The following happened between 18:00 and 19:00
Connor ran after Angel in the living room as she screamed and sped round the room with joy.
“You can’t catch me!” She screamed.
And Connor walked slowly, acting as if he couldn’t run any faster. “I’m going to get you!” Connor yelled in delight.
Kim sat on a couch, pretending to read a novel as she watched Angel and Connor. Should I tell him the truth? She shook her head.
If Connor ever found out the truth, he would probably want to come back into her life and she didn’t want him to return to her only because of Angel. Am I being selfish? She wondered.
Days after Connor walked out of her life, her father Hugo came to their apartment and asked the most stupid question she had ever heard. “Did the baby finally flush away?”
When she woke up from that bleeding experience and was told that she took a pill to induce abortion, she was so shocked and scared. At first, she thought that she heard wrongly. And as she began to think, she remembered the bottle of wine, Hugo sent her.
She took only a sip from it before ten of her friends burst in, and drank the wine like camels. She later called them and found out that they were fine. During that period after leaving the hospital, she was ashamed to tell Connor the truth.
And she had also been afraid of what he would do to Hugo. She loved him too much to tell him something that could irk him so badly that he would be provoked to do something such as hitting Hugo. An action, her dad would have made sure landed Connor in jail.
After Connor left her, she told Hugo that she would never marry any of his friends’ sons or any other man on the surface of the earth. And so, Hugo drew up a will prohibiting her from inheriting any shares or property of the Jacobs’s family unless she was married.
At first, she didn’t care but, few weeks later, she started vomiting in the mornings and was often tired. She went back to the health centre where she had been rushed to that time she was bleeding and she was told that she was pregnant. How was that possible?
And the doctor insisted that he never said that she lost the baby, but only that the traces of abortion pill was found in her. After that, she combed everywhere she could possibly could for Connor, but it was as if he disappeared like the biblical Enoch and was taken up into heaven where no one could ever reach him again.
And then one afternoon, Hugo died in his office from embolism. The chief examiner explained that Hugo wouldn’t have felt any pain. It was a sudden and swift passage from life.
Few days later, Hugo’s lawyer read his will. So, she married the one boy that had been seeking for her attention, Tony Ezuronye. A month after, she realised the marriage was a terrible mistake. He wanted things that she was not willing to give him. E.g, her body.
So, Jean went to him and he signed the divorce papers, with him not saying a single negative word about her to the press, on the basis that she paid him a hundred thousand naira yearly for the next ten years. She agreed.
She would have gotten a fair trial in court, but she conceded only because she pitied him. Tony was lazy and never liked to work. She might as well help him not to go hungry for the next few years.
As a result of Hugo’s will which she could not challenge until she had a child, she married Richard. And he was the ‘perfect’ husband she wanted. He never asked for more than what she was willing to give.
They understood each other and formed a wonderful friendship that lasted for years until yesterday when…his heart stopped beating.
“Mummy!” Angel squealed and jumped on her while Connor grabbed Angel by her small legs. She lifted her head from Kim’s bosom, “I want to pee, mum” Angel said.
“Run along” Kim replied.
And Angel pulled out her tongue to mock Connor and sped away.
As if Connor and Kim suddenly realised they were in the same place, a blanket of uneasiness fell upon the room with Connor toying with Angel’s toy in his hands.
And so, after a while, looking in the direction Angel went, he said, “Tell me the truth, Kim. Did you also kill the father of your child?”
****
Jasmine sat in Mr. and Mrs. Maina’s sitting room, watching them and making mental notes.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you at this late hour” Jasmine said. I’m not sorry. She thought. Not in the tiniest way, am I sorry. No one would sleep tonight, in this house until she got what she wanted.
“No problem, Inspector. We were not asleep” Jerry said.
He is speaking with an accent, Jasmine thought. It doesn’t sound familiar. This man is not from Nigeria. “Thanks for giving me your time” she said. “If I may ask, when last did each of you see Mrs Harrison?”
“Today” Jerry said.
Jasmine looked at Meryl.
“Today” Meryl replied.
“What of yesterday?” Jasmine asked.
“The last I saw her then, was before she left to drop Angel at her classmate’s place for a sleepover”.
“Does Mrs Harrison often take her daughter for sleepovers?” Jasmine asked.
He nodded “It could either be me, Mr Harrison or Mrs Harrison who drops Angel at her best friend’s place” He said.
“So, you know the place she took her daughter yesterday?”
“I do”.
“What’s the address of the place?” She asked.
“No. 24 Crescent Road” He said.
Jasmine wrote it down and without warning, turned to Meryl,
“And you?”
“Wha…” Meryl’s hands began shaking as she stammered.
“When last did you see Mrs. Harrison yesterday?”
Jerry’s hand enclosed Meryl’s “Yesterday, Meryl and me last saw Mrs. Harrison before she took her daughter for the sleepover” Jerry said.
Jasmine looked at their entwined hands. Jerry’s was firm but, Meryl’s hand was trembling as if an oculist was about to pluck out her eyeball.
“Is that true, Mrs Maina?” Jasmine asked.
Meryl nodded.
She can’t even shake her head well. Jasmine thought.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Maina stood up “We’ve told you all that we know, Inspector” Jerry said.
Jasmine smiled. She didn’t believe them or rather she didn’t believe Meryl. I will find out the truth.
As she left the house, she made a phone call, “find every detail about Mr and Mrs Jerry Maina at No. 102 Shadows Street”.
They didn’t know who she was.
Mr and Mrs Maina, I just became obsessed with you.
****
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The Last Time We Say Goodbye, currently available on my profile page.