The Wife ESCAPED!

Timmy leaned back as he put mental finishing touches to his plan. He had to be careful, otherwise failure would be certain. He ran over the main points over and over again until he was satisfied that it was fool-proof. Then he jumped off his chair and left his office, locking the door behind him. He had not moved five paces away from his office door when he heard a familiar voice say, “Okay. Bye bye.”

His first instinct was to hide, but there was nowhere to take cover in the vicinity. Going back to his office was not feasible. The fact that he could hear her meant that she was about to turn the corner which would give her a full view of his office. As he stood there, turning round and walking back and forth in his indecision, she came into view.

“You wanted to hide from me, abi?”, she questioned, eyeing him suspiciously.

“What! No! Why would I wanna do that? I was just trying to uh… think of something I might have forgotten.”

“Whatever. Come and attend to me abeg,” she hissed, walking toward his office. He followed right behind her and quickly opened the door to let her in.

“Make yourself comfortable, Trace. I was just on my way out, so I’ll ask uh… Jim or Stan to uh.. give you everything you need.”

“Come, wait o. Why are you treating me like this? As if I don’t pay for what I take.”

“Come on, I know you do and I appreciate it,” Timmy smiled, even though he knew how she always bullied her way into paying far below the normal price. “The thing is that I’ve got somewhere really important that I…”

“Somewhere that’s more important than your sister, eh?”

“But you’ll be well attended to. In fact, you don’t even have to pay for whatever you take away today.”

“So you want to bribe me? I’m now a small child that you’ll bribe with a toy, so you can escape, abi?”

“Come on, Tracy, it’s not…”

“Where on earth are you going that you cannot spend just 30 minutes for your elder sister? So this is how you want to repay me after all the sufferings me and Dora went through because of you? I don’t blame you. When you have such a successful business, how won’t you forget those who took care of you?”, she hissed.

“Come on, sis,” Timmy sighed, secretly wondering what care and sufferings she was referring to. “You know I love and appreciate you and I have promised that you’ll be well attended to. If anything goes wrong, just call me. But right now, I’ve got an appointment to keep. See you later, sis. Love you!”

With that, he ran out of the office, taking her completely unawares.

“Timothy, will you come back here!”, she shouted after him, but he had gone out of earshot.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

***

When Timmy arrived at his first destination, he parked his car near the building and looked at it through his window. He would have loved to see the girl without the knowledge of her boss, but it seemed that would be one hell of a mammoth task. How on earth would he go about this? A uniformed girl ran out of the building, obviously going on an errand. Seeing her, Timmy’s heart leapt in joy. He opened the door and alighted from the car, but just then, the girl stopped and ran back again into the building. Perhaps she had forgotten something? Timmy stood beside his car, waiting for her to return.

It took several minutes, but the girl eventually returned – this time, walking.

“Hey hi,” Timmy called as she walked past his car.

She turned around to regard him suspiciously, but seeing his car, her demeanor changed.

“Excuse me a minute, please,” Timmy said as he walked closer to her. “I… uh… need you to do a little something for me. There’s a girl in there, working with you guys. Her name’s Millicent. Do you know her?”

“Yes,” the girl answered, nodding enthusiastically.

“Great,” Timmy smiled as he reached in his back pocket to extract his wallet. He pulled out a five hundred naira note and handed it to the girl. “I just need you to tell her that I’d like to have a word with her.”

“Okay,” the girl nodded and swiftly made for the building.

“Hey hey hey,” Timmy called in a whisper and she ran back to him. “You don’t need to do it now. Go do whatever it is you wanted to do. When you return, you can tell her.”

Another ‘Okay’ and the girl sped off on her first errand. Timmy opened his car door and sat on the driver seat, facing outside, awaiting her return.

Ten minutes into his wait was when Timmy realized that he had no idea how long the girl would take. He didn’t even know what she had been sent to do. For all he knew, it might take her hours or even the whole day. The smart thing to do would have been to take her with his car and bring her back, but he never thought of that at the time, so he would have to wait for God knows how many more (hopefully,) minutes. His only consolation was that the girl had not said she would take long, so it probably meant that she won’t. If only he had allowed her to call Millicent before going on her errand. He just didn’t want to attract their boss’ suspicion.

**

About half an hour after her departure, the apprentice returned. She replied Timmy’s nod with a nod of her own as she ran past him into the building.

The next few minutes were heart-pounding for Timmy. Would Millicent come or would she not? Hopefully, the money he had given the girl would be more than enough incentive for her to persuade Millicent to see him, even if she didn’t want to.

“Oh it’s you. Good Morning.”

Timmy was startled by her sudden appearance beside the door of his car.

“Oh hi. Um… how do you do?”

“I’m fine. And you?”, she asked, cocking her head to one side.

“Well, I’m great. I just… I just came out here to ask you a little favour.”

“And what might that be?”, Millicent demanded, quite sure she knew the answer already.

“Your friend, the one you came with the other day to…”

“Caro, you mean?”

“Yeah yeah, Karow.”

“Well, what about her?”, she sighed, folding her arms across her chest.

“I’d like to, you know… see her and offer her a job. That’s it,” Timmy replied, hope in his eyes.

“Look,” Millicent sighed. “I don’t know why my friend hates you, but I can’t give you her number or address…”

“No no no. Just, you know… point me in the right direction and I’ll ask around. Look, I’ll make it worth your while,” he said, quickly reaching for his wallet.

“I don’t need your money,” Millicent stopped him. “I just want you to swear that you have no bad intentions for my friend.”

“I swear on my mother’s life, I have nothing but beautiful intentions for her.”

“Hmm. You really love her, don’t you?”, Millicent asked, smiling coyly.

“I… I…”

“It’s okay. I understand,” she waved dismissively. “But let me give you one important advice: if you really want to get her, you have to first understand that you can never get her.”