From 642 things to write about – A woman thinks she is living next door to her grandson.

He was playing outside again. His features were so familiar, she almost expected that he had jumped out of a family photo. The bright blue eyes and fair, curly hair. Family traits that had been passed onto all three of her children. The one he was most like was her youngest. The daughter she hadn’t seen for so long it was an effort of mathematics to remember the number of years. She watched him through her net curtain. He was so full of energy; darting here and there, never completely still. She’d been like that too, such a live wire. 

It was impossible. That was what she had to keep running through her mind. She knew the couple next door and there was no possible link. They’d moved in with the boy when he’d been six months old. It hadn’t been so obvious then. Just another baby. But now, it was heartbreaking. He turned and was momentarily facing her. He grinned, holding up something in his hand so his mother could see it. He was so much the image of her daughter that she almost ran out and snatched him up. Then he turned away and she made herself repeat again the impossibility of it all.

Perhaps it was just a product of her own longing. She saw her other children and the ones they had produced but the one she really wanted to see would never be coming back. And she knew whose fault that was. She watched as the boy trotted into his house, trying to keep a hold on herself. Why was she so intent on this form of torture? Everyday she came to the window to remind herself how impossible it all was. She couldn’t rest until she had seen the boy and reminded herself that he was nothing to do with her. Her mind would not let go until she was utterly destroyed.