Obinna poured himself a glass of orange juice and watched Amara eating and reading with pursed lips. He did not believe that the new clients from Europe had kept Amara out late the past week. He wanted to believe it, but he just could not, and it had nothing to do with “choice.” Was it a choice when your spirit awakened to something? If he had made a choice, then it was to do nothing, and ask nothing, of his knowledge.

The first time Amara had an affair, or rather the first affair that Obinna knew of, was with a man who owned a shop in the Palms mall. Obinna sensed something, at first, in Amara’s new eagerness, her brightness, but it was not until he saw the bite mark on Amara’s neck, like whorls drawn in faded red ink, that he asked. Amara said it was an insect sting. Obinna gave her an ointment for it, and the next day, he asked Amara’s driver, Catherine, whose loyalty he had constantly courted with food and money so as to always have information about Amara, where she took madam after work. Catherine told him. He had been stunned, both surprised and unsurprised. He hated now to think of how dramatic he had been, calling Amara’s cousin, the one who had paid her school fees after her parents died, and her brother, the one who was closest to her, to ask that they speak to Amara. He must have been hysterical; it was laughable to think of that now. Talk to your sister o! She wants to destroy this marriage! But both of them told him to not make a fuss, the important thing was that Amara came home to him every day, and Amara was a very good wife, and he had to consider how difficult it was for Amara in her position, with all those young boys throwing themselves at her.

It was truly believing this, Amara as a wonderful wife besieged by young boys, helpless in the face of their rapacious pursuit, that made Obinna get dressed and ask his driver to take him to the Palms mall, where he walked into the shop and screamed at the man, a mere boy really, no more than twenty, and threatened to hit him, and even raised a hand in the air. Afterward, he felt small. The boy’s voice rang in his ears: Go and put your marriage in order! Leave me alone! The memory still made Obinna cringe, how easily, cheaply, he had become a Lagos cliché: the husband fighting the boyfriend in public. He had never discussed it with Amara, one of the many things they carefully left unsaid.

Amara glanced at her watch. “I have a meeting in thirty minutes. What time does Eze arrive? I’ll try and leave the office early today.”

“I feel nervous about seeing him.”

“Ten years is not ten days,” Amara said as she got up. “But it will be okay. You’ll see, it will be just like university days again.”