Chapter 6 - The Mansion
909 Words
Monday came too fast.
Adaeze had spent the entire weekend convincing herself she was ready. Packing her things into two suitcases and a box. Telling her mother she would visit every weekend. Letting Chioma sit on her bed and talk nonstop for four hours because the talking filled the silence that would have been unbearable otherwise.
Sunday night she sat in her childhood bedroom one last time.
The pawpaw tree was visible from her window. Her father had planted it the year she was born. It was taller than the compound fence now. Ridiculous and overgrown and absolutely nobody had the heart to trim it.
She pressed her hand against the cool glass of the window.
"I am doing this for us Papa," she said quietly to the dark.
The tree did not answer.
She packed her last book and went to bed.
The car arrived at exactly 8am.
Same driver. Same black car. Same silence.
Her mother had made jollof rice at 6am because apparently the correct response to your daughter leaving for a billionaire's mansion was to cook an entire pot of rice at dawn. She had packed half of it into a container and pressed it into Adaeze's hands at the door.
"In case the food there is not proper food," she said firmly.
Adaeze had hugged her for a long time.
The drive to Ikoyi took forty minutes in Monday morning traffic. Adaeze watched Lagos move past the window. The chaos and color of it. Danfo buses and okadas and roadside traders and the whole magnificent noise of a city that never stopped.
She was still in Lagos.
It felt important to remind herself of that. Same city. Same sky. Just a different address.
The car turned into a quiet street lined with large gates and mature trees. The kind of street where you could not hear traffic. Where the air felt different. Where the whole energy of Lagos suddenly became muffled like someone had turned down the volume.
The gate was black iron. Tall. It opened automatically as they approached.
The house was not what she expected.
She did not know what she had expected. Something cold maybe. All glass and steel like his office. Something that looked like a magazine spread and felt like a hotel.
Instead it was a large cream colored house with a wide veranda and tall windows and an old flame tree in the front garden dropping orange flowers onto the driveway. Beautiful in a quiet serious way. The kind of house that had been built to last.
The driver carried her bags to the front door without being asked.
Dare was waiting on the veranda.
"Mrs Okafor." He smiled warmly. "Welcome. Mr Okafor asked me to show you around and get you settled. He is in a meeting until this afternoon."
Mrs Okafor.
She heard it land. Felt it sit strangely on her shoulders like a coat that belonged to someone else.
"Thank you Dare," she said. "And please just call me Adaeze."
He smiled again. Led her inside.
The interior was warm. Wooden floors. High ceilings. Art on the walls that looked real and probably was. A living room with tall windows looking out onto a back garden with a pool that caught the morning light.
Dare showed her everything. The kitchen. The dining room. The study. The gym she would never use. The staff quarters at the back where a cook named Mrs Fashola and a housekeeper named Blessing already lived.
Then he showed her upstairs.
"Mr Okafor's room is here," he said stopping at a door at the end of the corridor. "And your room is here."
He opened the door across the corridor.
She stepped inside and stopped.
It was a beautiful room. Large windows. A wide bed dressed in white linen. A writing desk by the window. Fresh flowers in a vase on the dresser. White and yellow. Someone had chosen carefully.
Her two suitcases and her box were already inside.
On the writing desk was a small envelope with her name on it. Just: *Adaeze.*
She waited until Dare left to open it.
Inside was a single notecard. Clean handwriting. Decisive strokes.
The house is yours for the duration. Make yourself at home. There are no rules except one: my study on the ground floor is private. Everything else is yours to use as you wish.
Dinner is at 7pm if you choose to join.
She read it twice.
Then she sat down on the edge of the white bed in her new room in her new life and looked out the window at the flame tree dropping orange flowers onto the driveway below.
The house was quiet around her.
Somewhere downstairs Mrs Fashola was moving around the kitchen. Somewhere in this city her mother was probably already calling Chioma to report developments. Somewhere in an office tower on Victoria Island her husband was in a meeting and probably not thinking about her at all.
Her husband.
She looked down at the gold ring on her finger.
Outside the flame tree dropped another flower onto the driveway. Then another. Slow and unhurried like the tree had all the time in the world.
She picked up her phone and texted Chioma.
I am here.
Three seconds later:
TELL ME EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW.*
Despite everything she smiled.
She was here.
Whatever here meant now she was in it.
Seven o'clock was six hours away.
- Writer
