Unwholesome Past

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

As Mabel drove through the streets of Lagos, she felt very exhausted. All she wanted was to get home and have a shower. She had been very busy at work today. Imagine, she had attended to three hectic cases in a single day! The three courts where each case was heard were by no means close to one another. She had had to drive from one part of Lagos to the other. The Ajibola case was the most difficult for her to handle. It reminded her of her own childhood and even though she was defending Mr. Ajibola, she felt sorry for his wife and children and secretly hoped they won the case.

Years ago, she had suffered the pains of lack of paternal care. Her father, an irresponsible man had lost his job just before she started secondary school. He was lazy and had never really searched for another job. He had relied solely on her mother’s business and as a result, her mom had had to use all she earned in taking care of the family. She had had to feed them, clothe them and pay their school fees. Because her mother never invested back into her business, it collapsed. Things became even worse. Mabel and her immediate younger sister who were by then in secondary school suffered a lot of embarrassment. They were sent back home on several occasions, disgraced at exam times before mercifully allowed writing the examination. At the end of each school term, they never received results and knew that they had been promoted just because they were brilliant. The principal had even asked Mabel once, ‘how did you know you were promoted to this class?’ She had remained awkwardly silent and had regretted it afterwards. She wished she was so stubborn that she could have replied back. As stubborn as Eunice.

When Mabel got to her final year, she was appointed the Senior Prefect and since she was very skillful, the school gained immensely from her efforts. Nonetheless, things remained as they were. She remained the well-known debtor at school and her father remained the lazy man that he was. He still hadn’t got a job. When it was time for her mock examination, she turned out to be the only one yet to pay her fees. The school principal, as he had put it then, ‘had sent her away against his will’. She could vividly remember that day. It was one of those ugly days. Sorry, one of those ugly nights when she wept even though it wasn’t worth it. Ugly nights. Ugly tears. She was having Economics the next day but God knew she couldn’t read a word. She held on to the book but instead of reading, her eyes were awashed with tears. Her mother had pleaded, had done all she could to appease her but she wouldn’t stop and her younger sister could not but join in. The next day, her mother had followed her to the school with the little amount of money she had and had pleaded on her behalf. As was expected, she was allowed into the examination hall but had already missed her Mathematics paper. In her little Lagos home then, quarrels were the order of the day. Her mother was always quarreling with her dad. It was only now that Mabel realised how naïve her mother had been. The poor woman thought that quarrelling would make him act. Mabel could not help remembering how her mother’s nagging only made the contrary happen. Instead of acting as she wanted him to, her father would wake up every morning, clad in his dirt-infested wrapper, and walk up to the living room to start another round of slumber. Sometimes, Martha would come back from her business place to find him still sleeping on the sofa. She would plead with him to go and sleep in the bedroom or better still, go and take his bath but he wouldn’t listen.

Mabel burst into tears as she remembered her childhood experience. She uncontrollably allowed the warm liquid to drop on the steering wheel. She wanted to get it all off her chest, but the tears only reminded her of more. Of the tears she had shed each day of her final exams. Of how she had almost never registered for that examination. Of how she was admitted into the higher institution and almost never went. She instinctively picked up a handkerchief and wiped off the tears. She wished she never picked up the Ajibola case. She wished she could turn against him now. She felt an urgent desire surge through her. A desire that the law should deal with all such fathers. Fathers that would abandon their children in another man’s house. Fathers that wished their children bad luck - wanted their future destroyed. Fathers that passed the buck to their wives. Damn it! In those her childhood years, she had harboured the thought that it was not really necessary to get married. ‘Why do people ever get married?’ she usually asked herself. ‘Is it to be humiliated and left to suffer?’ She made a resolution never to get married. She didn’t want what she watched her mother pass through to befall her.

As she drove into her mansion and alighted from the car, she thought of what she could do to get distracted.

‘I want the job perfectly done.’ Selina said as Nesta started to put on his jeans.

‘I want her destroyed. She seems to get all I have ever dreamed of. A good job and a good man.’

‘So I’m not good enough for you.’ Nesta said as he buttoned his shirt.

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Selina replied with a deceptive smile.

‘Then what do you mean?’ He asked absent-mindedly.

‘Well, nothing. Just do what I paid you for,’ Selina said irritably and turned to lie on her side.

She had always dreamt of finding herself in the arms of a charming and loving young man. Not a man or rather, a boy like Nesta, who was about eight years younger than she was and not loving in any way. Like Mabel, she had never experienced paternal care. Her father died when she was just five and her mother had had to take care of her alone. Unfortunately, when she got to her second year in the university, her mother joined her dad. Since then, she had ached to be with a man who would be her father and mother. All her relatives were cruel. So far, they’ve been very unsupportive. They refused to help her with anything other than the burial and they had squabbled over everything her father had left which was worth nothing actually leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves. Her mother being a petty trader and having died suddenly had also left nothing to her. So, there she went; a fresh orphan with no inheritance whatsoever. However, it was not too difficult for her to cope since she was an only child. She had only herself to cater for. Or maybe that was what she thought. She simply worked for a while and saved everything so that she could take care of her living expenses in the university. Then, she applied for a scholarship. Luckily for her, she was given the scholarship. She was quite able to cope with what she had saved but after a while, she ran out of money. That was when Julius reappeared in her life. He came at the right time and in fact, he was her messiah. He made sure she never lacked anything. Anything at all. He took her out on shopping sprees and to places she desired. Her relief was however short lived. Three years after Julius came back, she discovered that he had been seeing her friend. All this while. It was as if a knife had been thrust into her heart but she pretended not to know what was happening. He stopped coming to see her on campus. When she called him to complain, he gave one excuse or the other. She became very suspicious. She was convinced that he was seeing her friend who was a year ahead of her and already in law school. The girl who told her that she saw Julius and Mabel coming out of a restaurant hand-in-hand could not be lying and even if she was, why then did Julius stop coming to see her? Why did he refuse to pick her calls? Why didn’t he call her? At first, she had wanted to cut off her relationship with Mabel but she decided against it. ‘A friend’s pinch hurts more than an enemy’s blow,’ she thought. She would rather have Mabel take her as a friend, a very close one, before she strikes.

‘I would be leaving,’ Nesta’s voice brought her back to the present.

‘Alright,’ she turned to face him ‘remember that you must leave no tell-tale signs for the police’.

‘That’s of course if their services would even be needed’ Nesta laughed.

His mysterious grin hid an evil intention. He was a professional killer who could dare to kill the Minister of Justice and still not be caught. However, like many others, he was pushed into the job by circumstances beyond his control. He had experienced the separation of his parents when he was just sixteen. Even though his father tried as much as he could to make him feel comfortable after the separation, he had never gotten through it. He was an unlucky part of the game. And. Well, he got mixed up with bad company at the area where his father lived and few years into his early adulthood, he had resorted to armed robbery and had eventually become an assassin. Basically as a means to survive though because his father had been very unsupportive and more preoccupied with nude women than with him. The sudden death of his father a few years later had made life even more traumatic for him. He was defenseless and had no tools with which to survive the world.