Consequences

Chapter 49

Sitting opposite Nancy and staring at her, I knew she was hiding something. Was it pain or regrets? I looked at her in the same way that I had stared at my mother when she was struggling to make the phone call. My mother had pains and was using annoyance to cover it up.

Here was Nancy, my best friend, going through some kind of pain. And the only way she could deal with it was to keep quiet. If something had happened between she and Ola, she had never quite forgotten about it.

"Nancy tell me all of this is about you?" I asked, so sure, this was her story and not mine.

"What are you talking about?"
"How did it go between you and Ola?"  She blinked and looked away for a second.
"Nancy if you had anything with him, I see that you haven't digested it so well, have you?"
"Tola, where are you getting all these ideas from?"
"Nancy for once tell me how things are."
"Tola this is my office and you are a suspect...,"

"Nancy tell me you had a relationship with him. Tell me someone like Miss K came along and took him away from you? And tell me...," I paused.

"Tola, you keep thinking you have all the answers." She interrupted, " but you're making a terrible mistake."

"Then Nancy, tell me how it is. Give me the answers that I don't have. I've been looking for them for so long.  And you like everyone else has told me not to look for them."

Bending  her head, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Was she going to tell me what I already thought I knew? Or was she going to tell me that nothing happened?

"Tola?" She opened her eyes and looked at me. "Ola and I never had any relationship. But we were and are very good friends. And that's because both our families were friends.  I used to be around him a lot, more than he used to be around other girls at the time. At one point I felt we would hook up, that he would ask me, if I wanted to be his girlfriend."

"I guess he noticed what you felt for him." I added.
"Yes, perhaps he did. And that's why one day while we were alone together, he put his arms around my shoulders. He then told me that we were so close to each other to have any kind of relationship. That we were like brothers and sisters. So as you see, we never had anything, Tola."

I pondered over what she had just said. Could it be that because of this refusal on the part of Ola to have a relationship with her, she was jealous of every other woman in his life?

"Nancy you were jealous weren't you?" Her eyes suddenly widened and she leaned forward in her chair like she was taking a closer look me.

"Tola, jealous of who, you or Miss K? Tell me what you both have that I don't have, I mean body wise?"

"I don't have my doubts about how good looking you are, Nancy."
So why should I be jealous?" She asked me

"I mean it could happen, I mean you were in love and he never gave you that attention."

"Tola, I still remember what he told me. He said, 'Nancy you're a very nice person. I pray that the woman I will marry, iwill be as nice as you are, and if she is your friend, better.' Now you tell me, who did Ola marry? You. Can you call this jealousy?"

For a brief moment I stared at Nancy. I knew that she was she still refusing to tell me what was bothering her. But perhaps she wasn't ready to tell me yet.

"Except now, I'm not the only woman in his life. But you only arrested me, and not the other woman, Why?" She got on the phone and called one of the officers who came in with the registry book.

"Officer did you bring the keys?" She asked him.

"Yes, madam." He handed them over to her.

"Okay wait outside."  The officer went outside and waited while Nancy opened the book and wrote something in it. She then turned the book so it could face me.