Four Hundred Outfits

The invitation arrived on a Tuesday, in a gold envelope that smelled of cheap perfume and expensive cruelty.

Simisola Bakare turned it over in her hands at the cutting table of her shop in Bodija, Ibadan. Around her, six tailors bent over machines that hummed like a swarm of bees. Bolts of lace and Ankara and aso-oke leaned against the walls in rainbows. The radio played Sunny Ade, low.

"Madam Simi," called Yetunde, her apprentice. "Who is the card from?"

"Nobody."

"It has a ribbon."

"Everything has a ribbon, Yetunde. Even disasters."

She opened it. The gold lettering swam. Dapo and Kemi, together with their families, joyfully invite you to the traditional marriage ceremony. Saturday, the fourteenth. Ibadan. Aso-ebi: royal blue and silver.

Dapo. Her Dapo. The man who had slid a ring on her finger fourteen months ago on the rooftop of a restaurant, with the whole of Ibadan glowing orange below them. The man who had cried when she said yes.

And Kemi. Her cousin Kemi, who had held her hand in the car after the engagement and said, I am so happy for you, Simi, I could burst.

Simi had found them in March. Not in bed, she was not a character in a film. She had found them in a text thread on Dapo's phone while he was in the shower. Seventeen months of messages. Photos. Plans. Kemi had called Simi cold and stuck-up in them. Dapo had agreed.

Two days later Dapo's family had shown up at her mother's house with kola nut and apologies. Not to take him back. To ask her to keep quiet, for the sake of the families.

She had kept quiet. For six months, she had worked eighteen hours a day and kept quiet so loudly that her mother had begun to pray over her food.

Now this.

A second paper was folded inside the card. A purchase order. Four hundred outfits, royal blue and silver, to be delivered in nine days. The sum at the bottom was large enough to clear her shop's entire debt.

At the bottom, in Kemi's looping handwriting: Dear Simi. You are the best. We could not imagine anyone else. Please do not be bitter. Love, Kemi.

Yetunde had read it over her shoulder. "Madam," she breathed, "the audacity."

"Yes."

"You will not take it?"

Simi stood very still. Then, to her own surprise, she smiled. It was not a good smile. It was the smile of a woman who has just seen a door, and behind the door, a very long corridor, and at the end of the corridor, a plan.

"Yetunde. Bring me the royal blue. And the silver thread."

"You are taking the job?"

"I am taking the job," said Simi, "and I am going to make the best four hundred outfits Ibadan has ever seen."

"Why?"

"Because the day my cousin walks into that hall in my work, with four hundred guests in my stitches, she will know exactly who made her look beautiful." She picked up the shears. "And it will not be a gift."

Yetunde swallowed. "Madam, that is very scary."

"It is very good business," said Simi.

That night she sat alone in the shop with a single lamp and the radio off, and the cloth of the engagement dress she had once made for herself folded in a plastic bag in the corner. She had never been able to throw it away. She took it out. She touched the lace.

Then, to her horror, she began to cry. Quietly at first, then not quietly at all, great ugly gasping tears with her hands pressed over her mouth in case the neighbours heard.

She did not hear the door.

"Excuse me," said a deep voice behind her. "I am looking for Madam Bakare. I was told she sews. I was told she does everything."

Simi spun around, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

A tall man stood in the doorway in a rumpled travel shirt, a suitcase at his feet, a stethoscope looped carelessly round his neck as if he had forgotten it was there. He had a lean, tired face, thoughtful eyes behind round glasses, and the faintest scar through one eyebrow.

"We are closed," she managed.

"I can see that." His gaze moved gently over her ruined face, the bag of lace, the lamp. He did not pretend not to notice. "I am sorry. I will go. Only, I have just landed from London. My brother is getting married on Saturday. I have no outfit. I was told I should come to the best tailor in Ibadan."

Simi's blood turned slowly to ice.

"Your brother," she said.

"Dapo Adeyemi." He smiled a little, tiredly. "I am Dr Ade. The responsible one."