Lovers, Leavers & Keepers 6th Sept 2021

EXCERPT

Stella smiled and moved off but couldn’t help overhearing him whisper to his wife.

“When did you and that oyibo become friends, eh?”

“She isn’t my friend. I saw her walking her dog one day and said hi. Have I done something wrong again?”

“I don’t want you talking to her. She has a reputation in this estate. The woman is a divorcee for goodness sake. I have seen her entertaining men in her house. Her husband should have taken that boy away from her.”

Stella shook her head. Nigerian men. It was okay for them to have girlfriends but when a hard-working single parent had male colleagues around for a drink and a barbecue after work she was an unfit mother who should have her child taken away from her. What struck her was the look in Lola’s eyes when her husband put his arm around her. She seemed to dissolve before her eyes.

I wonder what’s going on there…

But Stella decided to put it to the back of her mind. She had enough to think about. What with her mother being ill in England and her son deciding to assert his adolescent independence on her so much that he was spending more time with his father and the added pressure of work getting to her, the problems of the Real Wives of Lekki – as she fondly called the women on her street, were not something she could take on.