"Don, what's the matter? Are you
alright?" Helen asked worriedly.
He did not respond but
"I'm ok. I've been taking these malaria
drugs and they make me feel dizzy at times," he explained.
"Sorry about that. Maybe you should go
home and rest. We could always hang out some other time," she said, still
looking worried.
He shook his head, insisting he was fine.
They chatted for a while with Helen doing
Before parting that night, he promised to call
in a few days so they could go out on another date.
"I've enjoyed our time together. Let's
do this again," he said as he kissed her on the cheek before she alighted
from his car in front of her house.
About a week later, when she did not hear from
him, she called his mobile.
"I was worried that maybe you had not
recovered from the malaria," she stated. "So, how are you feeling
now?" she enquired
He told her he was alright but had been unable
to contact her due to work commitments. But Don knew in his heart that that was
not the whole truth. Much as he liked her and wanted to see more of her, he had
decided to keep away for certain reasons which he could not explain to her.
"Actually, I have an invite for
you," Helen said, adding, "One of our executive directors at the bank
is retiring soon and a party is being planned for him next week. It's at the
Ritz Hotel and it's going to be a classy do
His initial reaction was to decline, but
hearing her sweet voice again and realizing how much he had missed her, he
accepted.
The party turned out to be a glitzy affair as
Helen had predicted. Mr Thompson, the director that was leaving, who was a
Briton, was one of the pioneer staff of the bank when it was established some
decades ago. Some of the top officials of the bank including the M.D, some
directors and senior management staff were in attendance. There was lots to eat
and drink and plenty of speeches as well.
"Nice party," Don said some time
later. They were taking a walk by the hotel pool. Inside the hall, a live band
was playing and some of the usually serious minded bankers were letting their
hair down and grooving to the beats.
"You can go back and continue with your
dancing if you want," she suggested, sitting on a chair by the pool. He
had danced with a couple of her colleagues including the loquacious Tina who
had been clinging onto him all evening. Due to her leg injury, she could not
dance and had sat watching the couples on the dance floor a bit enviously.
"No. I'm cool. It was getting a bit
stuffy inside," he said, sitting by her. They sat in silence for a while,
taking in the scenery and savouring the cool, fresh air.
Then turning to him, she said:
"I know you might say it's none of my
business. But you told me the other day that you called off your wedding to the
lady you were planning to marry a week to the day. What really happened?"
He sighed, before telling her a tale of
infidelity and betrayal.
"I caught her in bed with my best
friend. He was someone I trusted so much and we were like brothers. He was to
be my best man at the wedding. I just couldn't get over the betrayal of trust
especially on her part. It put me off relationships for a long while," he
stated quietly.
She reached for his hand and held it.
"What a sad story," she noted.
"These things happen. I have some horror relationship tales as well,"
she added. And she went on to tell him about her last boyfriend who turned out
to be a conman. "He claimed to be a businessman, an importer of computers
and accessories. One day, he told me he had secured a contract at a government
ministry to supply computers worth about N100 million. He begged me to use my
connection at the bank to secure a loan to import the items," Helen
narrated.
It was while the loan application was being
processed, she added that a colleague who knew someone at the ministry made
enquiries concerning the contract.
"It was then the truth was revealed-
there was no contract! He wanted to dupe the bank and disappear with the money
once he had received it. Of course I ended the relationship! The most painful
thing was that instead of showing remorse for his misdeeds, he wrote me a
terrible letter. He called me all kinds of names including a cripple,
disclosing that the only reason he dated me, was because of my job- as I could
facilitate his access to bank loans easily . Can you imagine that?" she
said.
"He was a very bad person. Its a good
thing you found out about him on time," Don stated.
"Yes. It was a lucky escape for me. As
his guarantor, I would have ended up being saddled with repaying the money.
Where will I see such a huge amount of money to pay back to the bank?" she
wondered.
"You know, we are two of a kind, been
through so much heartache..." Don said, holding her by the shoulder and
drawing her close.
"Yes," she intoned, resting her head
on his shoulder...
The revelation
After
that night, they saw regularly for the next couple of months. And soon, a relationship
blossomed between them. To Don, it was never part of his plan to get so close
to her but try as he could, he could not stay away from her. There was
something about her that kept drawing him to her and it got to a point where he
stopped trying to resist. He had fallen in love and there was no point denying
it. Besides, he found in Helen some of the qualities he had always wanted in a
woman- she was caring, loving and faithful. After the incident with his
ex-fiancé, he wanted a woman he could trust and he saw that in Helen.
About eight months after they started dating,
Don proposed to her one evening at his home. Though she had been expecting
something like that from hints he had been dropping , Helen still looked
surprised when she saw the ring he had slipped on her third finger.
"It's so beautiful!" she enthused,
then added. "Of course I will marry you, darling! At least that will stop
Tina from trying to snatch you from me."
After things had quietened down a bit, they
sat making tentative plans for their wedding.
"But Don," Helen stated some time
later, "Much as I love you and want to be your wife and I suspected you
were going to propose, I thought maybe, you would wait for sometime ..."
"Wait for what?" he asked.
"For us to get to know each other better.
We've not even been dating for up to a year," she noted.
"Baby, what more do I need to know about
you? Afterall , I've known you since you were a little girl like this," he
said, raising his hand to indicate the height of a ten year old child.
"Don ! That's not true! I was not as small
as that!" she said heatedly.
"You were!" he insisted, laughing at
her.
She
picked up one of the empty bottles of red wine on the table they had drunk to
celebrate their engagement.
"Say that again and I will hit you with
this," she said, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
He jumped up from the couch and standing at a
safe distance, repeated his earlier statement about her height, his hand raised
at the same angle.
"Ah! Somebody is going to join his
ancestors today!" she shouted, getting up to run after him, the bottle
raised in a threatening manner...
*
* * *
It
was about a month to the wedding. Preparations were in top gear and like most
brides-to-be, Helen was excited about the coming nuptials. One evening at his
apartment, they sat going over the guest list on Don's computer. It was growing
longer by the day and Helen was trying to prune it to a reasonable figure.
"It's too long. I think 300 is a more reasonable
number," she said, scrolling down the list of names.
"You are right. Well, you take care of
it. I'm going to see Patrick about the groomsmen's outfits," he stated,
picking his car keys from the side table. Patrick was going to be his best man
at the wedding.
After he had left, she worked on the list for
a while. She was saving the document in a folder when something attracted her
attention. She clicked on the file and began reading it. At the end, she sat
staring at the screen, too stupefied to move.
Could this be true? Or was she dreaming? How
could it be? That her own Don, the love of her life, the man she was planning
to marry was the one who had been driving the night of the accident back in
school that had left her nearly crippled? But it was all there- the details of
what had happened that night; the party, the drive back to the campus, hitting
her and abandoning her by the roadside half-dead, wounded, bleeding,
unconscious...
It was in his private files which she had
stumbled upon by chance. In a way she was glad, the truth was out. But on the
other hand, she wished fervently that she had remained ignorant of the truth
and had continued in her dreams and hopes for the future that now suddenly
looked so bleak.
"Baby, I'm back. How is the list coming
up?" Don said as he walked in through the front door. But he was stopped
in his tracks by the strange look in her eyes- a mixture of despair, anger,
disappointment and hopelessness...
To be continued
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the narrator and other individuals in the story.
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