RUN OF SHOW

Mandy

For twenty-four hours, I waited to be arrested.

I don’t know who I thought would arrest me. Daniel didn’t have police. Daniel had cameras, and a man called Kunle, and my company’s bank account. But every time a car slowed down outside the office, my stomach dropped into my shoes.

Tobi spent Saturday afternoon on the cameras.

“They weren’t found,” he said at last. “Or if they were, nobody smashed them. Somebody switched on a signal blocker inside the house. Both feeds went at once, within four seconds of each other. That’s a man who sweeps his own house.”

“So he knows,” said Bisi.

“Or he’s careful.” Tobi rubbed his eyes. “Careful men sweep every night.”

“Which one is it?”

“I don’t know.”

I was getting very tired of the people I relied on not knowing things.

……………….

On Monday morning, Daniel sent breakfast.

It came at eight thirty to the Yaba office, carried up the stairs by a dispatch rider in a red helmet. Akara, still hot. Pap in a flask. Agege bread wrapped in newspaper. And a card, in his slanted handwriting.

‘For the woman who tucks me in. Same time next week? D.’

Bisi stared at the akara.

“Is it poisoned?”

“It’s from Aunty Bose’s on Herbert Macaulay,” I said. “He used to get it for me every Monday.”

“That’s not a no.”

It wasn’t a no. I ate it anyway, because I am a Nigerian woman and you don’t waste akara, even when it comes from a criminal.

It was perfect. Of course it was.

That was the thing about Daniel. He was never more dangerous than when he was being sweet.

……………….

On Tuesday, Tiwa called.

“We did it!” she said. “Mandy! We gave notice! At the Ikoyi registry, this morning, with my lawyer and Daniel’s papers and everything. It’s official. It’s on the board.”

My hand was cold around the phone.

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

“Can you come and get the certified copy? For the file? Lare says you like to have everything.”

“I do like to have everything.”

So I went. Of course I went. I’m her planner.

The Ikoyi registry is a cream building with a long wooden board in the front hall, under glass, covered in neat typed notices. Names. Ages. Addresses. Twenty-one days for anybody with a reason to speak.

I found theirs in the second row.

‘Daniel Cole, bachelor, born Enugu. Tiwalade Ajayi-Williams, spinster, born Lagos.’

I took a photograph. Then another, closer. Then I paid the clerk two thousand naira for two certified copies instead of one, and put the second in my own bag.

Somebody had to keep the evidence. I’d decide later what it was evidence of.

In the Uber home, I looked at Tiwa’s name next to the forged one until my eyes stung.

Twenty-one days. If anybody was going to stand up and say something, the clock had already started.

I opened a message to Tiwa. I typed, ‘Tiwa, there’s something about Daniel’s papers you need to know.’

I looked at it all the way down Awolowo Road.

Then I deleted it, one letter at a time.

Not because I didn’t want to tell her. Because I knew exactly what would happen if I did. She would ask Daniel. Daniel would smile, and explain, and cry a little, maybe. And by morning he’d be on a plane with her money, and I’d be the jealous ex who tried to ruin her wedding with a forged accusation about a forged certificate.

I texted Dami instead.

‘Notice is up. I have a copy.’

He replied in under a minute.

‘Your call. Or hers. Not mine. I’m here either way.’

I read that one a lot of times too.

……………….

“Our first public date,” Dami said on Wednesday, “is at Ninth Floor.”

“Ninth Floor is impossible to book.”

“Not for me.”

“Isn’t that where your father’s old business partners eat?”

“Yes.”

“And the Okonjo brothers. And that woman from the oil board who hates your mother.”

Anything about the Ajayi-Williams family was practically news, the stuff of tabloid stories.

“Yes,” said Dami. “If we’re seen anywhere, we should be seen by people who’ll talk.”

I looked at him across my desk. He looked back, perfectly calm, like he hadn’t spent Saturday night under a desk with his thumb on my jaw.

We still hadn’t mentioned the desk.

“Fine,” I said. “Then we do it properly.”

I wrote a run of show.

I am not ashamed of this. It’s what I do. Arrival 8:00. Table by the window, where the light is good. Coat off, 8:02. One laugh at something he says, 8:15, loud enough for the Okonjo table. Hand on the table, palm up, 8:40. He takes it.

Dami read the sheet. Then he read it again.

“You’ve scheduled my hand.”

“I’ve scheduled everything.”

“Is there a kiss?”

“There is not a kiss.”

“Rule one,” he said gravely.

“Rule one.”

He folded the sheet and put it in his breast pocket, over his heart, which I thought was unnecessary.

……………….

Ninth Floor was all glass and low lights and the Lagos lagoon glittering below like somebody had spilled a jewellery box. Every table had someone important at it.

Arrival, 8:00. Coat, 8:02. Window table.

The waiter handed us menus. The special was smoked jollof with peppered snails.

I put my menu down.

“I am never ordering jollof in front of you,” I said.

He laughed. Properly. Head back, shoulders shaking. It wasn’t on the run of show. It was much better than the one I’d scheduled.

The Okonjo table turned to look.

After that, I lost track of the schedule. He told me about learning to swim at eleven, at boarding school in England, the only Nigerian boy in a cold pool. I told him about Dad teaching me to cut onions without crying. He asked questions and listened to the answers. He remembered things I’d told him weeks ago. When I laughed, it wasn’t at 8:15.

At 8:40, I looked at my watch, out of habit.

He had already put his hand on the table. Palm up.

I hadn’t told him to. Not yet.

I put my hand in his. It was warm.

Not scheduled warm. Real warm. I have planned a lot of weddings, and in all of them, I have never once managed to schedule that.

“You’re early,” I said.

“I was always going to be,” said Dami.

Across the room, a woman at the Okonjo table lifted her phone and took a photograph.

By the time our dessert arrived, Bisi had texted me a screenshot. A gossip page. Two hundred thousand followers. My face, his face, our hands.

‘Ajayi-Williams heir’s mystery girlfriend is the bride’s planner?!’