Todos os capítulos de Planning and Ruining my Ex's Wedding : Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

DamiDaniel clapped three times. Slowly. Like a man at the end of a play he’d written himself.Nobody else joined in.I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at Amanda.She was on the edge of the little round platform, one hand on my sister’s veil, and I watched her face do four things in about a second. Shock. Calculation. Something that looked a lot like grief. Then that smile.That smile that she had mastered to the point of reflex.“Tiwa,” she said. “I’d be honoured.”My sister screamed. Actually screamed. Ruth dropped a pincushion.Over Tiwa’s shoulder, Amanda’s eyes found mine.That smile had cost her something. I just didn’t know the price yet.“Welcome to the family,” Daniel said from the doorway. “Properly, this time.”My mother turned a page.……………….I gave it ten more minutes. Long enough for Aunt Abike to cry twice and for my mother to say “not lilac” in a tone that ended lilac forever.Then I stood up. “We’re going. Amanda has a three o’clock.”She did not have a three o’c

Dami‘Kunle: On my way. 20 mins.’She read it to me in a whisper, and I started a timer on my phone before she’d finished.19:58.“Who’s Kunle?” she breathed.“I don’t know. Is he asleep?”“Not yet. He’s telling me about Apapa.”I listened. Daniel’s voice came through her earpiece faint and warm, then slower. Then slower. A laugh that trailed off halfway. Then nothing at all.“He’s on the sofa,” she whispered. “He just… stopped. Mid-sentence. Like somebody unplugged him.”“Check his breathing.”A pause. “Breathing. Snoring, actually. He always snored.”16:40.“Kitchen door,” I said. “I’m coming.”……………….I ran two streets in Lekki in leather shoes. It’s not something I’d recommend.She had the sliding door open before I reached it. Bare feet, red lipstick, eyes enormous. She’d taken her shoes off so she wouldn’t make noise on the tiles.Of course she had.I tried not to take her in. She looked breathtaking in that short red dress. Her cleavage was practically popping. It was hard to c

DamiWe waited until the car had gone. Then we waited five minutes more, because Amanda said so, and because I couldn’t have stood up yet even if I was paid to.When we finally crawled out from under the desk, she didn’t look at me. She checked the drawers instead. All of them. Twice.“Still there,” she whispered. “Except the laptop.”“Except the laptop.”In the living room, Daniel was still asleep, one arm over his face. Amanda stood over him for a moment. Then she took the throw off the back of the sofa and laid it over him, all the way up to his chin.I stared at her.“I’m supposed to have stayed,” she said, low. “I’m supposed to be the girl who cooked with him and drank his wine and watched him fall asleep. That girl leaves a note.”She found a pen in the kitchen and wrote on the back of a receipt, in her neat round hand.‘You fell asleep. Didn’t want to wake you. Thank you for dinner. A.’She left it propped against his empty glass.It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen

DamiBy Thursday morning, the post had been shared forty thousand times, and my mother had called me eleven times.I let the first ten go to voicemail. The eleventh, I answered, because my assistant came in and told me that my mother’s driver was downstairs and had been told not to leave without me.“Lare.” Her voice was very calm. That’s how I knew. “The ex, Lare. On a gossip page. Holding your hand at Ninth Floor.”“She’s not just the Ex, Mummy. She’s my girlfriend.”“She is your sister’s wedding planner.”“She can be both.”“Nobody can be both. That is the entire point of a planner.”I looked out of my office window at the lagoon. A ferry was crossing toward Ikorodu, very slowly, as if it had all the time in the world.“Is that why you called?” I asked.There was a pause. A long one, for her.“Has Daniel said anything to you?” she asked. “About me?”I turned away from the window.“Like what?”“Nothing. Anything.” Another pause. “He’s been very… friendly. At the house. He asks a lot

DamiFive 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