IMAGINE

‘Sometimes I hide to wind him up,’ she said a slight smile her eyes shining. ‘I can see him panic when he doesn’t know where I am.’
‘Sounds like retaliation,’ I said, ‘You doing that.’
She mimiced what he does, craning his neck, looking for her, ‘Like this, he is.’
‘He doesn’t want to lose you,’ I said.
We were at a Marks and Spencer checkout.
‘It’s chaos when he comes back home,’ she’d said when I loaded my shopping behind hers.
‘Oh yeh?’
‘He’s updated my computer to make it faster and now I don’t know where anything is.’
‘Slow to them isn’t that slow to us, is it?’ I said, allying myself with her thinking of my daughter showing me a shortcut with a sigh.
Somehow we got to his anxiety when she’s out of his sight.
‘He can’t bear it,’ she said. ‘And neither can I, I’m glad when he’s gone.’
‘Home, you mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘A relief, is it?’
I’ve been reading about attachment and violence, so I’m not surprised a stranger is saying what this older woman is saying to me at this time.
She said that he’s always been like it.
‘Always?’
‘Since when I was really ill when he was younger, not five yet, and I had to go to hospital and they were taking him the other way and he was screaming and it was difficult for me too but what could I do? I was really ill.’
‘He hasn’t forgotten, then?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘and I said to his wife, “Is he the same with you?” but he isn’t and to be honest I’m glad he isn’t...I suppose I’m flattered.’
‘That he’s so attached to you?’
‘Goodness knows what’ll happen when I die.’
‘You won’t be there to see it,’ I said.
‘But I can imagine...’