Dear Beneficiary

  I was sitting and watching the spectacle before me when Lady Osolase came over. She sipped her drink and I noticed a twinkle in her eye as she spoke.

  ‘Well, I haf a surprise for you, dear Cynthia. Some of my people haf been doing some investigating.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. What have they found?’ I asked, hoping against hope it was something I wanted to hear.

  Someone was talking behind me, greeting a number of people on their way through the crowd. I thought it might be one of Lady Osolase’s colleagues from the outreach programmes. She’d been asking repeatedly if I was interesting in helping them.

  I’d prepared myself to put on a fixed smile and offer my best polite, diplomatic conversation when I saw a vision I hadn’t expected to see again. It was Darius, accompanied by a beautiful young woman I hoped he had nothing to do with.

  ‘Hello, Cynthia. How lovely to see you,’ he said, kissing me gently on the cheek.

  Time stood still and I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t been prepared for meeting him this suddenly and he seemed distant, like a stranger. He looked at me with his beautiful, kind eyes with no sense of guilt or shame. Did he not know he’d torn out my pounding heart and crushed it?

  ‘This is Chinaza,’ he said, introducing me to the young woman accompanying him.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I said automatically, even though I wanted to axe her into tiny pieces.

  ‘I’ve been reading about your adventures in the press and heard from Lady Osolase that you were here. It sounds like you have had quite a time,’ Darius said, gleaming through his pink-tinged lips and showing the tips of his icy white teeth.

  My insides turned with nerves, and I hoped he couldn’t hear the gurgling. My left foot started to quiver, so I shuffled slightly in the hope he wouldn’t guess my state of anxiety.

  I was glad I was dressed well and hoped he’d remember our liaisons with fondness. I wished I was in something a little sexier than my sensible courts. Perhaps I should’ve asked Tracey for a pair of her ‘shag me’ shoes.

  ‘Well, it’s been interesting,’ I said, hiding untethered emotions as deep in my soul as I could. ‘Not everyone can say they’ve been kidnapped and survived,’ I said as I smiled at Darius, wondering if this woman might be the object of his attentions.

  ‘We were very pleased to hear from the university you’d arrived there safe and sound,’ he said, as he moved forward and touched my arm. A thrill ran through my blood as if I’d touched an electric fence.

  ‘We’re also delighted to tell you we’ve managed to capture your kidnappers,’ Darius added, and I felt a wave of relief wash over me. ‘Chinaza is on the investigating team with me at Forensix Inc. She led the project to find and arrest them. They will appear in court in a few days.’

  ‘Actually, that isn’t quite true, Mrs Hartworth,’ drawled Chinaza in my direction, giving me what I could only describe as a sickly smile. Even her teeth were perfect. ‘We believe the main instigator of the scam is still at large. The others are too scared to give his name, although we understand he is known to many as ‘just John’.’

  I couldn’t stop looking at this woman, who was at least a foot taller than me yet probably ten pounds lighter. I imagined her breasts being upright and full, untouched by the teeth of mewling infants. She turned away to talk to a guest who was passing by and Darius continued to explain what had happened, but I felt like someone had blown dry ice into my brain to prevent it from functioning.

  I still clung on to the hope this young female was not the recipient of Darius’s affections. My stomach lifted, and I could have happily tap-danced my way round the house and garden dressed in nothing but a tutu had I been assured of that.

  A number of people came up to us, mainly to talk to Darius and Chinaza. They both seemed well known, which didn’t surprise me.

  Then a stab of pain nearly knocked me off my feet. I looked over to see Chinaza pick a piece of fluff from Darius’s shirt. Until that point I was prepared to think, hope, that they were just colleagues.

  That’s far too intimate to be just a work relationship, I thought, as I ran to the ladies to have a good cry. As salty droplets of sadness cascaded down my cheeks it occurred to me that many lovers meet at work. How could I think they were anything but?

  When I returned, Lady Osolase’s secretary, Idowu, came over and asked if I was OK. ‘I understand you’ve had some bad experience of people in our country. For this I must apologise,’ she said in a very clipped and precise manner. ‘I always feel very sad these people represent our beautiful nation so badly.’

  I looked around and couldn’t see Darius, or that witch of a woman, anywhere. I wanted to ask where he’d gone, but wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. I was glad my red-rimmed eyes could be blamed on a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder and not the consequences of a broken heart.

  Idowu was dressed in crisp, coloured clothes that hadn’t bent to the movement of her body and remained crease-free and fresh. Her hands were beautifully manicured, especially when compared to my short and unvarnished nails. In her presence I felt very badly maintained.

  ‘It isn’t your fault,’ I said, thanking her for her concern. She went on to ask how I dealt with being in captivity and how we’d managed to escape.

  Before long I was telling her about Darius. I was propelled towards such a conversation, like all those newly immersed in unrequited love. Not all the details, of course, but just the fact he was a friend I’d been looking for. I was economical with the truth, having decided there were some things best left unsaid. We talked about the problems the country had with some of the people who are using technology to fight their way out of poverty. She added that Darius was one of the leaders in his field, and very well respected. He’d apparently left a short while ago, with Chinaza.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl. His family know her family,’ she added, and that clinched the scenario for me. Arranged marriages are commonplace in Nigeria, although no man was likely to complain about being promised to such a beautiful woman, or no woman to such a beautiful man.

  My world was crumbling, but I knew I needed to keep up a good pretence of being unmoved by the news. Life goes on, dammit. I hadn’t been listening to Idowu’s conversation, spending my energy trying not to think about Darius and Chinaza together. I could barely register what was being said, and chastised myself for entertaining any thoughts he might ever have taken me seriously. I made a supreme effort to concentrate.

  What she also told me, as we watched Tracey and Baz stumble their way through their first dance to ‘I Love You Love’ by Gary Glitter, somewhat inappropriately given his offences, was that Baz was a bad boy.

  ‘It isn’t just poverty that motivates people,’ she said, as her words finally filtered into my distracted brain. ‘We have the same issues here as anywhere, with greed, power and envy. I’m so glad Abassi has seen the error of his ways and is settling down,’ she added, looking over as Tracey got her heel stuck in the bottom of her dress and was hopping around the dance floor trying to extricate it.

  ‘His mother got so upset by his behaviour. He’s been in prison three times, and it would’ve been more if it wasn’t for the efforts she goes to for him.’

  This news interested me, and I worried for Tracey. I wanted to protect her from coming up against any more unexpected disasters in her life.

  Apart from scamming British women for money, she told me he’d also been arrested for drug trafficking through Morocco and supplying cocaine to his mother’s university students.

  ‘It is like he wants to disgrace her. He is just like his father, unfortunately. Not like her other son, Mabu, who is honest and hard-working. He has a good job working as a customs officer in England. She’d like Abassi to be more like him, and is determined to make something of him rather than see him continue his life of crime.’

  I personally didn’t think marriage to Tracey was the answer, but could see how it served as a suitable punishment from Lady Osolase’s point of view.
I wondered how long it would be before Tracey thumped him the same way she did Chiddy. I almost felt sorry for him.

  As I had a ready source of information, I set to finding out more about our hostess and her life. Maybe I could take up her offer to work in Nigeria, using the few skills I had? I was sure I could find something else to be useful at, now ideas of a future with Darius had come to such a disappointing halt.

  Through subtle questioning I discovered Lady Osolase was truly an inspiration to many people. Apart from being the first Nigerian woman from her tribe, one of the poorest in the country, to get a degree, she went on to become a professor in Ethical Studies and a leading expert in the education of women in the Third World. She was also the mother of five children, who she had brought up on her own after her husband left, citing the fact he felt emasculated by his wife’s success. That and the fact he had a twenty-four-year-old Brazilian lover with a beautifully toned chest and a people-pleasing personality.

  This knowledge made me feel a bit inadequate. I’d given up on my own battle for further education at an early age and settled for a life of marriage and domestic support, which challenged nobody, other than me. I kept all disappointment to a minor level, which was easily masked with social nicety and the meeting of middle-class expectations. Whether Colin would ever have left me for a younger woman had I ever been successful in my own right is something I’ll never know. I thought it unlikely, given his lack of appetite in the bedroom department for anything other than a good book and clean vests.

  Maybe being kidnapped had given me a new perspective on life, but I certainly no longer felt I was the same Cynthia. Something had shifted. I might have spent many years bringing up my family and being a devoted wife, but I’d tasted something else. It was adversity, for the first time, and a feeling that life is very, very short.

  I felt sad, and tried also to feel blessed that Darius had been part of it. As the saying goes, ‘better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’.

  Whoever said that was talking rubbish.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Although the purpose of the party was largely false, it was an impressive affair. These people knew how to entertain, and even the karaoke had a certain class to it. The Nina Simone sound-alike did a rather rousing rendition of ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’, which almost brought me to tears.

  Lady Osolase came over to me as the party was beginning to slow down, many hours after it had started. The dancing, singing and celebrating seemed to be endless, and my feet throbbed from the sheer effort of it all. I’d enjoyed it despite a heavy heart and a strong sense that nothing would be the same again.

  She patted me on the back and introduced me to more people, each individually apologising for what had happened to Tracey and me and telling me of their shame at their fellow countrymen. I couldn’t imagine anyone in Britain apologising to foreigners for atrocities we’d visited on them. We’d made our country great on the back of such behaviour, after all.

  Once the final stragglers had gone and Tracey was going round the tables mine-sweeping any remaining alcohol, Lady Osolase said: ‘Most importantly, Cynthia, are you having a good time?’ emphasising the word ‘good’.

  ‘I’m having a really lovely time. And your friends are very nice,’ I replied, hoping my blatant lie didn’t show through my teeth. I didn’t want to be churlish to my very generous host.

  ‘Oh, I haf few friends, Cynthia.’

  I was surprised. A woman with all her qualifications and influence must have lots of friends, I thought. If she lived in Epsfield, Mavis would want to be her friend. But I’m not sure I’d be happy with that because I would like to keep her to myself. Anyway, Mavis always shouted at black people – thinking them not only ‘foreign’ and therefore unable to speak English, but also deaf.

  ‘I’m wealthy. I’m well known. I haf power. Da people want those tings I haf, but not me,’ she said in a surprisingly sage tone. ‘If I’d nuttin’ they would not be here, but I don’t mind. I can get tings done dat I want done. I haf worked for everyting I haf, so use it for ma goals. I haf big goals, yous see?’

  I couldn’t fail to be impressed. Lady Osolase really didn’t care about what people thought of her. She wouldn’t worry about changing the rota for sandwiches at the bridge club sessions or passing an Advanced Driving course under the watchful eye of the opinionated and judgemental Vera. She was changing the world. My life in comparison seemed futile, one where I filled in the days to get to the next one.

  ‘I would like to take yous to see me programmes. Dat is, if you haf the time,’ she said.

  I saw a whole new world opening up in front of me. One that didn’t revolve around whose turn it was to invite me for Christmas or which child of mine wanted to patronise me about my driving, swimming, bridge and the number of times I say I’m going to move but never actually do it.

  Not only that, I could forget Darius, love, passion, sex. It seemed a poor swap, but I needed something to focus on, and the prospect of Mavis and the bridge club plus never-ending family events just didn’t cut the mustard.

  ‘I would love to see what you do, Lady Osolase. Thank you.’

  ‘Call me Buke, I’m sure we can be friends,’ she said, as she got up and swished along the floor to warmly greet another guest.

  And that meant more to me than she could have ever known.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Buke organised the trip to the outreach programmes for the day after the wedding, which I was very grateful for. They were a good day’s drive away, and we spent three days visiting children, teachers, governors and fund-raisers. It gave me time away from the revelation that Darius was otherwise engaged.

  Tracey and I were still being advised to keep a low profile while the authorities moved in on the entire kidnapping ring. They didn’t want us targeted by the ‘big boys’, who might want to persuade us not to testify against their gangs. I thought again of John and whether or not I would describe him as one of the ‘Big Boys’. His only power was probably the fact he was English and more plausible in his ability to scam white women. I wondered if he could be bothered to come looking for us again.

  ‘You haf done very well,’ said Buke, as we made our way to the car due to take us back to the university. Baz and Tracey were due back from their honeymoon, and I was interested to see how they’d got on.

  Buke gave no indication she thought the marriage was destined to fail. If I asked her how she felt about her son marrying an Englishwoman old enough to be his mother, she replied that she was very happy they’d found each other, and turned the conversation to her work.

  One of the visits had been to a Girls’ Power Initiative that had been running in one of the programme’s schools for some time, aimed at talking to young women about an ‘empowered womanhood’ and the threat of HIV. One girl told me she couldn’t attend many of the sessions because her parents wouldn’t give permission, which surprised me. I constantly packed my kids off to anything going on at school, just for the peace and quiet. Bobbie wasn’t too happy with the motorcycle maintenance course running in the summer of her fourth year at secondary school, but I had told her she’d never know when it might come in handy. Jonjo benefitted greatly from the advanced sociology programme when it came to applying for jobs in the public sector. He told me his use of the phrase ‘socio-demographic’ clinched his position in marketing for Croydon Council.

  We didn’t stay very long, just enough time to say hello and goodbye to a number of people. Buke seemed particularly keen to leave after a young student presented her with a bracelet made of rice.

  ‘Dat is lovely,’ she said, sounding sincere as she bent down to the small girl with wide, innocent eyes looking up to her. She threw it in a bin at a petrol station we stopped at on the way back, claiming she didn’t want to wear something that might attract insects. I think my cat felt the same about flea collars. He’d never keep one on for longer than a day.

  It was good to get back to the
bungalow. I had enjoyed the trip to the programmes, but Buke’s energy exhausted me. She could survive on just a few hours’ sleep a night, and was like a Duracell rabbit, permanently on the go. I’d thought of asking her to come and stay with me on her next trip to England, but it would be like having a whirling dervish in the house. That, or one of those hoovers that goes round on its own while you’re out.

  I’d settled down onto the settee, having agreed to meet Buke later for dinner at her place, when Tracey came bursting through the doors.

  ‘Did you have a good honeymoon?’ I asked, looking around for Baz.

  ‘I suppose so. The place was great and I had loads of spa treatments thanks to mummy-in-law. The sex was crap, though. Baz did his back in so couldn’t perform,’ she said.

  I tried not to think of the two of them in bed together, and looked around the room, which I noticed was full of washed and ironed clothes, including mine.

  ‘Someone has done the laundry,’ I said.

  I walked across the wooden floor towards a pile of T-shirts, tops and trousers which had been neatly folded and placed on a sideboard on the wall facing the corridor to our bedrooms.

  ‘Yeah, I did it,’ said Tracey. ‘So don’t worry, no one’s been going through your knickers! And I charged up yer phone ‘n’ all. I found it in one of the bags you left behind when I was looking for your clothes.’

  I’d forgotten about my phone. Not that it would be any use without Tom’s notes.

  I was stunned by Tracey’s domestic proficiency and wondered if it was the novelty of being married that had spurred it all on.

  ‘That’s very sweet of you,’ I said. ‘How did you manage to do all that and go on honeymoon?’

  Tracey flicked the kettle on in the small kitchen and set out two mugs to make coffee for us both.

  ‘We’ve got a washing machine. We only went for two days. Baz had to come home for some kind of business, although I’m not sure what.’