Under the Seat

Folake Bankole found the second phone on a Thursday, while looking for a pen.

It was a slow, ordinary afternoon. Her own car was in the garage, so she had borrowed her husband's: a silver Camry, a little dented, smelling of old coffee and the lavender air freshener she had hung from the mirror on their first anniversary. She was running late for a client meeting. She patted the glove compartment. No pen. She felt along the door pocket. A receipt, a packet of tissues, a half-eaten roll of mints.

Then she bent and felt under the seat.

Her fingers closed around something flat and hard, wrapped in tape.

She frowned. She tugged. It came away with a rasp of adhesive, and she held it up to the light.

A phone. A cheap black one, the kind sold at roadside kiosks for five thousand naira. Its screen was cracked. A strip of silver duct tape was wound round it, as though someone had meant to keep it hidden.

She stared at it for a long time.

"Dele?" she said, to nobody.

He had never mentioned a second phone. He had a work phone, a company phone, a personal phone. He kept them lined up on the nightstand like soldiers. She knew the passcodes to all three. She knew his bank details, his favourite shirts, the name of his childhood dog.

She did not know this.

The screen lit. A notification slid across the cracked glass. One message. Unread.

K: Same place. 9pm. Come alone.

Her stomach dropped through the floor of the car.

She was thirty-two, a freelance interior designer, with a tidy mind and a stubborn mouth. She had been married six years to a man she loved, in the plain exasperated way you love a husband: his snoring, his socks, the way he left the bathroom light on. He was a chartered accountant at a mid-sized firm in Ikoyi. He ate the same breakfast every morning. He wore the same cologne. He had cried at their wedding.

And now, in her hands, was a cheap black phone with a message from someone called K.

She scrolled. The thread was long. Dozens of messages, going back months. Most were short, clipped, impersonal.

K: Received.

K: Not safe to talk. Use the usual.

K: You did well.

K: I know it is hard.

She pressed a fist to her mouth.

I know it is hard. Hard to what? To lie? To sneak? To live a double life?

She sat in the driver's seat for ten minutes, the phone in her lap, her heart hammering. Outside, the street went about its business. A woman sold roasted corn. A boy chased a football. The sun beat on the windscreen. She felt cold all over.

At last she turned the key. She did not go to her client meeting. She drove home, parked in the compound, and sat very straight in the car with her hands on the wheel.

"Okay," she said aloud. "Okay."

She put the phone back under the seat. She re-applied the tape as best she could. She put the pen she had finally found in her handbag, and she went into the house and made a cup of tea she did not drink.

Dele came home at six. He kissed her cheek. He asked what was for dinner. He sat at the table and ate jollof rice and chicken, and told her about a difficult client, and laughed at his own joke. He had a streak of ink on his thumb.

"You're quiet," he said.

"Am I?"

"A little."

"I've a headache."

"Poor baby." He reached across and squeezed her hand. His fingers were warm. "Take something."

"I will."

At eight-thirty he stood and stretched. "I'm going out for a bit."

"Where?"

"The office. I left a file." He was not looking at her. He was looking at his phone. "Won't be long."

"Okay."

"Don't wait up."

"I won't."

She watched the Camry's taillights vanish down the lane. She counted to sixty. Then she grabbed her keys, her handbag and her mother's old cardigan, and she ran to her sister's borrowed Corolla parked at the corner.

"I'm not a stalker," she muttered, as she turned the ignition. "I am a wife in need of information."

She pulled out into the night.