The next few days dragged by. As I cleared tables in the cafe or carried trays of poppy-seed rolls around the kitchen I asked myself whether I should go back up to the ruined house in the woods by myself and try to retrieve the piece of paper with my wish on it. In the end I concluded that it was unnecessary. If Kai von Jülich and I were going to be an item everyone would know about it soon enough. Half the girls in town had had their eye on Kai at one time or another; it would certainly cause comment when I appeared on his arm. However did Steffi Nett get hold of him? they would all be saying. Still waters run deep.
I saw little of the others. Timo and I were ancient history, we never met apart from the group any more. Max and Jochen were spending every spare moment trying to repair some problem with Max’s car. Hanna called at the bakery once, to see whether I wanted to meet up on Saturday night. She didn’t ask me about my wish and I didn’t volunteer any information. I saw Izabela too, briefly; we met in the street one evening and chatted for a few minutes. Izabela was one of the few people I might normally have confided in. She was quieter than the others and less likely to poke fun or threaten to tell the whole town about my date with Kai. Now, however, there was a certain restraint between us. Neither of us mentioned Timo at all, but he might just as well have been standing between us. I think we were both relieved to part.
I didn’t see Julius at all and on the whole I was glad. I told myself that I had nothing to reproach myself with – it had nothing to do with him if I wanted to go out with Kai. All the same, I was content to let the passage of time do what it could for the inevitable awkwardness between us.
Meanwhile I couldn’t help luxuriating in imagining the events of Friday evening. I wondered what we would do, where Kai would take me. He had a car, after all – not a dull and relatively old one like Max’s, but a sporty one with gleaming paintwork the colour of a fire engine. How people would stare if they saw me in the passenger seat of that.
‘What’s up with you?’ asked my mother, hearing me singing as I sped around the flat on Thursday morning, collecting up my things for college.
She was standing by the kitchen sink, neat and compact in her green dirndl, sipping a cup of coffee before starting work. Her voice sounded vaguely disapproving, but she was smiling. Perhaps she thought I had finally done what she and my father were always hoping I would do and given my heart to the world of bakery products.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
As I walked through the town to the bus stop, that smile was still on my mind. I knew what my parents wanted. I could even see it their way. If I didn’t take over the bakery one day, what would happen to it? If in some far-distant time, say 2025, someone were standing outside the bakery on a ladder, not painting in ‘AND DAUGHTER’ but painting ‘NETT’ right out, it would break my father’s heart.
I knew how much my parents still suffered over my sister Magdalena’s disappearance from our lives, although they rarely spoke about it any more. She never phoned, never wrote, and their sorrow had become like grief for the dead. It was almost unimaginable that I should add to their sadness by turning my back on their hopes and dreams. I felt like a wretch just for thinking of it, even as I struggled against their plans for me, longing to shape my own life, make my own decisions.
I was thinking about my mother, and wondering whether she had ever had these restless longings, whether she had ever wanted more from life than her cosy corner of a little town where everyone knew everyone else, when the idea came to me. I had been trying to imagine my mother at my age, with her mother – my grandmother – and suddenly my mind flitted to the things my grandmother had left us. Nothing of very great value – books and ornaments and a few pieces of furniture – but most of it was still stored in the spare room that had once been Magdalena’s, awaiting the day when my mother would go through it all and decide what to do with it. Suppose I put the five hundred euros into one of the boxes or vases? I might even volunteer to look through the things myself, and then I could ‘discover’ the money and hand it over to my mother.
The more I thought about the idea, the more foolproof it seemed. The momentary gloom which had hung over me began to lift; the guilt that had been seeping through me was dissipated by the prospect of doing something which would thrill my mother for once. Look what Steffi’s found, she would say. Thank goodness she thought to go through all those old things. And she would hug me and say, Now we can finally replace that old coffee machine.
I bounced along over the cobblestones with my bag swinging from my shoulder and my mind full of joyous images. Let the long-term problems wait. For once I would make my parents happy. And even better, tomorrow I was going to meet Kai von Jülich.
I gave a sigh of delight so audible that a woman walking her dachshund gave me a second look. Kai von Jülich was going to pick me up. He might infuriate the neighbours by driving that scarlet sports car through the Werther Tor, the great medieval gateway at the north end of Bad Münstereifel – a route that was strictly deliveries-only for most of the time – and parking it right outside the bakery, where everyone would see it. Or – delicious thought – he might come and fetch me on foot, and we would stroll through the cobbled streets hand in hand, Kai leaning close to me every so often to whisper some intimate phrase, while every woman under twenty-five in the town fumed with jealousy.
Optimism sprang up inside me like fireweed burgeoning on scorched ground. In the bright morning light it was impossible to believe that Kai’s invitation had anything to do with Rote Gertrud, or with that dank and horrible ruin in the woods. Kai had simply looked at me and seen something new. Perhaps the fact that I had been waiting for him to speak to me had worked its own magic. Perhaps – and this thought was such an enormity that I hardly dared confess it even to myself – he had wanted to ask me out for a long time and had never dared.
If something as fabulous as this could happen, anything could happen, I thought to myself. Perhaps the confidence that always seemed to radiate from other people was not some impossibly unattainable gift but something I could learn to have myself. Maybe I had always had the power within me – I had just never known it.
When I got on to the bus I astonished the bus driver with a cheery Guten Morgen instead of scuttling past him with my head down, as I would normally have done. I settled myself in a window seat and watched the streets and then the fields drift past and my heart was light; I felt like singing.
Anything can happen, I thought to myself. Even the prospect of a day at college studying bakery techniques failed to affect my mood. Things are going to change, I told myself. It’s already started.