All Chapters of Planning and Ruining my Ex's Wedding : Chapter 21 - Chapter 29

DamiShe called me at 1:12 a.m.Not a text. A call. I was awake, because I had been awake every night since the cellar, staring at the ceiling and composing apologies that all sounded like invoices.“Dami.” Her voice was low and fast. “I’m sending you something. Don’t say anything until you’ve seen it.”The photograph arrived. Daniel’s phone, on a duvet. A single letter. A single line.‘Almost done. Two more weeks.’“Tiwa took it,” Amanda said. “She showed me on the roof. She’s frightened, and she’s ashamed of being frightened, and she made me promise not to tell you.” A breath. “So I’m breaking a promise to a bride. I want you to know that I have never done that before.”“Where are you?”“Home. Surulere.”“I’m coming.”“It’s one in the morning.”“I know what time it is,” I said, and found my keys.……………….I didn’t take my car. I don’t fully know why. Something about the way Daniel always seemed to be a step ahead made me want to change one thing I did without thinking. I took a taxi,

DamiThe jetty at the Lagoon Pavilion runs fifty metres out over the water, and at eleven at night there’s nobody on it but the mosquitoes.I was at the end of it when Amanda found me. Shirt, two buttons undone. Sleeves rolled up. Looking at the lights of Ikoyi on the other side of the lagoon and trying very hard not to think.She didn’t say anything. She just came and stood next to me, her clipboard under her arm, her shoes in her hand. She always takes her shoes off when the work is done. I’d noticed that. I noticed far too many things about her now.“You should go home,” I said.“So should you.”“I’m thinking.”“You’re sulking.” She set the shoes down on the planks. “I can tell the difference. I’ve done a lot of weddings.”Out on the water, a fishing canoe went past with a lantern at the front, very slowly, like it had nowhere at all to be.“Do you want to know?” I asked.“Only if you want to tell me.”I didn’t. I had never told anybody. Tiwa knew some of it, the way little sisters

DamiThe rehearsal dinner was at my mother’s house, because everything is.Forty people on the terrace. Lanterns in the mango trees. A long table dressed in white and gold, a small army of waiters in black, and my mother at the head of it all in midnight-blue lace, receiving compliments like tribute.Lara was not there. Amanda had seen to that with a single phone call and the phrase “immediate family and wedding party only, I’m so sorry.” I had watched her make the call. It had taken eleven seconds. I’d never been so attracted to anyone in my life.She sat beside me. She was a bridesmaid, so she was allowed. She was also the planner, so every seven minutes she left the table to whisper to a waiter, and every seven minutes she came back and her knee touched mine under the tablecloth, and every seven minutes I forgot what anyone was saying.Across the table, Daniel gave a toast.He was good. Of course he was. He talked about the first time he saw Tiwa, at a friend’s birthday in Lekki, l

Dami“…speak now, or forever hold your peace.”The silence that follows those words is always the same. A breath. A cough somewhere at the back. A few soft laughs, because everybody knows nobody ever actually says anything.I stood up.The wooden pew creaked. In a church that full, that quiet, it sounded like a gunshot.Four hundred and forty plus heads turned.Beside me, my mother made a small sound, like a stitch tearing. Her hand closed on my sleeve. I felt it and kept standing.“I do,” I said. “I know a reason.”Father Ignatius’s smile stayed exactly where it was, frozen, like a man who had heard about this happening in films and had never once believed it.At the altar, Tiwa turned round. Her veil swung. Her eyes found mine, enormous, confused, and then they went past me to the bridesmaids.Amanda had already stepped out of the line.She put her bouquet down on the altar step, very carefully, the way she does everything. Then she walked across to the front pew and stood beside me