Free A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser

shall enjoy the uncertainty and launch myself with relish into every adventure.
    Thank you, thank you, thank you!
With warmest regards
,
    Yours
,
    Â 
    Gertje Zurhoven
    Valerie would have loved to know the unsurpassable book that her aunt had commended to Frau Zurhoven. But there was nothing about it in the letter. The customer seemed to have spent an entire year reading the novel. It was hard to imagine that a single book could take so long, unless it was the Bible. Interestingly, this was not the only letter that mentioned a year in relation to a book. Another missive, penned by a young hand, Valerie found oddly moving.
    Â 
    Dear Charlotte (thanks for allowing me to call you this),
When I entered the clinic a year ago I thought my life was over. I couldn’timagine being in a wheelchair for ever. Tomorrow, on my fourteenth birthday, I’m going to be discharged. I’m still in a wheelchair and maybe I’ll always have to be. But now I know that my life isn’t over. I’m so grateful you gave my mum this book for me. I’ve read it again and again, throughout the entire year that I’ve had to stay in the clinic. To begin with your book was the only thing that kept me alive. My mum read it out to me. At the start I found it very difficult to concentrate. But then, at some point, I was right in the heart of the story, as if it was my own story. I’ve dreamed every dream in the book and from the window I’ve seen every person that’s been written about. Soon I started reading myself and discovered so many good things in the book that I’ve come to love life. I love it far more than before my accident. I love it so much that I’m almost grateful it all happened to me. It might sound crazy, but that’s how I feel. As I write this I can see a fewspecks of dust dancing in the sunlight. There ought not to be any dust in the room at all. But this ballet’s so wonderful that I’m glad a little ‘dirt’ has been left. When I was still ‘healthy’ I saw almost nothing at all, noticed nothing and didn’t think about anything. I didn’t even have dreams, not proper ones. Now I’ve got all of this. And I feel that only now do I understand how wonderful it is to be alive. I’ve got you to thank for this. You ought to know how much you’ve given me. Thanks
.
    Yours
,
    Â 
    Nina F
.
    Valerie made herself a cup of coffee in her old espresso pot. It rattled a bit and hissed, then an aroma unfolded that immediately reminded her of her mother, who always made coffee like this in the old days, when Valerie still lived in an ideal world, in childhood, at home, at a time when Papa wasn’t the cynic he’d become, but every year would make himself look ridiculous as Father Christmas, every year would build snowmen with Valerieand make children’s punch at New Year, when on her birthday he’d climb to the top of the cathedral with her and each summer sit cursing in traffic so they could spend a carefree holiday together in the south. When every year the cherry tree in the garden would blossom and every year a photo was taken of Valerie with the girl next door. When every year at Easter the house smelled of raisin bread and Mama cooked up fruit in autumn. All the years had passed like this and nobody had noticed how wonderful they’d been. And Valerie had noticed least of all. She wished she knew what had become of the girl who’d written this letter. But there was no address on it, not even a complete name.
    She sat back down with her coffee on the sofa bed, which she hadn’t made back into a sofa for weeks, only changing the sheets occasionally, and placed the folder with the letters on her lap again. As she went through the papers she noticed to her astonishment that the famous actor, whose letter Sven had read out in the shop, hadn’t just written one letter to her aunt.
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    My Dear Charlotte
,
    Â 
    I arrived back