Chapter 14 - The Photo
946 Words
Mrs Fashola made akara and pap for Sunday breakfast.
Adaeze came downstairs to find it already on the table and Emeka sitting with his coffee and his phone doing what he always did in the morning which was read things that appeared to require serious concentration.
She sat down.
He looked up briefly. Looked back at his phone.
This was their morning language now. Comfortable and wordless. She had stopped finding it strange about four days ago.
She served herself akara and thought about the photos they were going to take and told herself it was a practical matter and nothing else.
"My PR person will come at eleven," Emeka said without looking up. "Her name is Sade. She is very efficient."
"What should I wear."
He looked up then. Considered her the way he sometimes did. Like a man taking a careful inventory.
"Something you are comfortable in," he said. "Not formal. The narrative we want is natural. Genuine."
"The narrative," she said.
"Yes."
"You want us to look like a real couple."
"We are a real couple," he said. "Legally."
She ate her akara.
"Something yellow," he said after a moment.
She looked at him.
"You look good in yellow," he said simply. Then looked back at his phone like he had just commented on the weather.
She looked at her akara.
"Okay," she said.
Sade arrived at exactly eleven.
She was a tall woman in her thirties with natural hair and the brisk efficient energy of someone who managed other people's public images for a living and found drama tedious. She shook Adaeze's hand firmly and looked at them both with professional eyes.
"Good," she said. "You are both photogenic. This helps."
She walked around the garden assessing angles and light with the seriousness of a general assessing terrain. Settled on three locations. The veranda. The garden bench under the flame tree. The kitchen doorway.
"Natural," she said to them both. "I want natural. Not posed. Just be yourselves."
Be yourselves.
Adaeze glanced at Emeka.
He glanced back at her.
They both understood the mild absurdity of that instruction.
The veranda first.
They stood together and Sade told them to talk about something. Anything. Just talk.
A pause.
"What did you have for breakfast," Emeka said.
"Akara," she said. "You were there."
"I know. I am following instructions."
"You are asking me about food I ate in front of you."
"It is a conversation topic."
"It is a terrible conversation topic."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth.
Sade's camera clicked rapidly.
"Good," Sade said from behind her lens. "Keep going."
"The akara was good," Adaeze said.
"Mrs Fashola's akara is always good."
"Better than the akara at that place near my office."
"Where is your office."
"Surulere. There is a woman outside the gate who sells akara every Tuesday and Thursday morning and it is genuinely terrible but I buy it every time because she has a baby on her back and the baby always looks at me."
He looked at her.
"You buy bad akara because of a baby," he said.
"The baby has very compelling eyes."
The camera was clicking steadily.
Emeka shook his head slightly. But the thing at the corner of his mouth had become something more definite now. Not quite a smile. Almost a smile. The kind of expression that changed his entire face from the inside.
Sade lowered her camera briefly and looked at her screen.
"Perfect," she said quietly to herself.
The flame tree was next.
They sat on the garden bench together. Close because the bench required it. The orange flowers moved overhead in the light breeze.
Sade asked Adaeze to say something to make him laugh.
Adaeze thought for exactly two seconds.
"Your grandmother called you too thin in front of your entire household staff," she said.
He exhaled. Short and sharp. Almost a laugh. The closest thing to a real laugh she had heard from him.
The camera captured it perfectly.
The kitchen doorway last.
Sade positioned them in the frame of the open kitchen door. Morning light. The warm interior of the house behind them.
"Just stand together," Sade said. "Naturally."
They stood together.
Naturally.
Which meant close. Which meant his arm went around her shoulders because that was the natural thing. Which meant she was standing within the warmth of him with his hand resting lightly on her shoulder and the kitchen behind them looking like a home.
She kept her eyes on Sade's camera.
But she was very aware of his hand.
And she thought he might be aware of it too because he was standing very still in the particular way he went still when he was thinking about something.
Click. Click. Click.
"Wonderful," Sade said. Looked at her screen. Looked up at them with a professional expression that had something else underneath it. Something that looked almost like curiosity. "These are genuinely beautiful. I will send you selects by this evening."
She packed up efficiently. Said goodbye. Was gone in ten minutes.
They were left standing in the kitchen doorway.
His hand was still on her shoulder.
Neither of them moved for a moment that lasted slightly longer than it should have.
Then he stepped back.
"I will be in my study," he said. His voice was its usual even self.
"Okay," she said. Her voice was also fine. Completely fine.
He went to his study.
She stood in the kitchen doorway alone and looked out at the flame tree dropping orange flowers onto the driveway.
She pressed her hand to the shoulder where his hand had been.
Just for a moment.
Then she went upstairs
- Writer
