FAMILIARITY not only breeds contempt, it also breeds a hotbed of opportunities for unfaithfulness. The more close-knit a crop of friends are, the wider the chances of swopping partners, albeit discreetly. Tope’s recent experience, however, took the cake when it comes to how far you can go in forgiving a friend who ‘snatched’ the partner you believed you could have married. A few of us were in a ‘no-party-this-weekend’ drinking and chin-waging session when she suddenly invited me to one of her friends’ house-warming party a few days away. I’d never heard her mention this particular friend and no wonder, because when I asked her who she was, Tope actually looked a bit pensive. “I’ll tell you all about her on the way but I need you to come with me for much needed support.”
We’ve never stood for ceremonies when going out on the spur of the moment. As we nestled in the back seat of the car, Tope told me this friend, Cecilia, was once a close friend in their undergraduate days. “We did virtually everything together,” she reminisced, “and went to social outings as a foursome with our boyfriends. When I met David, she was the first person I told because she had a knack of assessing people.
We were room-mates then and I was glad David had a lot in common with her boyfriend. He was a freshly employed banker with a very promising future. Whenever either of our men visited, we had this unwritten rule of leaving the coast clear for some privacy. Cecilia did this regularly even when she fell out with her boyfriend. She was so miserably unhappy that I insisted she came with us on a few outings to take her mind off her grief, David used to grumble about three being a crowd, but I put my foot down.
Cecilia was pathetically grateful to have a semblance of a social life and I was glad to be of help. After all, what were friends for? When she said she was pregnant a few weeks to our final exams, I was shocked. She had no serious boyfriend to speak of, and I asked who the father of her unborn child was. She said she met him when he recently came to Nigeria on a brief visit and had gone back. She was likely to join him after we graduated. I felt happy for her but was concerned she could jump into a relationship so quickly after her botched one. Was she on the rebound?
” A couple of months after we graduated, I called on her, hoping to cheer her up and discuss the new job I had just landed. I was intrigued to find David’s car parked in front of her parents’ house. What was he doing there? Her mum let me in and I went straight to her room. I was curious that David wasn’t anywhere to be found. I cautiously pushed Cecilia’s bedroom door open and the sight that greeted me made my world spin! David was on the bed with my best friend, his naked back to me, his trousers around his knees. They were obviously having a quickie!
“Cecilia, who was lying beneath him in spite of her rounded tummy saw me, her mouth, a shocked ‘O’! of surprise. “You bitch!” I yelled at her in frustrated anger. David turned at the sound of my voice and quickly scrambled to his feet when he saw me, pulling up his trousers as my best friend struggled to get into her clothes.
“l rushed blindly out of the room and ran smack into Cecilia’s mum. She’d heard the commotion and came to find out what was going on. ‘I just caught Cecilia having sex with my fiance!’ I spat at her. She looked shocked.
Was I sure David was my fiance? She obviously was in the dark as to my relationship with him. She said David was the father of Cecilia’s unborn child, that they were getting married in three weeks. Silently, she handed over a copy of the invitation card, still looking confused. It was then I knew what betrayal really was. I was inconsolable, and my parents were concerned about me. Most of our friends that I called told me they knew about the wedding but didn’t know how to tell me.
“For weeks I couldn’t make the terrible image of what I saw that day go away. I thought the whole world was laughing at me. David didn’t bother to contact me and neither did Cecilia. I nearly had a break-down when I saw pictures of their wedding in newspapers. A few months after the wedding, Cecilia sent a note through one of our friends. She’d had a baby girl. She wrote: I’ m awfully sorry for hurting you the way I did, it’s happened and you’re still my best friend. Do you think we can get over this?’
“I couldn’t believe she would have the nerve to ask for my blessing after she’d flattened the life I’d dreamt of having. ‘Tell her I would go to the grave hating her!’ I told the friend she sent. Talk about stabbing you in the chest and turning the knife! That was over 20 years ago. I met my husband shortly after and couldn’t have asked for a more successful and understanding man. David was retrenched by the bank he worked for, and Cecilia now has to struggle to keep the family of three kids together. When the landlord started grabbing them by the throat, they hurried the completion of the bungalow they started building ages ago on the outskirts of Lagos.
“Cecilia shuttled between Nigeria and Britain from time to time and sent in money from her career job through the Western Union so the house could be habitable. I didn’t know all this until I ran into her at a friend’s house. She looked so contrite and despondent that being hostile to her would amount to kicking her when she was down.
“Haltingly, we got talking and she was her friendly self. The chemistry between us gradually returned and there was really nothing to hate about her. She’d put on a lot of weight and was a far cry from the sophisticated room-mate I’d known. Her marriage wasn’t all that happy either, and when she asked for my address and phone number, I gladly gave them to her, convinced she would not have the nerve to call.
“I was mildly surprised when she called at the house about a week later and was glad I lived in such a posh surrounding. It was then she invited me to a house-warming. I don’t think I’ve ever visited that neck of the woods their house is situated but I didn’t want to give the impression of a snob, so I agreed to come.
The driver knows the area, thank goodness.”
After veering off a tarred road and bumping dangerously through the very rough stretch of lane that leads to Cecilia’s bungalow, I really felt sorry for the poor woman. The place still needed to be painted and neighbourhood buildings weren’t impressive. Yet it was home to her family and as we went in, we were ushered in like VIPs. Cecilia was obviously happy to see us. Decked in a very expensive lace material that I’d once seen on Tope, I knew right away that Tope must have given it to her. “What else could I do?” she asked on our way back home.
‘I had so much and she had precious little. You should see how excited and grateful she was when I gave her a few of my clothes that I didn’t really need.
And did you see David? I’m glad that I had this opportunity to see both of them and finally lay the ghost that had hunted me for years. It was like revisiting the scene of the crime! David’s shabby look made me wonder what I ever saw in him.
“Thanks to their supposed betrayal, I found a better man and providence had more than compensated my loss. I intended to do whatever I can to make life easier for her. I mean, but for the grace of God, I would have been in her shoes! If we were useful to each other once, we could be useful to each other again. You can forgive anything if your hurt eventually works in your favour….”
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