When he’s tired he forgets things, as do I. Earlier this week he forgot to take the keys out of the door and when I returned to the flat in desperate need of a pee I couldn’t get in. Easy enough to ring the doorbell, one would think, but not so for he can’t hear it. I rang it anyway, pressing the buzzing on and off at fast intervals, before resorting to banging my fist on the door and shouting his name, (this cacophony actually roused our downstairs neighbour, a woman of 104 years and who is profoundly deaf). In the end he heard me. And wasn’t, I thought at the time, at all shame-faced. I’d over done it and exhausted myself as a result. “You’ve too much imagination,” he said, later. And he’s right. I see it all, the being locked-out forever, pee all down my leg, and him possibly dead or dying. Ugh. I am ridiculous. In the end the shamefacedness was all mine.
I dreamt that I found his sketchbook. Or at least I came upon it. Someone had just left it, unwanted on a table. I took up in wonder, knowing it immediately as one of his. I woke as I was turning the pages, slowly, reverently.
