she had. She was pleased that it also meant no further mention of their separation, of him cutting her out of his life completely. That should have been enough for the time being. Part of her had even been a little relieved—the part that preferred to hide from reality, like a little child who closes her eyes in the belief that she can’t be seen.

But she had only partly managed to suppress her worries, and she had used the following days, during which she and Simon had acted as though nothing had happened, to put together the diary she was composing for him. She’d begun the morning after the night Lisa had spent with her. She’d bought a particularly nice Filofax in an expensive stationery shop, a fine volume bound in dark-blue leather with white stitched seams, that nestled cozily in her hand.

Hannah liked the idea that the leather would become softer and softer over the years, so soft that Simon would secretly hold it against his cheek from time to time just to enjoy the feel of it. Over the years—many, many years.

Hannah had not hesitated one moment when it came to the first of the ring-bound pages. She had written Your Perfect Year with a fountain pen she had also bought in the stationery shop. Then she had got down to work with feverish enthusiasm, thinking, with Lisa’s help, about what Simon enjoyed, what would jolt him from his lethargy and inject some enthusiasm into him. What would help him forget how things were, and might even inspire him to face up to his illness and start fighting it.

Hannah had written out everything she believed and lived by. All of it. She had spent hours on the internet searching for words of wisdom that were inspiring but not clichés, and in the frequently recurring moments when despair threatened to overcome her, she had taken hold of herself, carried on and carried on and carried on, in the hope that what she was doing would convince Simon not to give himself up to his perceived fate.

Hannah had been conspicuous in her absence from Little Rascals since Simon’s revelation, and she was grateful to Lisa and both their parents for supporting her project without objection. She would otherwise never have managed to complete the diary by New Year’s Eve, but they had all agreed there was no question that she should hand over the Filofax to Simon on that symbolic night.

A wake-up call, a “Get set, go!”—this was the purpose of the diary, and Hannah had put all her energy, all her love, into every single entry. As Lisa had noted appreciatively on reading the finished work, she had surpassed herself. The two friends had fallen into each other’s arms in tears. Lisa was particularly moved that Hannah had actually made an appointment with Sarasvati, for January 2. “Because ultimately,” Hannah had explained, “it’s all clutching at straws. Things can’t get any worse.”

Hannah had then copied the pages of the diary for herself, so that she could support Simon in living his perfect year and always knew to the last detail what was coming up. She hoped so much that he would not only understand the Filofax but really get into it.

“Come on, let’s go in. You’re shivering.” With these words, Simon gave the signal for the most difficult moment in Hannah’s life to date. She had no idea whether the diary she was about to give him would serve its purpose. Whether he would be as moved as Lisa had been, or whether . . .

No, she wasn’t going to allow any “or.” Watch your thoughts; thoughts become reality! If these words she had heard her mother say since she was tiny contained the slightest hint of truth, then now was the very moment she should be taking the advice to heart.