Chapter summary
Dara senses Ernest’s farewell beneath dinner, intimacy, strange praise, and an untouched plate of plantain.
DARA
Monday evening Ernest arrived at half past seven with a paper bag of suya and a look on his face that she could not place. It was not tiredness. She had seen him tired. This was the look of a man carrying a full glass across a room.
“You came,” she said.
“I said I would.”
She took the bag from him and put it on the table. She had cooked too, a pot of jollof she had been stirring since six and a tray of fried plantain, and she was wearing the green dress he liked, the one with the low back. Tactics? No, no. She told herself it was hospitality.
He ate very little. He sat on her sofa with his tie loosened and his jacket over the arm, watching her walk about her own flat, like a man watching a film he has seen before and trying to memorise the ending.
“You’re somewhere else,” she said.
“I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired.”
“I know.” He smiled. “I’m going to be tied up all of tomorrow, and I’m out of the country from Wednesday. Dubai. A conference. I won’t have my phone.”
“You never have your phone,” said Dara.
He laughed at that, properly, a real laugh, and he reached up and pulled her down onto the sofa beside him. For a while there was no conversation of any kind. Afterwards she lay with her head on his chest listening to his heart, which was slow and a little loud, like a man knocking on a door he does not expect to open.
“Dara.”
“Mm.”
“You know you could do anything. Anything you wanted.” He was looking at the ceiling. “You don’t need me for it.”
She did not move. She heard it the way women hear certain sentences, in the place beneath the words. It was not a compliment. It was a sentence you say to someone before you leave a room.
“I know,” she said lightly. “That’s why you like me.”
He did not answer. He kissed her on the forehead, which in two years he had never done, and held his mouth there a moment too long.
He left at eleven. At the door he put on his jacket and turned and said, “Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Ernest.”
She stood at the window and watched the car go down the road and turn the corner. It was only when its lights had gone that she noticed the plantain, still on the table, cold, untouched, a perfect gold. She sat down and ate it all herself, slowly, one piece at a time, with the television off.
Loose Ends · Continue reading
Continue to Chapter 11
The story continues in the next chapter.
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The featured photograph is used under the Pexels licence. Four contextual images are AI-generated editorial illustrations for this fictional serial; no generated image depicts a real event or named person. Featured photograph source. Editorial design by akinakingbogun.com.
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