“Take a Kinder egg,” she whispered, pointing to the shelf beside the till.
“Mum, I’m forty,” he replied.
“But you like them. You always have.” She gently placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Yes, thirty years ago,” he hissed, pulling away from her.
“Jure, come on, just one. I’ve got enough money.” She looked at him pleadingly.
“Of course, Mum. With pleasure.” He placed the Kinder egg in the trolley. Then he put a carton of milk and a pack of mineral water onto the conveyor belt, followed by the lighter items.
Once a month he took her to the supermarket. Once a month he took her to the shopping centre. They would circle the shop until the trolley was full. She always bought oil, flour and sugar. But because she hadn’t baked for several years, the supplies had begun to pile up. So, without her knowing, he took them home. He did not want to upset her.
“And a packet of Marlboro,” his mother joined in. “Red.”
He smiled. His mother had not smoked for at least twenty years. Back then, a mild stroke had left its mark on her, which had been a strong enough message for her to stop.
“One hundred and twenty-six euros and thirty cents,” said the cashier, without looking up.
Jure’s mother already held out her card.
“PIN, please,” the freckled girl went on in a bored voice.
Slowly, her hands trembling, Jure’s mother entered the number.
“Card declined. Try again.”
“But I have the right number. Look, I’ve got it stuck here on the card.”
“Try again.”
Carefully, so as not to make another mistake, she tapped in the numbers.
“Four.”
“Mum,” Jure raised his voice, “everyone will hear you.”
“It’s my money,” she said, undeterred, and continued: “four, three, eight.”
“Well?” She looked triumphantly at the cashier.
“Card declined.”
“Leave it, I’ll pay, so her card doesn’t get blocked.”
When the same thing happened again the following month, he grew suspicious.
He persuaded her to go to the nearest cashpoint. He entered the number himself. It was correct. The account had €2.17.
“Mum, how?”
“I don’t know. Someone is stealing from me. It’s been going on for a long time. Is it you?”
“What’s wrong with you? Are you mad?” He was furious and disappointed, the conflicting emotions leaving him unsettled.
“Jure, Jure.” She spoke in a reproachful voice and shook her head.
It hurt. His own mother was accusing him of stealing from her.
“It was you. I’m sure of it. You’re always saying you have no money.”
He narrowed his eyes. I only mentioned it to her once, asking whether she could lend me a thousand euros. When I was buying the flat. But even then, she reproached me so much that I refused the money. Still, she throws it back at me every chance she gets.
Her voice was trembling.
“We’re going to the police first thing tomorrow. I’ve had enough.”
He did not answer her.
The next morning she called him before six o’clock.
“Jure, I’m sorry. It probably wasn’t you. We don’t have to go to the police. I must have paid for firewood, or the chimney sweep.”
“All right, Mum. I’ll come after work, and we’ll talk it over.”
“You know, I’m getting old, and I forget things.”
“It’s all right. I’m in a hurry to get to work.”
“And I bought myself new slippers.”
“All right, Mum, it’s your money.”
“They’re so warm.”
The following month, when she once again found herself in the shop with no money on her card and once again accused her son of stealing, that was the last straw. He went to the bank to check her account balance. They would not disclose it to him because of data protection. Then he remembered that she had authorised him to manage her bank account a year earlier.
A look at the transactions on his mother’s bank account revealed that, in the days after her pension arrived, someone was withdrawing the money from a cashpoint. Two hundred euros a day for five days. Of course — her pension was a little over a thousand euros. But he still had no proof of who was withdrawing the money.
At work, he arranged to take a week’s leave. On the day his mother received her pension, he parked his car in the street next to her house and waited. She did not appear on the first day. He felt awful. He was spying on his own mother. He spent the second day sitting in the car, too.
On the third day, just as he was about to give up, he saw her. She wore a long fur coat and a hat. In her hand, she was carrying a brown leather briefcase. Just as she once had when she was setting off for school. For many years she had been the headteacher of a secondary school in Maribor.
He got out of the car and followed her at a safe distance. Whenever he felt she might see him, he mingled with passers-by or slipped into one of the side streets. She strolled leisurely to the nearby Mercator shop. She stopped in front of the cashpoint. She took her purse from her handbag. All the while, she kept looking around. She opened the purse and pulled out her card. She held it up before her eyes, quickly turned back and looked once more at the little note where she had written down the number. One last time she jerked her head round, as if trying to catch someone out, and then entered the number into the cashpoint. She took the money from the machine — how much, he could not see — put it in her handbag and went home.
She repeated the same procedure over the next four days. Each time, she left the house at the same hour. Elegantly dressed, she walked to the cashpoint and returned home.
Under the pretence that his flat was being whitewashed, he persuaded her to let him spend one night at her place. That evening, he waited until she had fallen asleep. First he searched the drawers in the hall. In the very first drawer, he found three two-hundred-euro notes. He was sweating. He felt like a burglar. He comforted himself with the thought that he was doing it for her.
In the kitchen, he found even more money. In the cutlery drawer, in the cupboard where she kept the plates, in the microwave. Even in the vegetable drawer of the fridge, there were five banknotes, completely steeped in various smells.
He found nothing in the living room. Then he noticed the wooden wall clock standing on the floor. He remembered that he had once hidden tests there, the ones he had been afraid to show his parents. He went over to the clock and opened the glass door. At the bottom, he noticed an enormous amount of money.
“Oh, Mum,” he muttered.
He sat down at the kitchen table and began to count. There were fourteen thousand euros.
The next day, a little after eight o’clock, he was at the bank.
“I’d like to deposit fourteen thousand euros,” he said to the cashier. “Into my mother’s account. Stella Greer.”
“How much?” asked the grey-haired clerk with the large glasses.
“Well, actually… five thousand, please.”
It often happens that a person with dementia realises they can no longer manage their bank card and asks someone close to them for help — to withdraw money or pay bills on their behalf. But they do so with an excuse, saying they have no time, that they cannot see well, or something similar, and do not reveal that they can no longer cope at the cashpoint. If other family members do not know about such an arrangement, serious conflicts can arise between them, as well as genuine abuse, which may only come to light much later.
In this story, the concealment of signs of dementia leads to the son’s “detective operation”. Although he feels guilty, he is driven by a strong need to discover where the money from his mother’s bank card is disappearing.