Your Perfect Year(66)
But she wouldn’t, simply couldn’t, go home. She was incapable of anything except sitting in Simon’s apartment waiting for him to come through the door and tell her his letter had been a mistake. A joke, a sick joke. A new twist—not an April Fool’s trick but a New Year’s prank, ha ha!
Yes, he’d admit it had been tasteless, thoroughly tasteless. He’d be sorry, but he’d been put under so much pressure by her, driven into a corner and overwhelmed by her expectations, to the extent that he had simply . . . Yes, he’d understand if she was mad at him. Truly, truly angry, furious as hell. He’d accept if she never wanted to say another word to him despite a commitment to go for further tests and even live according to her childish diary.
Over three days. Seventy-four hours and fifty-four minutes. That was how long she had sat in his apartment with nothing but these thoughts for company, waiting for him. Wearing the black dress she had worn again on New Year’s Eve, so soon after the evening at Da Riccardo, she could do nothing but wander aimlessly between the bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom, suppressing a scream every time the doorbell or her cell phone rang.
But it was never him, never. It was always Lisa, or her mother, Sybille, who were taking turns keeping an eye on her throughout the day and bringing her something to eat. Who told her that they were managing just fine at Little Rascals without her (as though Hannah had the slightest interest in the business; with all due respect, she didn’t); who brought regular reports that Simon had not turned up at Hannah’s apartment, where Sybille had moved in for the time being. And who, just like the police officers, begged her over and over again to relinquish her vigil, or who brought copies of the Hamburg News, as they had yesterday, so that Hannah could see for herself that the missing-person notice for Simon really was on the front page, as his former colleagues had promised.
As Hannah stared into space in Simon’s apartment—simply vegetating, checking her cell phone every ten seconds, remotely checking her voice mail at home and scanning her email inbox, in the faint hope of receiving some message from her boyfriend—she knew the whole time. She had known from the moment she’d read his farewell letter. That she could scream and rage and cry as much as she liked, but Simon no longer existed.
He had not, as one of the police officers suggested, simply run off; he had not burned all his bridges, nor was he sunning himself somewhere under a palm tree with a cocktail in his hand. No. These were nothing more than empty words to help Hannah hold out, to stop her from rampaging through the city lashing out at everything and everyone in her way.
It was crazy; she was crazy. For although she knew deep down that Simon was not a man to make empty promises, never had been, she clung in utter desperation to every possibility, however improbable, even if it was only a goddamn cocktail under a goddamn palm tree.
But there was his Mustang—he would never have left that behind. However absurd and painful this notion was, it was so true. If he had paused even for a second to consider the idea of a drink under the palm trees rather than suicide, he would have slid behind the wheel and driven off. Hannah couldn’t rule out that if he did, he might leave her behind. But his car? No, never. The car keys on the coffee table in the living room, together with the farewell letter and the power of attorney (or copies of them—the police had the originals), were compelling evidence of all that Hannah didn’t want to contemplate.
The only thing she hadn’t been able to find was the diary. It wasn’t in the apartment nor outside in the trash, where she had looked in the certainty of finding it there.
That damned Filofax, tossed in among the sticky eggshells and coffee grounds by Simon as his last deed. That miserable effort Hannah had put together in her stupid delusion that it would all turn out right. In the naive belief that it would take no more than a bit of attention, a cheerful song or two, and some “every cell in my body is happy” drivel to free her boyfriend from his mortal dread.
The very thought made Hannah want to do the same as Simon. To grab a sharp knife from the kitchen and slash open her wrists or leap from the fourth-floor balcony—the only logical punishment for what she had done.
It was probably her constant urges to action, her insensitive some-good-comes-from-everything, crisis-as-opportunity, and finding-light-in-the-darkness platitudes that had driven him to despair in the first place.
Some good comes from everything? What, exactly, was this situation good for? Apart from driving Hannah humbly to her knees and showing her that real life had nothing to do with her colorful Pollyanna world? Nothing in the slightest.
The ping of her cell phone made Hannah jump. A new email had arrived in her inbox. Another message from her parents or Lisa, or the newsletter of some online shop, or a message to say that some deceased Nigerian multimillionaire had declared her his sole legal heir.
None of those. It was from Sarasvati.
Hannah took a moment to process the name. The day on which she had written to Lisa’s psychic and explained the situation, asking her to throw out her professional ethics and hold a “very special” session for Hannah’s terminally ill boyfriend, which might renew his will to live a little (and, for the love of God, not to let him know she’d received prior instructions from Hannah)—it seemed to have happened in another life.
Sarasvati—Hannah remembered. She opened the email.
Dear Hannah,
Normally I don’t ask any questions if someone misses an appointment, because I don’t want to put pressure on anyone. But I’m making an exception in this case, because I can’t get it out of my head.