Consequences

Chapter 5

The breakfast consisted of fried eggs, sliced bread and tea. It was something I enjoyed eating because it wasn't complicated to prepare. Unlike acamu or custard powder that needed to be stirred, frying eggs was quite simple.

In fact I remembered the many times I served Ola with fried eggs, sliced bread and tea and he would start complaining.
"Ha dis house dey no dey chop anything pass dis one?"
" And what else is there to eat for breakfast apart from this?"
"Well invent something else." He would say. What was there to invent? After all, this combination to the best of my knowledge, was one of the most served breakfast I could think of.

Sitting opposite the hotel manager gave me a sense of being with my own husband. We used to sit opposite each other on the breakfast and dinner table. Lunch time we were never at home as we were both at work.

I ate slowly when I noticed the hotel manager raising his head up and looking at me from time to time. I was used to my husband staring at me that way, so it didn't bother me too much.

Instead, what bothered me, was when he said I should consider myself lucky to be the only woman after his ex-wife to come inside his private area. While I felt honored, it didn't appear to me as too much of a complement.

I was a skeptic when I wanted to be one. And so I believed, there was something behind him bringing me into this place.  I found this out after we had finished breakfast and went to sit down in the sitting room area.

"So Sunshine, how was the breakfast, did you enjoy it?" He asked, smiling at me.
"It was okay, I mean yeah, I enjoyed it." I replied.
"Good, I'm glad you did. You know, I only do this on very special occasions, and for very special people." He got up and went to get himself a glass of whisky. 

He came back holding  a glass in his hand, and sat down.
"Yeah, so after a good breakfast, I always use this to digest the breakfast." I laughed as he said that.
"But that is alcohol, it might cause you stomach upset."
"Oh well I'm used to taking it after breakfast so it has become a habit."
"Well if you feel okay about it then there's no problem." I said. He smiled like he was putting a mark of approval on what I had just said. He sipped his drink with a sense of pride and then looked at me.
"You know my wife," he said, " I mean my ex-wife of course, had a problem with my early morning drinking habit."

He looked at me as he took another sip again. I observed him as he sipped his drink, and felt the need to know how it all went between him and his wife.

Knowing he didn't bring me into his private area just to welcome me, I had to ask him what happened between him and his wife

"So what happened between the two of you?" I asked, not sure if he would want to talk about it. But he took a deep breath and started to talk.

"It's a long story, a very long story. In fact I don't know where to start."
"Well if you don't feel like talking about it, I can understand." I shrugged as I said that because, if there was one thing I wanted most, it was to know the reason I was brought here.

"Sunshine, like I told you, you are the only woman after my wife that has entered here. It's a long story but I will tell you briefly how it started and how we came to the point of separation."

I looked at him quietly without saying a word. Seeing my unresponsiveness, he went on to tell me a story; his version of the story.

"We came from having nothing to being the proud owners of this hotel. As you can see having this hotel meant money wasn't our problem anymore. But just after two years into the business, she started finding all sorts of reasons to take out money from the account we had opened for the business."