Chapter summary
Disguised Sarah delivers Dara’s foul package, recognises unsettling similarities, then trembles privately inside her Mercedes.
SARAH
Tuesday afternoon
She had never bought a pizza in her life that she did not mean to eat. This was a first.
The box itself was easy. On Monday she had walked into the Allen Avenue branch of the chain that Dara used and bought a pepperoni pizza for seven thousand eight hundred naira, exactly the price in Dara’s messages. On the way home in the taxi she ate one slice, out of respect, and gave the rest to the driver, who looked at the pizza, and then at her, and did not ask. She kept the box.
The contents had taken more planning. She had spent Monday night in the garage with a mask on and the windows open, and she did not intend to think about it again.
The POS machine was her own, the one she used at the candle fairs, linked to a trading account she had opened years ago for imports and never used for anything she was proud of. The helmet and the goggles and the gloves were from Sunday. Everything else was nerve.
She knew the pizza was due. Dara’s messages to Sammy were full of it. Ordering my usual pepperoni. Tuesday is my day. Are you coming Monday? Half past twelve, every Tuesday, delivered by two. At ten to two she was on the back of an okada at the estate gate in Yaba, with the engine idling and the box on her lap, rehearsing the first line.
The gate was a steel one, painted green, with a small hatch for deliveries. She stepped off the bike. Behind her the okada man, a wiry boy of about twenty, said, “Madam, I no go wait,” and was already gone.
Dara came out of the building in a nightgown, barefoot, her hair tied up in a scarf, and walked down the path.
She was pretty. Sarah had known that. She had seen the photographs. But photographs do not tell you that a woman will walk the way Dara walked, with her shoulders back, quick and a little defiant, like someone who expects to be told no. She had bitten fingernails. A pulse ticked at the base of her neck.
“Good afternoon,” said Sarah. Her voice came out perfectly steady, which astonished her. “I trust you are having a great day? You ordered pepperoni pizza? Please pay here.”
The woman looked at her boots. Sarah braced for a question, but what came was a small, startled nod, almost approval, as if to say fancy that. Then Dara looked down at the machine and began to press the buttons with her chewed thumb, and Sarah’s eyes stung under the goggles, because it was exactly what she herself would have done.
She would refund it that night to the last kobo. Seven thousand eight hundred. She was not a thief.
She handed over the box, said “Enjoy your meal,” and walked round the corner at an ordinary speed, which took every ounce of will she owned. The white Mercedes was waiting at the junction with Tunji reading a newspaper. She got in, shut the door and took off the helmet.
“Home, madam?”
“Home, Tunji.”
He drove for a full minute in silence. Then, without looking round, he said, “Madam, you are shaking.”
“It is cold in the car.”
“Yes, madam,” said Tunji, and turned the air conditioner off.
Loose Ends · Continue reading
Continue to Chapter 16
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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