SPARE KEYS

MANDY

I knew that dress.

That was my first thought. Not ‘oh no’. Just: I knew that dress. Red. Cut on the bias. I’d paid it off in three instalments and spilled zobo on the hem before the speeches.

Funny, what your brain grabs when the floor tilts.

Chief Imelda Ajayi-Williams folded her hands on the tablecloth and waited.

Beside me, Dami had gone very still. The way a cat is still right before it decides what to do about a rat.

I could lie. I am an excellent liar about small things. But this wasn’t small.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s me. And that’s Daniel.”

“You were engaged to him.”

“For a year. We ran the company together. Okorie & Cole.” My voice was steady. My napkin was not. “Three months ago, two weeks before our wedding, he left. By text. He took nothing except himself and left me everything else, including the debt.”

Her face didn’t move.

“And you did not think to tell my daughter this?”

“I found out who the groom was at the tasting, ma. The same day as the scallops.” I swallowed. “By then I’d signed the contract. And Tiwa hugged me. Twice.”

Something passed behind her eyes. Too fast to name.

“And then,” she said, “you began seeing my son.”

“Your son began seeing me,” I said. “He was very persistent about the candles.”

Chief looked at him. Then at me. Then at the photograph, for a long, long time.

“Does Tiwalade know?” she asked.

“No, ma.”

She picked up the photograph. Slid it back into the cream envelope. Put the envelope back in her bag and snapped it shut.

“Keep it that way,” she said. “For now.”

Then she stood, which meant everybody stood, including the waiter, who hadn’t been sitting.

“Lunch was informative, Chimamanda.” She adjusted her gele by one millimetre. “Lare. Walk her to her car.”

And she left.

No threat. No explanation. Just a woman in green lace sailing across the terrace.

I sat back down. My legs had decided for me.

“What,” I said, “was that?”

Dami was watching his mother’s back. His jaw was tight.

“I don’t know,” he said.

That scared me more than the photograph. Dami always knows. It’s his whole personality. Knowing things, and charging interest.

……………….

He walked me to the car, as instructed. He also got in it, as not instructed.

“Your passenger door is getting worse,” he said.

“It’s grieving. Everybody leaves it.”

“Where’s your office?”

“Why?”

“Because on Monday he heard you say my name in it.” He looked straight ahead. “I want to know how.”

I wanted to argue. But my hands were still shaking on the steering wheel, and he was right. He never looks pleased about being right. He just looks like he expected it.

……………….

The office is on the second floor of a building in Yaba, above a pharmacy and a man who repairs phones and plays Fuji music at a volume that suggests he is hard of hearing or at war.

Dami stood in the doorway and looked at it. Then at the door, where, taped at eye level, were three notes from my landlord.

‘Rent overdue.’

‘Rent VERY overdue.’

‘FINAL notice. FINAL.’ Underlined twice.

“You were working here,” he said. “With this on the door.”

“The door was free. The rent wasn’t.”

He turned to look at me, and his face did something complicated. Not pity. I’d have thrown him down the stairs for pity. Something closer to anger, but not at me.

“The rent will be paid by tomorrow.”

“That is not in the agreement.”

“Add it in the margin. Initial it. You like initialling things.”

Bisi chose that moment to come up the stairs with two sachets of water and a bag of plantain chips, see Dami, and stop dead.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she said, in a voice I had never heard her use, not even for clients.

“Good afternoon. You must be Bisi.”

“Head of Operations,” she said. She did not say ‘and Lies’. I was proud of her.

Dami looked at the plantain chips. Bisi looked at Dami. Then she silently held out the bag, and he took one, and I learned two things. He does eat. And Bisi had just decided he was allowed to stay.

Then he got to work.

He checked the window, two floors up with nothing to stand on but a pharmacy sign. He stood outside on the landing, with the door shut, while I said “Dami” at normal volume from my desk.

“Did you hear that?” I called.

“I heard the Fuji,” he said. “Nothing else.”

He pushed the door open a few inches. “Again.”

“Dami.”

“That one I heard.”

He came back in and closed the door.

“So he didn’t hear it from the stairs,” he said. “He was right outside this door, and it was open. Who else has keys to this office?”

“Me. Bisi. The landlord, in theory. He prefers to communicate by sticky note.”

“And Daniel?”

“He left everything when he…”

I stopped.

He hadn’t left everything. He had left me eleven words and a loan. He had not left his keys. I had never seen them on his desk. I had never once thought to look.

I picked up my car keys from the desk. Office key. Corolla key. A tiny plastic cake from a bakery that doesn’t exist anymore.

“The Corolla had two keys,” I said slowly. “He drove it on Sundays, to take Dad his groundnuts and visit. He kept the spare on his own ring.” I swallowed. “I never asked for it back.”

Dami was very quiet.

“So he can walk into this office,” he said, “and into your car, whenever he likes.”

Bisi put the plantain chips down. That’s how I knew it was bad.

“He’s been here,” I said. “On Monday, while I was on the phone. Or before. When I checked my door after the call, it was open, and I was sure I had locked it. He must have…” I couldn’t finish.

“I’ll have a locksmith here by the weekend,” Dami said. “And tomorrow morning I’m putting a camera in this room and on the door. If he comes in again, I want to watch him do it.”

“Tomorrow is a long way away.”

“Then don’t be here tonight.”

“Fine.” I held up both hands. “I’ll go home. Like a normal person.”

He looked at me like he knew exactly how much that promise was worth.

……………….

It was worth until 10:40 p.m.

I was in bed when I realised my laptop charger was still plugged into the wall behind my desk. I had a seating chart due at nine. The laptop had eleven percent.

‘Don’t be here tonight.’

Five minutes isn’t a night. It’s an errand.

The Corolla started on the second try. Yaba was quieter, just okada horns and an all-night vigil.

The stairs were dark. I climbed them with my phone torch on and my office key already out, like a weapon.

The door was locked. Good.

I let myself in and reached for the light.

Everything was exactly where I’d left it. The fan. The folders. The snake plant. The charger, still in the wall.

Except my chair.

I always push my chair in. Daniel used to say I tidied up after furniture.

My chair was pulled out from the desk and turned all the way round to face the window.

The way he always left it.