Your Perfect Year(67)

Your boyfriend, who you wrote to me about, didn’t turn up. Instead, there was a man who had found his diary by the Alster. I can’t tell you any more than that, and I didn’t tell him the circumstances of our appointment, because I wasn’t sure you would have wanted me to say anything.

Now I’m wondering whether it was maybe a mistake. I’ve got a very strange feeling about it. I therefore just wanted to check whether everything was okay with you. How is your boyfriend?

Light and love,

Sarasvati

Hannah had never dialed a number more quickly in her life. Her fingers flew over the keypad of her phone as she entered the numbers at the bottom of Sarasvati’s email.

A few seconds later she had the life adviser on the line.

“Th . . . this is Ha . . . Hannah Marx,” she gabbled, tripping over her words in her haste.

“Hello, Hannah,” a friendly, warm voice said. “I didn’t expect you to call me so quickly.”

Hannah got straight to the point. “My boyfriend’s disappeared. He wrote me a goodbye letter. He said he was going to kill himself.”

“Oh my God!” There was complete silence for a long moment, until Sarasvati asked Hannah what had happened.

“I gave Simon the diary—the one I told you about—on New Year’s Eve. And he promised he’d try to follow it. That he wouldn’t give up the fight.” She swallowed hard as she remembered their last evening together. “The next morning, he’d disappeared and left me a suicide note. The police have been looking for him ever since. I have, too, of course.”

“God, I’m so sorry!” Sarasvati blew her nose audibly. “How foolish of me not to have realized something was wrong when that man turned up at my door with the diary. But I simply thought your boyfriend hadn’t liked the idea. As you said in your email, you weren’t sure he’d go along with it. How stupid of me!”

“Who was this man? What was his name?”

“I don’t know, I’m afraid.” She sounded truly remorseful. “I didn’t ask him. I don’t, usually. If I do, many people think I’ve got some secret device in my ear to access the internet and find out all about them.”

“Do you know how he came by the diary?”

“He said he found it in a bag hanging on the handlebar of his bicycle.”

Hannah’s heart sank. She had fervently wished and prayed that Simon had handed the Filofax to someone in person, given it away as a gift or asked someone to keep it safe for him. That he had exchanged a few words with whoever it was—had maybe even told them what was wrong and what exactly he intended to do.

Hannah sometimes felt it was easier to open up to a complete stranger than to someone she was close to. She had no other way of explaining why Simon hadn’t told her the extent of his despair.

She corrected herself silently. Yes, he had told her. Not in so many words, but he had told her. It was just that she hadn’t listened closely enough. She hadn’t listened at all, but drowned him in a sea of her overwhelming optimism. “So the bag was just hanging on the handlebar of his bike?” she asked, cutting short her self-recrimination.

“That’s what he said, anyway. Apparently on January first, like every other day, he went jogging by the Alster, and when he got back to his bike, the bag was just there.”

“Did he say anything else?” Hannah was gripping the telephone so hard that her fingers hurt and her knuckles were white. “Did he notice anything unusual? Did he see Simon, maybe?”

“Not that he told me. He said he’d like to know himself who the diary belonged to, and that the only reason he came to the session with me was because the date and time were in it. He believed the owner would turn up at my place.”

“So he only wanted to give the diary back?”

“That’s what he told me,” Sarasvati said. “He seemed incredibly eager to find out who the Filofax belonged to, so he wanted to wait until the owner arrived. To pass the time, and since the session was already paid for, I gave him a consultation. He was an odd guy.”

“Did you tell him what I’d asked you on Simon’s behalf?”

“Of course not!” Her voice was gentle but firm. “And I’d only have told your boyfriend what I actually saw for him in the cards, even though I’d have been fully aware of the circumstances myself.” She paused, then added, “Of course, I’ll refund what you paid for the session.”

“There’s no need,” Hannah assured her. “The only thing I’m interested in is finding Simon. So on New Year’s morning, he must have been somewhere near the Alster . . . It could be a small clue, a tiny one. But better than nothing!”

“What do the police have to say?”

“They don’t know yet that he was near the Alster, but I’m going to call them as soon as we’ve finished.”

“I meant, what have they done so far?”

Hannah sighed. “If you ask me, not much. The police are looking for him and have put out a missing-person notice, but he could be anywhere.” She stopped herself from even thinking If he’s still alive, that is, let alone voicing it. “His cell phone’s at his apartment, so they couldn’t locate him that way. But now at least there’s a starting point for a search. Maybe some dog walkers or locals saw him by the river.”