Your Perfect Year(72)
“But if I hide away in there, I won’t be able to see—”
“Any crazy walkers. True.” Lisa sighed. “Listen, sweetie, you’ve done everything you possibly can. You have to leave a little to the fate you’re always talking about. It’s not all down to you alone.”
“I know that.” Hannah sobbed loudly and involuntarily. She had no idea how many tears she had shed in the last few days, but it was certainly more than in the rest of her life put together.
“I’d come out to you, but I’m afraid I can’t. I’m still surrounded by a noisy crowd of twenty or so kids; I can hardly leave them to our two mothers.”
“No.” Hannah was overcome by a guilty conscience. She did have something better to do than sit helplessly on this bench in the sleet. Or if nothing better, then at least something different. “Listen,” she said, “I really am going to stay here for another half hour, and then I’ll come over to Little Rascals and help you clean up, okay?”
“That would be great! We could go for something to eat together afterward.”
“Um . . .”
“Or go to Simon’s apartment and have a pizza delivered there? And a nice bottle of wine?”
Hannah smiled into the phone. “I love you!”
“You too.”
At a quarter to five—after thirty minutes during which not a single person walked past her—Hannah got up from the bench as promised. Her joints were painful from the cold, and just putting one foot in front of the other made her legs ache as if she’d run a marathon without training.
She briefly considered calling a taxi to get her to Eppendorfer Weg, but when dashing out that morning she had not only failed to think of plastic sleeves for the posters, she had forgotten to bring any money. Which meant a visit to the Red Dog Café would have been pointless in any case. But if she had to walk back, at least she could show her poster to anyone she passed on the way.
“Some good comes from everything,” she told herself loudly and forcefully, then tramped off toward Harvestehuder Weg. If she walked quickly, she could reach Little Rascals in twenty minutes. A few stops to question passersby would make it thirty, and it would warm her up enough to rule out pneumonia. She coughed.
After nine minutes, Hannah was more than halfway, since she had run more than walked, and apart from a couple of cyclists and a man who responded to her inquiry with nothing but a bewildered stare before walking on, she had not encountered another soul.
What was wrong with the people of Hamburg? Surely a little bit of sleet like this wasn’t enough to keep them huddled on their sofas at home. A true northerner ought to be a hardy being, unafraid of storms, possessing at least three oilskin jackets and a sou’wester ready for action.
By Innocentia Park, Hannah hurried along the slushy sidewalk in the shadow of the nearby town houses. By now, she was frozen enough to consider pneumonia a real possibility. She should have taken a taxi after all, and borrowed the money for the fare from Lisa when she arrived, but her stubbornness had once again blinded her to common sense. And now it was hardly worth getting her cell phone out and calling a cab.
Thirty yards away, in the glow of a porch light, Hannah saw a small figure stepping out onto the sidewalk. A child? She picked up speed—child or not, she wanted to show at least one other soul her missing-person notice, hopefully ensuring that her arctic expedition would at least have yielded some results.
As she approached, she saw that it was not a child but a small old woman with a poodle on a leash. She was wearing a raincoat and a plastic head scarf; the dog was also tucked into a little coat.
“Hello!” Hannah called and pounced on the woman, who jumped. “Don’t worry, I only want to ask you something.”
Instead of replying, the little woman shot with amazing speed back into the entrance of her villa, dragging the poor little dog behind her.
“Hello!” Hannah called again. She waved her soggy poster in the air, bounded toward the dog walker, and laid a hand on her shoulder from behind. “Please wait!”
“Let go of me right now!” She was astonishingly fast and had an even more astonishing voice. Her reaction shook Hannah to the bone. Shocked, she withdrew her hand. The old lady spun around and looked at her angrily, but with a touch of fear. Hannah immediately felt apologetic. “What do you want from me?” the woman snapped. “Leave me alone!”
“I’m sorry, I only wanted . . .” Hannah took a step toward her, reaching out her hand in an attempt to appease her.
“Help!” the woman cried. She followed this with a command that seemed incredible given the appearance of the dog: “Daphne, get her!”
The poodle neither bared its teeth nor growled but began to yap frantically, causing Hannah to leap back in fear that the grumpy mutt might soon be hanging from her leg.
“You’ve completely misunderstood,” she said, trying to sound as reassuring as she could while raising her hands defensively. “I . . . I . . .”
“What’s going on here?”
Both women turned abruptly toward the man’s voice. In the darkness of the porch of the house next door, two indistinct figures were peering out.
“Is everything all right, Frau Fahrenkrog?” the man asked.
“Everything’s absolutely fine!” Hannah said before the lady could resume screaming bloody murder. “Just a misunderstanding!”