David poured whisky when they got home, then left it untouched on the dresser. Victoria sat at the edge of the bed removing her earrings. She had changed out of the dress from dinner but still felt Chief Adebayo's gaze on her skin, measuring what she had failed to provide.
David loosened his collar. "Don't let him get inside your head." She almost laughed. "Your father has been inside my head for six years."
"Then evict him."
"Very funny."
"I'm serious."
He came to stand in front of her. She looked at the man she had married and saw the things he was pretending did not matter: the company reports on his bedside table, the calls he took at midnight, the fountain pen his father had given him after his first board presentation. Adebayo Holdings was not merely money. It was twenty years of being prepared for a life.
"If we never have children," she said, "would you leave me?"
David frowned. "What?"
"Answer me."
"No."
"Just like that?"
"Yes, just like that."
"Your father could take everything from you."
"Then he takes it."
She searched his face.
David knelt in front of her. "I married you, Victoria. Not a future son. Not my father's will. You." For one dangerous second she believed him completely.
Then she remembered how his expression had changed at Kunle's name.
"What if you regret me?"
David exhaled. "I don't know how to keep proving something you refuse to believe." The sentence hurt because it was true.
He kissed her forehead and stood. The tenderness should have comforted her. Instead, it frightened her more. Because she could survive Chief's contempt.
She was not sure she could survive David's regret.
The next morning he left early for work. By nine, flowers arrived from Margaret with a card that said nothing about dinner. At eleven, Victoria's mother called to ask whether she had heard about a fertility prayer programme beginning on Friday. At one, an aunt sent a voice note about a woman in Abuja who had conceived twins after drinking a mixture Victoria did not finish listening to.
She deleted it.
For two days she did nothing. On the third, she drove to her fertility clinic and sat in the car for twenty minutes without going inside.
A pregnant woman came out holding a file to her chest. Her husband opened the passenger door for her, then placed one hand protectively over her head as she got in.
Victoria looked away.
Her phone rang.
David.
"Hi," she said.
"Lunch?"
"I can't."
"Busy?"
She looked at the clinic sign. "Something like that."
"Okay. Tonight?"
"Yes."
"Love you."
Her throat tightened. "Love you too." After he hung up, she opened the glove compartment and took out a folded business card.
She had received it months ago from a woman in a fertility support group who had whispered, with the embarrassed excitement of someone sharing contraband, that there were "other arrangements" for women who had money and discretion. Victoria had almost thrown the card away.
Instead she had hidden it.
MRS. EZE - MATERNITY SERVICES.
No clinic name. No website. Just a number. She dialled before courage could turn itself into morality.
A woman answered on the fourth ring.
"Yes?"
Victoria's mouth went dry. "I was given your number."
"By who?"
She named the woman.
Silence.
Then: "What do you need?"
Victoria looked through the windscreen at the fertility clinic where doctors had spent years telling her what her body would not do.
"I need to speak to you privately."
"About?"
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
She could still stop.
David had said he would choose her.
Nothing had been taken yet.
Nothing needed to be stolen.
"A child," Victoria said.
The woman was quiet for long enough that Victoria heard her own breathing.
"Come tomorrow," Mrs. Eze said. "Eleven o'clock. Come alone."
The call ended.
Victoria remained in the car. A message from David appeared almost immediately: Dinner at eight? I promise no fathers, no wills. She stared at it until the screen dimmed. He was trying to give her exactly what she claimed to need - a marriage in which the two of them were enough. She typed Yes, deleted it, then typed it again.
That evening he cooked badly, burned the onions and made her laugh despite herself. Nothing about the night suggested a marriage approaching disaster. That knowledge followed her into sleep.
Victoria remained awake long after David's breathing settled. Mrs. Eze's number sat in her recent calls between David and the fertility clinic, ordinary digits carrying an option she had not deleted.
The next morning, she saved Mrs. Eze's number under the name Evelyn.
By noon, she had decided she would still go.
Evelyn looked harmless in her contacts. That was the point.