Episode 1
TRUE LIFE STORY
I will best be described as extremely reserved, and when it
comes to matters of the heart (love); I can be annoyingly
sluggish with showing what I feel. My best moments in my
many relationships have all been in dreams with
imaginary perfect men who never put a foot wrong. I was
fearful, detailed and analytical to a fault. For the larger
part of my life, the above weaknesses hindered me from
opening my heart to accept love. On many occasions I
turned men down only to get home and cry myself to
sleep. I thought I had a pretty good idea about love and
how it should work, but the problem with all I knew was
that they had not been put to test in real life situations. I
had a masterful knowledge of love but only in my
imaginary escapades. However a time came when I got
bored with denying myself of real love. I grew bitter with
myself and craved to be in love with a man…a real man.
About that time my frustration peaked, I had returned to
Nigeria from Canada where the company I worked for sent
me for a course. When I got back to my office I met new
faces, some of whom were guys. The new faces I met were
part of a team hired by my company to handle Client
Service and CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
They were hired for us through a modeling agency. You
can imagine what they looked like. The sight of the guys
amongst them made my heart palpitate. Already I was
desperately searching for a man. I could not wait to put
my ideas to work, to love a real man and to be loved back.
With these guys thrown in my path, I hardly concentrated
at work.
Three weeks after I resumed work, I was asked by the
head of HR (Human relationship) unit to supervise our
new Client Service/CRM team. This meant I had to always
be in touch with those ‘pretty’ guys. While my boss was
speaking to me, my heart was racing and ideas were
assailing my mind about how to nail one of them down for
myself. I already had a target, Dayo. He had briefly
modeled in London before things went awry for him and
he came back to Nigeria to reinvent himself. He seemed to
be above the other guys judging by how he did his work,
carried himself and treated his colleagues. I was pretty
sure I was not the only woman at work who dreamt of
having him beside them in bed at night. But I was the only
one in a position to get him with regard to the influence I
would have over his career at work. I still do not recall
much of what my boss said to me after she had broken
the news that I should take charge of the Client Service/
CRM team. My only question to her was, “Please madam,
can I pick one of them to work as an assistant…sort of?”
“Of course! You are free to manage the team the way you
see fit so long as your method gives us great result,” she
replied. I beamed with a smile because finally, I was going
get me a man to love me.
The next day, I went to work – but not for my company. I
had spent the previous night studying the file I was given
on each member of the group I was to supervise. I wanted
to know how to get Dayo, or some other guy and slay him
with love. I just could not wait to hear a real man say to
me, “I love you” and then carry me into his bedroom to
treat me like I was the ‘queen of Sheba’. It was time to live
all those dreams I had dreamt for many years. Having
over shielded myself from men in the past and did not
really know what loving one was like, I did not know what I
was getting into, and struggled to manage the surge of
emotions which went through me like currents. To be fair
enough to myself, I was annoyingly naïve. At the
conference room I and the team converged and I
introduced myself to them. One after another they
introduced themselves to me. I was both strict and gentle.
I didn’t want to be seen as easy or harsh. I wanted every
one of them to know that I would be friendly if they
preferred it and that I would also be tough if that was how
they liked to work. I announced to them that Dayo would
be assisting me with the job of helping the team achieve
its goals. After making the announcement I waited to read
their faces and to give anyone who had other ideas the
chance to air them. There was none, so I proceeded with
the meeting; however I kept a close look on their faces to
see if I could decipher what they were thinking. Frankly I
was scared. I had not wooed a man before and doing it
tactfully in public scared the living day out of me.
Nonetheless, I kept my cool, bellying the storm of fear
which raged on the inside of me.
After the meeting I went into my office and took a deep
sigh of relief, I had given everyone a valid reason to be
seen often with Dayo. So it won’t get tongues wagging if we
were often seen together. Other ladies who were head-
over-heels about Dayo won’t see me coming until he was
gone. I set up my work in such a way that Dayo was in
touch with me, and not me with him. In-between our work,
I gave him the impression that I was available and that he
could make the move. On the other hand I also reminded
him that I was his boss. I had to be patient, but Dayo’s
slow pace of making a move on me was frustrating. It got
to a time I almost switched him with Samson, another
handsome and intelligent guy in the group. I felt Samson
understood me better and picked my cues as a lonely lady
like a sniff dog. One evening after work, I was feeling
lonely at home when my phone rang and it was Samson.
My thoughts were that he called because of work; however
when I picked the call he boldly asked me if I cared to join
him on an evening outing. To me, he was clearly asking
me out. My legs shook and my hands vibrated. In fact, I
almost collapsed into the sofa close by. When I tried to say
a word I found my throat dry like Sahara desert. My long
silence had completely betrayed the fact that I was
overwhelmed by his request.
To regain my pride, I tried to intimidate him, “Samson,
what do you think you are doing?! Are you asking me out?”
My voice was not as harsh as it often sounded at work,
and being a smart guy Samson saw through that. “I am not
sure that is what I am doing right now, I am sorry if it
came across to you that way. I felt you might be alone and
wouldn’t mind to share a few bottles of drink with me at a
bar.” I had to put up another façade, “How in God’s world
did you get the idea that I am alone?” “I know you are very
reserved and did very little outside after the day’s work.”
“Thanks for your request Samson, tonight is not the night I
will drink with you. Ask me another day. I happen to be
very busy right now.” I lied, I was actually sick at home
with being alone. I was an expert at throwing men’s
advances back at them. After all, that was what I had been
doing since my preteen years. However this time I did not
do it stupidly, I simply did it not to look cheap, because I
figured Samson had been studying me for long and I was
not sure what he might have found. The next day I carried
on at work like nothing happened and Samson was his
usual self, doing his work with a smile on his face and a
song in his heart.
I studied him when I could and he perhaps did the same.
By the time the day’s work was over, my fancy for Dayo
had waned a bit; I was already fantasizing about Samson. I
remember driving home from work and praying for him to
call again with the same request. When I got home I got
myself ready and waited for his call. It didn’t come.
However another call came. Dayo was in my
neighbourhood and had called to check on me. His call
wasn’t the one I was expecting, so I brushed him off. But
on a second thought I called him back and asked if he was
leaving my neighbourhood immediately and he said no.
He was actually waiting for his friend who was not at
home. So I told him that I was coming out to bask in the
evening breeze with him while he waited for his friend. He
told me where he was and in a few minutes I arrived there
in a taxi. I was spotting an adidas T-shirt and a pair of Loro
Piana black trouser. I like flat slip-on footwears, so I wore
one and had my handheld devices in a purse which I
clutched unto. I spent about two hours with him that
evening before his friend called to inform him that he was
home. Those two hours were amazing for me. Dayo had
knowledge about everything, and I happened to have a
bent for intelligent guys. I almost asked him to take me
home. Knowledge flowed from his mouth like water from
a fountain. The sound of his voice was polished; it was like
the sound of music. He clearly worked out a lot. As she
spoke, his chest would pulsate and his biceps would firm
up. I almost touched them.
When I got home I could not resist calling him to say I was
home. You should have heard me, I sounded like I was
already his girlfriend. At work the next day I had him
pinned in my office really doing nothing. I wanted to know
if he could not get it that I was offering myself to him.
Sammy (Samson) came into my office severally and saw
us. He probably wondered what Dayo was doing in my
office that long. I did not care. Thank God I had not fallen
for Samson; Dayo was my man and I was going to get him.
As if he understood the reason I had him detained in my
office all day, that evening he called to ask if I cared for a
round of stimulating chat over a few bottles of drink at the
bar of my choice. “Of course!” was my answer. Then I
asked him to come pick me up at home. I liked to be spoilt
with tender loving care. That was how all the men I dated
in my dream treated me. When he came, I silently prayed
for him to open his car door and hold it for me to go in.
He did exactly that. ‘Oh God! I am already living my
dreams,’ I thought. To cut the long story short, from the
events of that night, a relationship with Dayo blossomed.
Two months later we were living partly in his apartment
and mine. I washed his boxer shorts, cooked for him, we
visited his parents together, his sisters often spent time in
my house, and I would often ask him to bathe me during
most nights he spent with me. I loved to be bathed by the
man I love. If you asked the men I dated in my dreams,
they would have told you it made me tick.
At some point I boasted to myself that my relationship
with Dayo was better than the ones I had with those
imaginary perfect men in my dreams. By the time our
relationship was eight months old, it had already hit
overdrive. I could not figure out what in the world we were
waiting to get married. So one evening, while he was
bathing me, I asked him what he was waiting to propose to
me. In a very romantic way, he put his index finger on my
lips, signaling I should shut up, stood up and left the
bathroom. I had no clue what he was up to; I just sat in
the bathtub and waited for him to return. When he
returned, he grabbed and began to kiss me as though that
was our first kiss. In my head I wondered what his game
plan was until his tongue began to wander feverishly in my
mouth and left a metallic object in it. I broke from the kiss
and spewed the object into my palm only to see it was an
engagement ring. Faster than light can travel, my eyes
moistened at the surprise he pulled off on me.
I looked up and found him kneeling on one foot; the
hallowed words from his lips took my breath away, “Baby,
will you marry me?” Desperately, I gasped for breath, I
had to blurt out my answer as if I waited a second longer
he would take his request back, “Yes, I will!” I leapt from
the tub and kissed him with tears flooding from my eyes.
From that day our wedding plans began in earnest; I made
sure all my friends and work colleagues got a good look at
my engagement ring. I worked like an ant to make sure no
detail was left out in my wedding plans. Dayo’s family
could not wait to see us get married, especially his mother
and sisters. Our wedding reception was grand and stylish;
we had a very romantic looking table with white linen
tablecloth covered with a pink overlay. I made sure our
event planner tucked in a tiny, perfect rosebud into each
guest’s pale pink napkin. A centerpiece included varieties
of pink blooms, such as roses, orchids and tulips. We had
masses of candles to warm everyone’s heart. We floated
them in glass bowls in various heights on tables. We had
table cards printed with the “firsts” of our romance. The
two of us wrote those together. We used them instead of
standard table numbers — for example, one table was
“First Kiss” table and another was “First Date” table and so
on.
Stories continues……….

---

Episode 2
After the wedding, we spent two weeks in São Tomé and
Príncipe in a hotel overlooking the sea. Dayo’s uncle had
paid for that as his wedding gift to us. I will save you the
details of what happened on the beach over there in São
Tomé and Príncipe. However just five months after our
wedding, my fairy tale romance with Dayo came crashing
like a pack of cards. I was washing his clothes when I
found a note in his trouser pocket which read, “Baby, I will
be waiting for you in the hotel room. Don’t give me any
excuses this time.” Unbelievably I stared at the note as my
heart threatened to stop. Hot tears ran down my face and
my head felt light. I began to cry. In the dream land where
my kind of love evolved from, men don’t cheat and not
one of my imaginary lovers cheated on me. With my feet
wobbly, I stood up and reached for my phone and called
Shola, Dayo’s younger sister who had come to be a bosom
friend of mine.
I cried so hard on the phone she thought I was going to
die. When she came over and saw the note I found in her
brother’s trouser pocket, she was struck dumb. We
couldn’t reason our way around the evidence of infidelity
before us. Dayo was out supervising work on the house we
had acquired. Before he could get home I had packed my
things and moved into another room. When he returned
home and I confronted him with the note, he vehemently
denied knowledge of it. To me his denial of having no
knowledge of the note seemed quite genuine. He was mad
with me for even entertaining the thought that he could
cheat on me. My heart was in tatters, I did not know what
to do or believe. I had never been cheated on before.
Dayo was my first love. To save our marriage, Dayo
brought the matter to the knowledge of his family
members and mine. His efforts to save our marriage were
impressive but the problem was that my heart had fallen
prey to morbid fear and paranoia. I found myself thinking
every time he was away from me that he was with another
woman. To drive home my plight, my mind daily tethered
on the fringes of hysteria.
Slowly I started denying him sex occasionally and began to
starve him at home. Before long the love I had in my heart
for him was replaced with bitterness and disregard. Fear
completely ate me up and I fell into darkness. To save our
marriage I began to read his e-mails and went through his
phone to prove to myself that he was not cheating on me,
however the more I dug into his life, the more I found
clues that perhaps there was another woman somewhere
sleeping with my husband when he was not at home.
When my heart could not take it anymore, I packed my
stuffs and moved out of his house. He fought like a bull to
keep me from leaving him, he cried, swore and even
threatened to commit suicide, but my heart was no longer
with him. Living with him was driving me insane. After I
left him, almost every night I cried myself to sleep. I would
wake up in the morning and found my pillow wet. Many
times I thought that I gave up too easily and abandoned
what mattered the most to me. But I was too afraid of
Dayo dumping me in the long run, so I slipped into my old
self who perfected the art of rejecting men’s advances and
cried about it all night long.
A month after I moved out of Dayo’s house I found out I
was pregnant, so I called his mother and told her. She
must have told Dayo, because he did everything he could
to see me but I refused to see him, even though I cried
about that. When I made up my mind to leave his house, I
convinced my superiors at work to move me to another
branch of the company both of us worked for. My request
was swiftly considered given the good relationship I
enjoyed with my bosses. So for Dayo to see me was
difficult, and I made sure it stayed that way for long. I
wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right. Everyone told me
I was being stupid, including my parents. My father was
particularly angry with me for throwing my marriage away.
On several occasions he called demanding I move back to
my husband’s house. Each time I tried to explain my plight
to him he would shut me up, yelling at me. My Mother
summoned meetings to get me to move back to Dayo’s
house, but I wouldn’t budge. After some time, it seemed
everyone cut me a slack and allowed me to follow my way.
Even Dayo who called me off-the-hook, strangely went
silent. The only person who stayed in touch with me was
Dayo’s mum. She continued to treat me as though I had
not left her son’s house. She was exceptionally nice to me
and that made me feel guilty.
Things further deteriorated about the eighth month of my
pregnancy. Dayo’s mother had called to know how I was
doing; as usual I was in tears. She decided to drive down
to my house to see me. I had not let any of Dayo’s relative
know where I was living. However, because of how much
Dayo’s mum cared for me, I sent my address to her. About
an hour later she was in my house. She didn’t like the way
I looked. Living alone I had to do everything for myself.
That evening, I had not much to eat and was too tired to
fix a meal for myself. Dayo’s mother offered to cook for
my, but on a second thought she decided to go buy me
food. About a minute after she left my living room, I heard
a loud cry at the staircase. It was Dayo’s mum. I ran out in
panic, clutching my protruding tummy. The sight I met at
the base of the staircase was shocking; Dayo’s mother was
lying still on the floor with a bloody gash on her head. She
must her slipped off the staircase. I began to shout as
loudly as I could, calling for help. Thankfully my
neighbours were already on the way to the staircase, they
had heard my mother in-law’s cry. She was lifted quickly
and driven off to a hospital. I ran back into my apartment
and dialed Dayo’s number. I did not believe I would call
him for any reason, but that was what I did in that
situation. Sadly his phone was off. I had to call his sister,
Shola and told her what had happened.
By 10: pm in the night, doctors gave us a terrible news.
Dayo’s mother had gone into coma; her head had taken a
terrible hit when she tumbled on the staircase. Strangely,
late into the night there was still no sign of Dayo. Everyone
was at the hospital including my parents but Dayo was
nowhere to be seen. I had to pull Shola aside and asked
her why Dayo was not in the hospital. She was angry with
me as was everyone. I was blamed for what happened to
my mother in-law. They all believed that if I had agreed to
return to my husband’s house, my mother in-law would
not have slipped on the staircase. Judging by Shola’s
mood, it seemed to me she was going to beat me up. I
could tell she was having a hard time controlling her
anger. Possibly to let me realize how selfish I had been,
Shola decided to tell me what everyone had agreed not to
let me in on, “Runaway-wife, when you came into our
family we thought it was for good, but as it is, when you
came death was following behind you. If you care to know,
Dayo has been lying sick for three months at the hospital.
He has colon cancer. The way things are; he is not going to
survive it.” I still can’t explain what happened next. All I
remember was going down in a heap as my head went
blank.
The next day I woke up in a hospital bed, crying to see
Dayo. Everyone in the room sighed, and I could
understand why they did so. It was already late. My failure
to forgive what actually never happened had ruined my
marriage and the relationship I had with those in Dayo’s
family. Nonetheless, I continued to cry, demanding to be
taken to him. After I had recovered from my shock, I was
taken to see Dayo at the hospital where he was. The first
thing he said when he saw me was, “Baby, I did not cheat
on you, and neither have I known another woman since
the day we exchanged our marital vows.” My parents who
had taken me to see him had to steady me. I seemed to
totter at the sight of the gawky figure which lay on the bed.
In just three months cancer had eaten up my love and left
him looking like a retroviral patient. All I could say amid
tears, as I sat next to him was, “I am sorry. I believe you,
please forgive my stupidity.” Raising his frail hand he ran it
on my big tummy and asked, “How is the baby?” I could
not say a word, hot tears were gushing from my eyes as
guilt stabbed at my heart.
In the weeks that followed, I moved back to Dayo’s house.
I was eager to make the brief moment we had to spend
together the most memorable ones we had spent. I had to
go apologize to Dayo’s father and siblings for my failure to
forgive Dayo a wrong which he consistently confessed he
did not do. His father was quick to forgive me, but his
siblings dragged their feet. They believed I had ruined
their family. While I was on knees crying to be forgiven my
phone rang, it was Esther. We worked together back when
I worked at the same branch with Dayo. At first I ignored
her call, but when she persisted, I had to take the call
meaning to ask her to call me back later, but what
followed was unbelievable. I heard Esther crying and
asking me to forgive her over the phone. She wanted to
see me immediately. When I asked her what I had to
forgive her for she said she was the one who planted the
note which broke my marriage with Dayo and had sent the
suspicious e-mails I read.
I was so deeply hurt that I went into labour in that
moment. Dayo’s father and siblings could not figure out
why I cried the way I did. At first they thought that Dayo
had passed on. Shola had to pick my phone which I flung
in her direction to find out whom I spoke with over the
phone and what he or she might have told me. After I had
successfully delivered my baby, Shola gave me the full gist
of what she had found out from Esther. Esther happened
to have had a crush on Dayo, and had hope of nailing him
down until I took him away. Determined to win him for
herself, she went to work to destroy my marriage. All
these were strange to me, I had heard stories of women
stealing other women’s husbands, but I was too naïve to
believe any of it. I believed that men leave their wives
because they want to. When I mentioned Esther’s
confession to Dayo, he didn’t speak a word for over thirty
minutes. He simply turned on his bed and faced the wall.
It turned out that after I moved out of his house, Esther
began to pester him to let her move into his house so she
could take care of him. It hurt Dayo so much because he
did not make the connection when Esther pestered him
and threw herself at him at every chance she got. She had
to confess what she did because a native doctor had told
her that if she did not, she would never get married (I do
not believe this was the reason she confessed. She
confessed only because she saw that Dayo was as good as
dead. Perhaps guilty conscience wouldn’t let her move on).
However the thought of Esther visiting a native doctor for
whatever reason scared the living day out of me. Back
where I come from I did not hear of such. I saw girls flaunt
their bodies to catch the men they wanted, but did not
hear of any visiting native doctors.
In all, I learnt that I was naïve about love and life.
Dreaming about love did not mean I knew jack about it.
Right under my nose, a fellow woman took my marriage
and smashed it on the floor. You can dream about love all
you want, if you do not work your fingers sore and learn
how to love and keep your man, you might lose him to
those who want him more than you do. On the other
hand, the birth of my son seemed to give Dayo a lot more
reason to fight and live. He did not survive the cancer, but
he lived long enough to see his son say, “Dada.” My
mother in-law woke from coma about a month and two
weeks after I had my son. She still treats me like an angel
in spite of my folly. I still regret my stupidity. I should have
believed Dayo when he swore to me that he knew nothing
about that note. Cancer may have killed him anyway, but
we would have lived happily all those months I left him.
Maybe…just maybe my love would have stopped the
cancer. Someday I might get the chance to love again, and
even if I catch my man pants down with another woman, I
won’t throw him away, until I have heard the whole story.
The above story was narrated by Angela Ighalo (actual
name withheld)
THE END