Free Forever Yours by Daniel Glattauer, Jamie Bulloch Page B

And to drive the point home she hung up.
5
    For three days she heard nothing; there was no trace of him at all. They were three rainy, humid days. Oppressive, which matched her frame of mind and physical state. She woke early feeling dull and sluggish, as if someone – Hannes, for example – had lain on her stomach with their full weight. In the mornings and evenings she stole beneath the protection of her umbrella to the lighting shop and back home again. During the day she entrenched herself for as long as she could in the back-room office, to avoid contact with a certain potential customer. She survived the evenings at home with books, films and music by the light of her lamps. Every few hours she thanked the telephone for not having rung.
    On the fourth day after the abrupt termination of their relationship, she made her first efforts at being something approaching “sociable”. Lara and Valentin, the hand-holders, had been in touch to say they wanted to bring round her birthday present a week and a half early, as they were about to go to France. No doubt a Gmundner porcelain pot for hot chocolate. Over the last few years Valentin (then without Lara) had given her Gmundner porcelain vessels for tea, coffee and fruit juice.
    But no. In fact it was a quite beautiful set of Bohemian wine and water glasses from an antiques shop in Josefstadt. (Lara had clearly made her influence felt.) Judith was intending to tell them about the failure of her relationship the moment Hannes’ name cropped up. After all, she had to begin somewhere. But his name didn’t crop up. Maybe they suspected what had happened since he didn’t feature in Judith’s stories, holiday plans or her talk of the future. She only mentioned Venice in passing, as if the minibreak had been a tedious business trip, which explained the crammed programme of cultural obligations.
    All in all it was an entertaining two-hour chat, which distracted Judith from her corrosive thoughts. As they left Lara surprised her with the consolatory remark, delivered with a wink: “It’ll be fine!” And Valentin hugged her considerately and supportively, as if she were a disaster victim. Maybe you don’t have to talk about everything to know what’s going on, she thought.
6
    Feeling pleasantly tired and harbouring the hope of seven dreamless hours, she entered her bedroom and switched on the brass chandelier from Prague. For a few moments she looked mistrustfully at the bed until she realised what was disconcerting her: the bulge at the foot of it which hadn’t been there a few hours previously. When she pulled back the duvet the only reason she didn’t scream was because it couldn’t be true. The window was closed and there was no way he could have slipped past the door.
    Nonetheless, there on the bedsheet lay this crazy, tall, narrow, conical thing. With three yellow flowers sticking out of the top. Grabbing the roses, she hurled them against the wall. She tried to calm herself, cowering beside the bed with her knees pressed to her chest, attempting to get her thoughts straight. First the note. She crawled to the damaged flowers and came across the fat, pencil-drawn heart. Beside it in capital letters: “… HAVE IN COMMON?” The damn puzzle was now complete: “WHAT DO THESE AND THESE AND THESE ROSES HAVE IN COMMON?” They were yellow. They were from Hannes. She was at their mercy. She was petrified. Shit.
    Eventually a semblance of logic entered her mind. There was only one possible way the flowers could have got into her bed. Valentin’s phone went straight to voicemail, but Lara’s rang. Lara: “Hello?” Judith: “Hi there. Listen, did you put those roses under my duvet?” (She disguised her voice to sound at least a bit normal. She didn’t want anyone to suspect the crisis she was in.) Lara: “Who did you think it was? The Holy Ghost? Of course it was me. Quite a surprise, eh?” She giggled. “We just wanted to do our little bit to help you get back