A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser Read Free Book Online

for much longer. I mean, as she’s done over the past few years.’
    Valerie shrugged, seemingly casually, but inwardly at a loss. ‘She won’t have to inject any more capital,’ she curtly informed the dumbfounded banker. Giving him a nod, she stood up.
    To Valerie’s astonishment she found out over the coming days that, although there were pretty much zero cash reserves in the small business that was Ringelnatz & Co., Aunt Charlotte had nonetheless carefully avoided accruing anything like debts. Whenever a financial hole had appeared, she’d plugged it with her own money – during all those years she’d run the shop she gradually returned to the business the little money she’d been able to save. There weren’tany other banks of course, nor any other assets – but there weren’t other liabilities elsewhere either.
    Basically, the appointment with the accounts manager had been totally unnecessary. His involvement extended to little more than passing on a statement of net income (although it had been years since one could talk of net income) and an invoice for his work.
    The only real items in Aunt Charlotte’s business accounts were the quarterly direct debits for gas, electricity and water, as well as the incidental costs for the premises. What Valerie hunted for unsuccessfully was a regular rent payment, until finally she discovered that the elderly bookseller actually owned the shop! The business itself might not have been thriving, but Aunt Charlotte had had money in bricks and mortar! Or she still did. For in spite of all the conclusive proof Valerie was faced with, she didn’t want to exclude the possibility that the old lady might still be alive. Hopefully she was. Valerie wished it to be true. But of course she was enough of a realist to know how low the probability was.
    â€˜The appointment was a roaring success, by the way!’ she later told her new friend, who was now showing up on a daily basis, over a saucer of milk. ‘Bankers are as predictable as an atomic clock.’ Valerie sippedher tea and watched Grisaille’s pretty pink tongue lap away at the white liquid. If you set aside your prejudices and look at a rat close up, you can’t help finding it beautiful. Rats have coats that shine like silk, clever, alert eyes, while their claws are tiny masterpieces of evolution. What’s more, Grisaille always had one ear open for Valerie’s reflections. And now Valerie even dared leave the window open when the rat emerged from its obscure corner.
    In spite of this proximity to literature, however, Grisaille was more interested in her own tail than the tales housed in the bookshop. When Valerie once tried to read her a few lines of Susanna Clarke’s
The Ladies of Grace Adieu
, the beast fled – which can’t have had anything to do with Clarke. At least this cleared up what species of rat Grisaille belonged to. Valerie thought that it couldn’t be
Rattus norvegicus
, the common sewer rat, or
Rattus rattus
, the established house rat, but
Rattus alliterarius
and thus a welcome distraction from the insularity that usually envelops the written word and its reader. With this, Valerie added a sixty-seventh species of rat to the sixty-six already recognized by zoology.
    â€˜Do you think Aunt Charlotte is still alive?’
    Grisaille looked at her with her pitch-black, reflective eyes. Was she smiling?
    â€˜Thanks,’ Valerie said after a while. ‘I bet you’re right. She’s travelling somewhere in the history of the world. Maybe she hijacked an underground train and absconded to South America with it. Or right now she’s inviting a few Eskimos to share an excellent bottle of Tunisian vodka.’
    Grisaille smirked, then lapped up a little more milk. When Valerie poured herself some more tea the rat vanished. But then the bell by the door rang and the postwoman came in.
    â€˜You’re not going to