a second time

It happens a second time.
This time we have been stopped at a police roadblock, one of many on the main highway between the capital Harare and Mutare.
A policeman, rotund in his winter fluorescents, peers in through the driver's window. "Where is the Daddy?" he asks my husband.
"The Daddy?" This time it's my husband who is stumped. "My father is back at home."
The officer considers us. The thought of a fine keeps my lips clamped together like wheel locks.
"Well, look after the Mother," he says, before waving us on.
"He thought you were my son!" I explode, as soon as the driver's window is safely sealed. I round on my husband. "Can't you stop looking 16?"
"I don't look 16," says he. A trifle too innocently for my liking.
I study his side profile. Not the hint of a wrinkle. I suspect he may have been secretly smoothing on my imported-at-great-expense sun cream. Which clearly works better on him than it ever has on me.
"You do," I say crossly. "17, max."
"Oh." Is that all he can say? When his longsuffering wife -- who he dragged across continents from a carefree existence in Paris to Africa 10 years ago -- gets mistaken for his mother?
My husband ponders for a minute or two.
"Maybe you should dye your hair red," he says finally as pyramids of tomatoes piled high in Kango dishes flash past us near the town of Rusape. "You know you’ve always wanted to."
I choose to remain silent.