"So what happened after?" I asked as I walked to my car with my colleague with whom I'd come to the popular 'Della's Restaurant' to eat lunch.
"Well, you know our supervisor now, she no dey take nonsense. She called for security and they took her away instantly. We didn't see her after that. It was someone from the Security department that came to pack her things for her."
"Did they ask her who she was working for?" I asked, as I shifted my purse to my left hand causing my car keys to make a little jingle noise.
"Probably. Anyway, I heard she's now banned from all companies related to CCTV and security in the country." My colleague, Adaku, said.
I nodded in agreement. "Well..."
Before I could say anything, however, I was interrupted by a familiar voice that almost made me groan in frustration, "Omolola?"
Trying to take full control over my facial features while praying to God that the woman who had apprehended me would not be in the mood to make fun of me, I turned around slowly.
Unfortunately, when I saw not just one but four high society women whose husbands belonged to the same circles as my husband, I knew that I may never be able to look Adaku eye-to-eye again.
Many high society women were catty, vindictive and jobless women who usually went out of their way to take out their frustrations with their lives on other people. As a woman who had joined their group because of my marriage to my husband and was seen as a golddigger by this group, I was basically their favorite victim of choice.
"Keji, how are you doing?" I said, forcing a smile onto my face.
"Of course, I'm fine. The person we should be asking about is you, Omolola. How are you doing? Your husband went to Dubai with Busayo again. I heard all kinds of things about what they did? Are you okay?" Keji always had this high-sounding tone that made it look like she was genuinely worried for you even when she was mocking me.
I smirked. "I think you should stop worrying about me and worry about your own husband. After all, if you know about my husband going to Dubai, then yours must have also gone to Dubai. Rather than one woman, he must have had time to deal with as many women as he wants. I think we should all be asking you if you're okay."
If Keji was a little bit lighter skinned, I knew that her face would have become as red as a tomato at my words.
These high-society women liked to dig at me because I'd married a man in their circle but the truth was that we were all in the same situation, whether we married into the circle or we married in the circle, we all had powerful husbands who saw nothing wrong with sleeping with all sorts of women.
Even if their husbands were not chronic humanizers, they would be alcoholics or worse, drug addicts.
As someone who'd mistakenly married into their circle and had come to greatly regret it, I'd quickly realized that there was truly nothing joyful about being one of them. Their society seemed to have the singular rule: 'Bully whom you can bully and respect those you can't bully."
Even among themselves, they dug holes for each other and buried whoever they could bury.
I didn't come from a wealthy family but in my tiny village, there had never been such dog-eat-dog behavior. Even though food was not in excess amount, we shared food with our neighbors and they shared their food with us.
A woman snorted from behind Keji. "This is why I said we shouldn't talk to a village girl, Keji. Look, you were showing her concern and now she's coming at you like a shrew without manners as if you're the one who asked her husband to cheat on her."
"Oh, you guys can show concern and I can't? Speaking of concern, Adaeze, I saw your husband at Della's Restaurant just last week and guess what, he was with a female friend." I said.
Adaeze was fairer than Keji and it was quite obvious when she went pale at my words.
"You...You're talking to us this way, don't you want to get along smoothly in..."
I nodded, "Get along smoothly in a society full of haughty bitches like you who think they're better than me even if we're in the same situation? Not anymore. Not after what you guys did the last time. Now if you come looking for my trouble, I will drag you in mud with me."
They looked shocked at my words.
I glared at them and walked away, ignoring how shaky my hands and legs were and how my colleague, the most gossipy colleague I had at work, was quiet next to me.
I just knew that every word that could be gleaned about me from my conversation with those women would reach the ears of my other colleagues before we left work today.
I was silent and my hand shook as I pulled open my car door.
Adaku gripped my shaking hands and extracted my keys from my hands. "Give me the keys, I'll drive. Get in the passenger's seat."
The car ride to our office building which was not very far from Della's restaurant was taut with a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions.
At first, I was worried about Adaku spreading my darkest secret to everyone at the office and my team members. I went down a rabbit hole imagining people pointing fingers at me or disrespecting me when I spoke during our meetings at work.
In the latter half of the ten minute drive, my thoughts switched to my husband and Busayo, his childhood sweetheart, who had left Nigeria when they were in secondary school.
She had been the catalyst to Seyi cheating on me. The man, who had promised not to ever cheat on me when we got married five years ago, had been going around with Busayo in the past one year showing off the woman he wished he could have married.
I clenched my hands on my thighs as anger and pain warred in my heart.
Whenever I asked him about Busayo, he always told me she was just a friend and that I had to stop listening to irrelevant rumors. But the truth was that he had changed. Again.
Before we got married, he had showered me with love and gifts. He'd made me feel like a princess. In my department at our University, I was the envy of everyone who knew me. Because the rich boy in Engineering was dating me and wanted to marry me.
After we got married, he didn't seem to have changed but he did change. The gifts slowly came less, caring about me became foreign and the morning text messages were gone.
Things got worse in my third trimester of pregnancy when he moved out of my room and the way he avoided me until I bore our first daughter.
Our initial relationship seemed to have been a dream and the partnership I was promised when I married him was long gone.
By the time we got to the office, I was already holding a handkerchief over my face and clenching my lips to stop my sobs from leaving my lips.
Before she got out of my car, I felt Adaku's gaze fall on me. "Lola, don't worry about what I heard at Della's. I promise that no word of what I heard will reach anybody's ears. I may be a gossip but I have a sense of measure."
I nodded and croaked out an, "Ok," hoping she would leave as soon as possible.
She sighed and finally left with the last words, "Alright, take your time. I'll ask Janet to give you thirty minutes."
Her words, the pity I couldn't raise my head to see in her eyes but could hear in her voice and the thoughts of my husbands caused a heart wrenching sob and wail to leave my lips.
I couldn't help myself. It seemed like everything I'd been pushing to the back of my mind had finally burst out to hurt me and I could only cover my lips to hold my sobs down.
A knock on my window interrupted me.
I stared out the window into hazy light brown eyes and my breathing, sobbing, everything stopped in time.
!****!!!
Author's Note: I'm having problems finishing this book and I thought I might need some external opinions on it before I shelve it forever so please let me know what you think about it.
As for copy editing, please try to ignore the grammar errors, spelling errors, sentence structure errors, etc because this is a very rough first draft.
Also, the manner of speech in the dialogue may read a bit weird because it is a typical Nigerian way of speaking.
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