The Bulldozer

The bulldozer was yellow and enormous, and it had been parked across the plaza's main gate with the casual arrogance of a thing that knows it can't be moved.

A crowd had gathered. The bread woman. The phone repairer, a tiny man named Alhaji Sule, in a skullcap. The tailors from the second floor. A knot of children from the school next door, pressed to the railings. Everybody was talking at once.

Ada pushed through them with her white coat flapping. "Excuse me. Excuse me!"

A heavy man in a navy suit stood at the front, with a briefcase. Behind him, three burly figures in hard hats. He raised a hand.

"Madam. Please. I'm Barrister Ugo Anozie, counsel to the receivers. We are here to take possession of this property under the Deed of Mortgage dated..."

"You are doing what?"

"Taking possession."

"You cannot." Ada stepped in front of the bulldozer. "This is a family estate. My father died two years ago. There are legal proceedings."

"Which have been settled." He opened the briefcase and produced a stamped paper. "A court order, ma. Issued yesterday."

"Yesterday?"

"The receiver applied ex parte. Standard practice."

"Standard?" She snatched the paper. Her eyes ran over the legalese. A word leapt out. Immediate. A date. A name at the bottom of the page: Balogun Capital Limited.

Her blood went cold.

A voice behind her said, "I didn't sign that."

She turned. Femi stood at the edge of the crowd, in his charcoal suit, pale as paper. He looked at the court order. He looked at the bulldozer. Something dark and dangerous moved across his face.

"Ugo," he said quietly.

The barrister's smile faltered. "Mr Balogun. I thought you had approved the application."

"I approved a standard enforcement notice. Not an ex parte injunction." He walked forward. "Who filed this?"

"Your general counsel, sir. Mr Lawal."

"Mr Lawal is my father's man. He did this without asking me." His voice was soft and utterly cold. "Tell your driver to turn that machine around."

"Sir..."

"Now."

The barrister swallowed. He nodded to the operator. The engine roared, spluttered, and the great yellow monster reversed, slowly, with a beeping like an outraged hen. The crowd erupted. Alhaji Sule threw his skullcap into the air.

Ada didn't cheer. She was staring at Femi. "You stopped it."

"I didn't start it."

"Are you telling me you don't control your own company?"

"I'm telling you my father does." He rubbed his eyes. "I founded Balogun Capital with money from a sale of my own. But my father invested in the second round. He has a seat on the board. And a very long memory."

"What does he have to do with this?"

"Everything." He looked at her. "He hated your father, Ada."

"My father was a good man."

"My father thinks otherwise." He glanced at the crowd. "Is there somewhere we can talk privately?"

She hesitated. Then she led him up the back stairs to the little flat above the pharmacy, where she had lived for the past seven years. It was two rooms and a kitchen: a sofa, a table, shelves of medical journals, a photograph of her parents on their wedding day. He stopped in the doorway and stared at it.

"You kept it the same," he said.

"I didn't have time to change it."

"You kept my mug."

She flushed. She had not intended him to see that. On the top shelf of the kitchen, between a chipped teapot and a jar of dried hibiscus, sat a battered blue enamel mug with a crack in the handle. He had bought it at Balogun Market in their second year. It said BEST PHARMACIST IN LAGOS, in wobbly paint.

"It was practical," said Ada stiffly.

"Of course."

"It holds more than the others."

"I'm sure that's why."

She marched to the kettle. When she turned back, he had sunk onto the sofa with his head in his hands, and his shoulders were shaking.

She stood very still.

"Femi?"

"I'm sorry." His voice was muffled. "I'm so sorry. I should have come back years ago. I should have written, I should have called. I thought if I stayed away long enough, it would stop hurting. It didn't. It only got worse."

"Why did you leave?"

"It wasn't what you think."

"What do I think?"

"That I didn't love you." He lifted his face. His eyes were red. "Ada. I have loved you every single day for seven years. I left because I had no choice."

"No choice."

"Your father came to see me."

The kettle began to whistle. She did not move.

"The night before I left Lagos," said Femi, "Chief Nwosu came to my flat in Surulere. He sat on my one chair. He said, 'Young man, I want to talk to you about my daughter.' He told me something. And I swore I would never tell you."