THE WINE CELLAR

Dami

Five weeks went the way weeks go in Lagos before a big wedding. Fast, loud, and mostly in traffic.

Tobi built a file. Candice sent him scans from Johannesburg, one careful batch at a time. Court papers. Bank records. A photograph of her grandmother’s diamond under a jeweller’s lamp, the little feather on the left side.

I went to Ward C three more Sundays. Pa Ikenna and I discussed football, the price of diesel, and whether I ate properly. I bought better groundnuts each time. He noticed.

The registry notice came down from the board in Ikoyi. Nobody objected. Amanda had two certified copies and a stolen serial number in a drawer, and she still hadn’t decided what to do with them. Neither had I. It wasn’t ours to decide.

Daniel sent breakfast every Monday.

My mother started locking her study. She had never locked anything in her life. She had people for that.

And Amanda and I did not mention the desk. We had become very, very good at not mentioning the desk.

Three weeks before the wedding, my mother hosted the bachelorette planning meeting at the house in Ikoyi, because my mother hosts everything, including other people’s parties.

……………….

I arrived late, from a site visit in Apapa, still in my work boots.

The drawing room was full. Tiwa on the sofa with four bridesmaids, a laptop, and a rooftop venue on the screen. Aunt Abike in the armchair, eating chin chin with grave disapproval. My mother at the window, on the phone, her back to the room.

“Lare!” Tiwa waved. “We’re choosing the champagne.”

“Where’s Amanda?”

“Cellar. Mummy said she could pick.” Tiwa rolled her eyes. “Daniel went down to help.”

Something cold slid down my spine.

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know. Ten minutes?” She frowned. “Why?”

“No reason,” I said, and went.

……………….

The cellar is under the kitchen. Stone steps, a heavy door, my father’s racks of wine nobody drinks. It’s cool down there, and quiet. Nobody can hear you from the house.

My father designed it that way. He liked to be alone with his bottles.

I took the steps two at a time.

The door was half open. I heard her before I saw her.

“Daniel.” Her voice was light. Too light. Her sales voice. “We should get back. They’ll want the list.”

“They can wait.”

I stopped on the bottom step, in the shadow, and looked.

She was against the far rack, a clipboard held to her chest. He was standing very close. One hand on the shelf above her head, the other at her waist. He was smiling.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

“I’ve been planning your wedding.”

“Our after.” He leaned in. “I’ve been very patient, Mandy.”

“Amanda,” she said.

“Amanda.” He said it like he was humouring a child. “You came to my house. You ate with me. You tucked me in.” His voice dropped. “So why does it feel like you’re still holding back?”

She smiled up at him.

I knew that smile. It was the one she gave difficult mothers of the bride. It meant, I am thinking of four exits and none of them are you.

“Because there’s a houseful of people upstairs,” she said. “And one of them is your fiancée.”

“Then be quick,” he said, and bent his head to kiss her.

She let him get close. I saw her let him. I saw her decide that he had to believe it, and I saw what it cost her.

Every part of me wanted to cross that cellar and lift him off her by his collar. I didn’t. She had made me promise, in Tobi’s Camry outside her flat in Surulere, that if I ever saw her in a room with him, I would trust her to get herself out.

I was trying. I was trying very hard.

Then his hand moved from her waist, lower, and her face changed.

She brought the clipboard up between them. Hard. A cork board, I saw now, the kind she pins swatches on. It caught him under the chin and he stumbled back a step, more surprised than hurt.

“Not here,” she said, perfectly pleasant. “I’m working.”

I came down the last step.

Daniel turned. For a second, a fraction of a second, his face was a stranger’s. Flat. Cold. Assessing.

Then it was Daniel again, all teeth.

“Egbon,” he said. “We were choosing the champagne.”

“I’ll help,” I said.

He looked at me. At her. He laughed and lifted his hands. “Of course. She’s all yours.” He went up the steps past me, close enough to brush my shoulder. “For now.”

The door swung shut behind him.

……………….

Amanda put the cork board down on a barrel. Her hands were shaking. She folded her arms so I wouldn’t see.

I saw.

I also saw the champagne list, pinned to the cork board in her neat round hand. Four options, with prices. A small star next to the cheapest, because she always gives a client one sensible choice. Even now. Even down here.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“What were you thinking? Coming down here with him alone…”

“I was thinking about champagne.” Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t invite him. He followed me. What was I supposed to do, scream? With your mother upstairs and Tiwa choosing a rooftop?”

“You were supposed to say jollof.”

“I didn’t have the earpiece. It’s a planning meeting, Dami, not a burglary.”

“Then you leave. You walk out.”

“And he knows. He knows instantly.” She took a step toward me. “I’m the only reason he hasn’t run. Because he thinks he’s winning me back. If I stop playing, he stops believing, and then we’ve got nothing.”

“I don’t care about nothing.”

“You care about Tiwa.”

“I care about you!”

I hadn’t planned to say it. I don’t say things I haven’t planned. I had spent thirty-six years being very careful about that.

It came out louder than I meant. It bounced off the stone and the bottles and came back at us.

She stared at me.

“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Don’t do that. We have a contract.”

“I know we have a contract.”

“Rule one, Dami. We wrote it down for a reason.” Her voice cracked on ‘reason’. “You don’t get to stand in a cellar and shout at me like you have a right. Like this is real.”

“Amanda…”

“You’re not my real boyfriend.”

I looked at her. At the cork board, and her shaking hands, and her lipstick, which he hadn’t touched, because she hadn’t let him.

“Then stop looking at me like I am.”