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He continued with his curious stern gaze at me as I sat on the leather couch some few yards away, with the photo album on my laps, I was lost in my own thoughts and didn’t know I had spoken those words out, so loudly, that he could hear and make him pause and turn around to look at me.
With my heart beating so fast, my hands were visibly shaking and I could feel drops of sweat break out from my forehead, even though the tastefully furnished Asokoro mansion living room was fully air-conditioned, but I became so hot.
“I said what can’t is happening babe? Because if you think our plans to Netflix and chill won’t happen tonight, then you must be joking, our order has arrived and I have the movies you requested for all on queue, so don’t be a Friday night spoiler for me abeg he retorted.”
I, I, I mean, the.... “why are you stammering all of a sudden? A whole P.A, are you okay? You look like you have just seen a ghost !”
Just as he wanted to leave the door and come over to where I was, the door bell rang again, obviously the delivery guy was beginning to run out of patience and decided to make it obvious with the way he was hitting the bell at the gate.
At that moment, his attention shifted away from me temporarily to the person outside, and as he engaged with him, I flipped more pages of the album and the more pages and pictures I saw, I got more convinced that the person there was my loving husband of 8 years!
I was caught in-between wishing and praying for this to be a guy with an uncanny resemblance, after all they say we all have a body double, but even I wasn’t convinced with that thought, or that the world should just rewind to 6 months ago when I first met Ibrahim at the restaurant.
I had just dropped off my two kids at my mums who wanted them over for the weekend. You know how grandparents can be, spoiling and dotting over them like they were going out of extinction and at age 80, she feared she didn’t have much time to spare especially given her recent poor health record. It wasn’t holidays yet but she insisted, so I packed clothings for 3 days for Stephanie 7 years and Steve 5 years, and from picking them after closing, we headed straight to Garki my family home.
She was already waiting at the gate and so I didn’t even bother stepping out of the car, the trio waved excitedly as I zoomed off. I had plenty paper work to tidy up for my politician boss who was coming in that weekend from the UK, so I decided to just buy lunch from an eatery before delving straight into work.
As I waited on the waitress to get my order, he walked pass me to the table behind, the first thing that drew my attention was his perfume, it was exactly what my husband wears all the time – CARLTON London.
Even though I was flipping through Instagram but the scent took over the entire ambience and instantly brought back memories of Jeff my husband.
Because of the nature of his job in London, his phones were always off till 8pm Nigerian time, he says it’s company policy and since I haven’t been to the UK, I totally believed him. I don’t call, he does, when it is “safe” to call. I can send messages like I just did now, telling him I smelt his perfume on another guy, but it won’t deliver till 8pm(on second thought, I deleted the chats cos it won’t make sense anymore when he finally sees it).
My bank accounts were not starving and I was living the life from his weekly deposits, he said this was gonna be his last year in the abroad, he was tired and wanted to come back home finally (he’s been saying that for the past 3 years).
To be continued...
©The Jaliab Network
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