“Everybody gone home?”
He asked.
“Yes.” she replied with a slight frown. “What is the matter?”
“Folake just called.” He
said,
his face impassive. “She’s coming over”
My heart hammered. Not again! I thought. Was I going to be in the middle of a lovers quarrel again?
Mrs Ade-Cole sighed. “Why?” She asked. “The party is long over”
Michael looked at me, and his eyes softened. He turned back to his mother, giving her a look which she returned, mirroring all his stubbornness. After a while he looked away and went towards the reception, no doubt to wait for his fiancée.
After a few moments his mother excused herself and got up too, she went over to her daughter and after a few words, they left the parlour together.
I glanced down at the photo album now on my lap. Should I just sit here? I wondered. Michael’s father and his friends were still deep in a conversation about some long ago coup d’état. I decided to go and find his mother and sister. They must have gone to the kitchen I decided, to supervise the cleaning up.
The kitchen was next to the dining room, I got there in a few moments. I was about to open the door and go in when I heard their voices.
“I don’t know why she’s coming or why he still he hasn’t done anything about her.” It was Cecilia’s voice. She sounded exasperated. “Everybody knows what she’s up to!”
“But he doesn’t.” It was her mother.
“He suspects.” Cecilia said. “Nobody has actually told him in so many words, I mean who would want to tell someone something like that about their fiancée.”
I realized they were talking about Folake. I should have gone, walked away and pretended I hadn’t heard any part of their conversation, but something kept me there. I wanted to hear, I wanted to know.
“She’s bad for him, and he knows it” Mrs Ade-Cole said. I heard her sigh. “He will make the right decision in the end, especially now that.., you know”
Now that what? I wondered.
I heard Cecilia laugh. “He’s crazy about her and its mutual. They should have hooked up all those years ago and saved everybody a lot of trouble”
“She was too young.” Her mother laughed. “They were both too young, and you know not everyone was born with your supernatural ability to handle men and relationships
Ceecee
.”
“And who did I inherit it from?”
They were laughing softly. I realised that I had been standing there by the door for some time. It was getting strange. Should I knock and enter or should I go back to the living room? I decided to join them, I didn’t want to go to the living room and wait for Folake to come and poison me with her accusing eyes.
I fiddled with the handle a little to let them know someone was coming in before I opened the door. They
both turned to me at the same time. I thought I may have seen a flicker of guilt in both their eyes but I wasn’t so sure.
“Sophie!” Mrs Ade-Cole said. “Hope I haven’t left you alone too long with the old people”
I smiled and shook my head. “No” I said. “I just wanted to check to see if there was something I could help with”
“No, we were just talking.” Cecilia said. “Has Folake arrived?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her.”
Mrs Ade-Cole came forward and put a reassuring hand on my arm, “Let’s go back to the parlour and finish looking at our pictures.” She said.
We hadn’t spent up to five minutes on the couch when I heard voices coming from the reception, obviously Folake was here and she was angry. I heard her voice, high and accusing and Michael’s voice low and impassive.
Mrs Ade-Cole got up. “I’d better go and see what I can do.” She murmured heading towards the reception.
I’d never been so confused in my life. What was I supposed to do now? Go home? How? I still needed Michael to drop me at home. Or was the requirement of going out with him, that I always take my own car?
The last two guests were leaving and Chief Ade-Cole got up to see them to the door, along with his son in-law. I couldn’t hear what was being said in the reception as they left.
Cecilia came to sit with me. “Sorry.” She said lightly. “The party has gotten boring.”
“We’re missing the interesting part” I quipped, nodding towards the door.
Cecilia laughed. “You’re right” she said. “Folake can’t make a scene though. She’s too scared of my mother.”
“She has no reason to make a scene” I whispered. “There’s nothing going on between Michael and me”
Cecilia looked at me and smiled. Then she gestured to her stomach. “Sophie I didn’t get this way without learning a thing or two about men.” My eyes widened and she laughed. “Believe me Folake has every reason to be jealous.” She paused as her parents and her husband walked back into the parlour without either Michael or Folake. She exchanged a look with her mother, who shrugged. She looked at me. “You must be tired. Let’s go and remind my little brother that he still has to take you home.”
I followed her outside, Aware that we were going to look for trouble. Michael and Folake were standing on the porch, not talking. She looked exceptional in pencil jeans
and a cream silk blouse which hugged her figure very closely. Paired with the costume jewellery she was also wearing, she looked cool and trendy, more like she had been at a party than at work. She didn’t look happy though, her arms were folded across her chest and she was frowning hard and tapping her foot on the tiles. Michael’s face, in contrast, was inscrutable.
“Hello Folake.” Cecilia said. “We weren’t expecting you.”
Folake glared at Cecilia. “I know” she replied pointedly.
Hmmn
, I thought.
“Ah!” Cecilia smiled. “Have you met Sophie?” She asked Folake, not very nicely. “She came as Michael’s guest. They’ve been friends for years” she looked at Michael as if for confirmation while Folake gave me a glare that could have shrivelled every living thing in its path.
“Cecilia?” Michael’s voice was low.
Cecilia chuckled. “I just came to remind you that your guest has been waiting for you” Michael turned to me and the concern I could see in his eyes filled me with sympathy for him. “You should take her home you know, if you’re not going to make the party interesting for her.”
“I and Michael are leaving together.” Folake said.
“Right now.”
Michael looked both surprised and exasperated.
“Really?”
He asked. “I thought you just took a few moments to dash out of your meeting with the chief and you had to go right back”
Cecilia rolled her eyes. “What a busy career girl you are, Folake.” She said sweetly. “I hear Chief
Adeleke
is very appreciative.”
“I think I’ll take a cab.” I said, interrupting all the drama. I didn’t want it to turn into a full scale fight on my account.
“You’ll do no such thing” Michael said. “Folake, you should go back to your meeting. There was no reason for you to come here in the first place after you’d said you weren’t coming.”
I couldn’t bear to look at
Folake’s
face, she looked so angry I thought she might explode. How she must hate me now, I thought. And yet surely she deserved this. She was the one who was spending all her quality time with her boss, in questionable circumstances. I had my suspicions about that relationship and I could see that everybody else did too.
She paused for a while, I realized she was weighing whether she should stay and stake her claim to her man, or go back to the man who was waiting for her somewhere. In the end she decided to leave. “We’ll talk about this.”
She spat venomously at Michael before turning on her heel and striding to her car.
We watched as she zoomed out of the compound.
“Whew.” Cecilia breathed. “
and
I was just going to ask her in to have some of the dinner she missed.”
Michael sighed. “You don’t always have to be such a trouble maker Cecilia.”
She flounced inside the house without saying a word.
“Sorry.” Michael said to me.
“For what?”
I asked, studying his face. He still looked annoyed, and also confused.
He shrugged. “You want to leave now?”
I nodded. He led me inside to say goodnight to his parents, Cecilia and her husband were staying over. They all walked with me and Michael to the car, where Mrs Ade-Cole hugged me and told me how glad she was that I came,
Folake’s
spectacular entrance and exit, conveniently forgotten.
We drove silently back to my flat. It only took a couple of minutes for us to get there.
“I’m sorry.” Michael said again as he parked in the quiet parking lot.
“I had a nice time” I said.
“Until I put you in an awkward situation”
I studied his face. Some of the brightness of the security lights had gotten onto the car, emphasizing the planes and angles of his face, how handsome he was and yet how sad he looked. I sighed. If only he knew, I thought, that every day with him was an awkward situation. “It’s okay.” I reassured him. “It’s not like I didn’t know you had a fiancée.”
He nodded. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I started to open the door. Then he put his hand on my arm “I’ll make everything all right.” He said quietly. I promise.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t dare to hope. So I just nodded.
He patted my cheek. “I’ll see you.” He said.
“I’ll see you” I replied. “Goodnight”
“Goodnight”
He waited till I had walked to the front door before driving away. I watched the car drive out of the compound until I couldn’t see his tail lights anymore, before I turned to go upstairs to my flat.
“Why have you been avoiding me, young lady?” Michael
asked,
his voice teasing and playful through the phone.
I was at Park ‘n’ Shop on
Adeola
Odeku
, trying to rush through the shopping I should have done the weekend before. I had spent the whole weekend hard at work, so now I had to spend Monday evening buying necessities.
“I’m not avoiding you” I protested, narrowly missing a portly Indian with my trolley. I was lying of course, I had been avoiding him. It was more than two weeks since the party at his parents’ house and we had only seen each other once, through his persistence, when the Saturday after the party I went to a wedding at
Ajah
without my car, when I mentioned to him on the phone that I was going to take a cab home, he had insisted on coming to pick me up.
Of course he didn’t take me straight home. He decided it was time I found out where he lived so we’d gone to his apartment in
Lekki
, which was nice and spacious and tastefully, if lightly furnished. He bought some
Sharwarma
on the way, which we ate while we watched TV.
It was a very innocent sort of date, at least it looked innocent,
the
thoughts that were raging through my mind as I sat on his rug watching him eat were far from innocent. I knew he was making an effort too, to keep
himself in check. In fact we were both trying our best to keep ourselves from doing something that might affect the current dynamics in our ‘platonic’ relationship.
So I had been avoiding him, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to see him. I knew he was still having issues with Folake and the truth was I had figured it was better for me to give him some space to decide what he wanted to do with that relationship. I didn’t want it to be my continued presence in his life that would push him to make a decision regarding Folake that he would regret later. After all, for them to have become engaged, she must have meant something to him. Who was I to him after all? Only a girl from his past, Folake was the one he had chosen to spend the rest of his life with.
“Then why haven’t I been able to see you for close to two weeks” Michael said now, jolting me out of my thoughts. ‘You’re always busy, working, at a function, going somewhere?” He paused. “Hope you’re not planning to dump me for some new guy?”
I laughed. As if, I thought wryly. “I’m not dumping you yet” I replied playfully. “Though who knows what could happen in the future”
He chuckled. “Okay” he said. “But seriously, hope I haven’t done something wrong?”
Where do I start? I thought, rolling my eyes. “I’ve really been busy” I said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.” Apart from break my heart again and again, I added silently.
“I was beginning to wonder.” He stated. “What are you up to anyway?”
“Shopping.”
I told him, as I pushed the trolley through the supermarket to the freshly baked goods area. I sighed as the delicious aroma of pastries and other foods assailed my nose.
“Really?”
I could almost hear him smile on the phone. “I hope you’re buying lingerie.” He said. “You can describe them to me and I’ll help you choose.”
“Lingerie indeed” I scoffed. “They don’t even sell lingerie here.”