Happy Birthday my darling ,khayr_Souf

"The pictures are fake?" I sigh.

"The action happened but it's all wrong, they have it all wrong." The lady I'm speaking to holds my phone captive, copying photos from my phone into her computer.

"He cornered me. And tried to get me to talk to him, I ducked out of those photos a second later. It's so unfair that they only put these ones up." She nods understandingly, the pictures have finished sending.

"What we will do is send out a strong statement. This Mr Ali must have had every knowledge that this picture was being taken. See his pose?" She shows me my phone, but I'm forced to see the picture in a different light.

"He knew. First we'll take him down by a peg, forcing him to apologise for maliciously trying to make you be his mistress when you didn't care for it. Then we'll encourage members of the public to look at your reaction well and we'll hope they're sensible enough to gather the right conculsions." I nod slowly.

"First we'll start by making proper use of your advantage as our client. Our legal team. Let me call someone in." She makes a quick call and soon the door sounds with a knock. She allows the person in and they both take me to a conference room next door.

"We drafted out a statement; with a strong tone, we also got a letter from our legal team here," She waves a white envelope at me. "This is the court injunction from forcing him to retract those photos and apologise for them. You should not publish this one or it will look like you're trying to bluff, we are too serious to be taken as jokes." I chuckle. I remember a case between an actress and a musician, they both traded letters from their lawyers on the internet and it all amounted to nothing.

"Once the letter has been handed to him, you'll know. You just watch out." I nod, sighing in relief. "Thank you so much." I say but She shakes her head. "You're welcome, this are the services you paid for and we're very ready to serve you. Also, these pictures, we will examine them and find out who took them. Don't worry."

Once out of their office building in the Maitama busniess district, I order a cab and wait for the cab to arrive. Over across the street, I see people trooping in and out of a new generation bank, then I see a flash of color I've seen before. Nafeesah.

While I look again, the cab arrives and honks, I check my phone and wave it at the driver who is trying to call me. "Good afternoon Mr Hassan." He greets me back and I see Nafeesah again. A thought occurs to me.

"Can you end the trip?" He looks at me quizzically and I beg with my hands and face. "Please. Help me, I need to follow someone and you're the only free cab here." He nods and cancels the trip, driving out to follow Nafeesah who has stopped a green city centre cab.

"This trip will cost you." I wave his concerns off. "Don't worry, I will pay every Kobo." He follows Nafeesah who has gone into a street in Maitama that links the business part with the housing area.

I tsk at her when she finally gets on a street called Ribadu and waits at the gate of number three. This driver is very smart, he drove past the cab she's in and went to turn around and parked in front of a flowery that hid the car but gave us vantage view of her dealing.

The gate opens and it's Aunty Raliya and Ali who step outside to meet Nafeesah. She argues a bit with them but Ali throws a big brown envelope at her chest that she catches with a smile. She enters the car and the driver begins to turn out if the driveway.

What in the world was that? I ask myself.

"What should I do now?" I exhale with my mouth before answering the driver's question. "Just please, take me to Wuse 2,  I need to get home."

******

"What did you cook?" I shake my head. Nothing.

"I didn't cook because Amal already cooked when I came home. There was no point cooking twice for you when you already have food from one wife." I state and try to shut my door. I'm worried sick about what I saw today. Nafeesah may be betraying my interests to those people.

"Well, it's your week, open up." I hiss lightly and wonder for a moment if I should open the door. "No thank you. You can go be with your wife. I want nothing to do with you." I shut my door at the last second, surprising myself. Abdul bangs the door over and over while I walked to my bathroom and turned on the warm water, I stepped out to strip my clothes and to take a towel, I make a mental note to put all my worn clothes in the washing machine later.

Once I step out from the bath, my phone is blinking. It's Rabiah. "Rabiatu." She laughs before saying the salam which I neglected to say.

"Walaikum Salam." I greet back and wait for her to speak while I put the phone on speaker and take out my skin's nightly routine products.

"Did you go there?" She asks as I take a mask to wear on my face. "It was amazing Rabiah, they swung into action immediately." She laughs. "You know I and them were having steady correspondence via email before now?" She hums and I shake my head at their competence.

"Immediately, they sent me a statement they drafted for me, they also sent off a court injunction making Ali saying that he actually had someone take those photos to smear me." She claps her hands in glee.

"This is what I like, instead of you Labeebah sitting around looking for who to pity you, I'm glad you found a PR company that took your matter up." I laugh, it's true, I'm known for being reticent about issues until they blow up in my face. E.g Abdul's marriage.

"So, what next?" She asks as I lean back on my bed holding a steamer to my face with one hand and my phone to my ear with another.

"I need a new assistant." I finally blurt out. "What happened to Nafeesah?" I turn off the steamer before telling her all that happened and all I saw today, including what Nafeesah did the other day, her odd behavior that I had been shaking off.

"Innalilah! What? How come? She's like the sweetest person I know after you. How come?" I shake my head at Rabiah's disbelief.

"I guess everyone has a price." I reply firmly. She hisses long and hard. "This is really bad. But she can't stay oo, never! Sack her, pay her a nice severance and collect all your accounts from her, just don't show her you know. Even tell her it's because you don't have money to pay her anymore, a t least those useless people must have given her more." I exhale plenty of air through my mouth, this is hard.

"I am supposed to post my statement before I go to sleep oo." She says good bye gleefully and ends the call. I drop my phone into my bed and drop the towel I tied earlier to wear a cobalt blue pyjama set. I tie my loosed hair into a caramel colored silk scarf and pay my face dry. Good skincare is the life. One day I'll open up a skin care brand for women of all color, In Sha Allah.

I apprehensively pick up my phone and get in bed, turning on my phone's data connection as I tuck myself in bed and turn off the light, leaving only the glow of my phone's light to light the room.

Pings come in from all directions and I wait, trying to calm myself before I take out the email waiting in the email box, that which may make or Mar me, that which I pray makes me.

I copy it and take it to an app that helps me sort Instagram captions and paste it there, it does its work and I copy again to Instagram where I find a picture of myself. I'm not smiling, just looking as innocent as possible, as I am. A few clicks later, I've posted the picture and it's very huge ball of a caption with it.

When it posts, I take photos of it and take it straight to my Twitter account and post it there too. My PR person said for maximum dissemination of information. The amount of messages falling in starts to slow down the phone's function, so I shut it down and pull my sleep mask over my face.

In blissful silence.

*****
So, hi guys. 👋🏽

How are you doing? Fine I hope?

This past week, I've been reminded over and over about how Social media can destroy a person's reputation if used wrongly by people.

So please for the sake of God. Let's be good people, don't troll anyone, don't judge anyone, regardless of what you see. Lest it be that on the day of judgement, you're asked why are you going to hell, all you can reply is that; 'I judged people'

See y'all later. God bless.

TheOmoope 💙