The Small Print, page 1
The Small Print
An Inspirational Christian Novel
by
Abimbola Dare
www.abimboladare.com
Copyright © 2011 by Abimbola Dare. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the Kings James version of the Bible.
The Small Print is a work of fiction. Names, images, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.
Dedication
To the Author of Life.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.
~ Proverbs 3: 5-6 NKJV~
CHAPTER ONE
The moment he stepped into room 415 and saw Jennifer Lennox sitting behind the polished mahogany table, Wale Ademola knew he was a dead man. He shut the glass panelled door behind him with a click and glared. It had to be an illusion. He checked again. Nope. This was for real. She was here. What on earth was his ex wife doing in his office?
“Good morning Wale.” The woman sitting next to Jennifer spoke first. Her name was Coleen something from HR. She’d interviewed him only last year, at the start of his job as a temp administrator. She peered at him. “Is something wrong?
He started to come forward, stumbled and bumped into a stationery cupboard. “Sorry. I… I must have the wrong room. I am here for a promotion interview for the trainee project manager position.” It had to be the wrong room.
Coleen waved a piece of paper at him. “You didn’t get the confirmation email?”
He nodded. His mind swirled with questions and he tried his best to look relaxed. Had Jennifer traced him to London? Or was this a nightmare?
Coleen gave a reassuring smile. “It will be over before you know it.”
My life will be over before you know it. “Uh-huh.”
Jennifer gave nothing away with her expression, and when she glanced at him it was like she was looking right through him. As though he wasn’t even there. She shifted in her seat and the aqueous floral scent of her perfume smacked his nostrils. He coughed, spluttered. He’d given her the fragrance for her twenty- eighth birthday last year... a day before he – should he say left her? He dropped his gaze to the table.
“You look a tad bit uncomfortable,” Coleen said, concern brimming on the edge of her voice. “Take a seat.” She gestured at the only vacant chair in the room.
In front of Jennifer? God forbid bad thing. He sagged into the chair like an invalid. “Thank you.”
Beads of perspiration beneath his armpits prickled. Trouble had landed in his backyard. Jealous enemies from his village in Nigeria had chosen the best time to strike their juju, African black magic. Wale mentally sent a curse in return. Thunder fire them all. Including Jennifer Lennox.
Jennifer tossed a stray lock of curled blond hair away from her face and held out her hand. Obviously, his curse did not work. “Mister Ademola,” she said. “An absolute pleasure to meet you.”
Mister? Her performance deserved a standing ovation. He sat up straight with a tight grin, convinced his expression must look like one on a mug shot. “Same here.” His hands remained on the table, numb. If Jennifer noticed, she didn’t react. She turned to Coleen. “Ready when you are.”
“We almost cancelled the interview when Maryann called in sick.” Coleen gave Jennifer a grateful nod. “Thank your stars that Andrea came in on a short notice. She will lead the interview.”
Andrea? A chill spread across his body. Jennifer changed her name? He swallowed. “T-that’s fine.”
Jennifer pointed to the jug on the table. “Water?”
Her nails were perfectly manicured, as always, metallic blue with silver sparkles.
Rat poison would be perfect. “No. No thanks.”
She sipped water from her glass. “I will allow you a few minutes to get yourself together.”
Wale squinted at the window. Determined rays from the sun streamed into the room even though it was barely ten. Somewhere down below, a car tire scrunched against the asphalt. The engine of a bus shuddered to a stop and the doors hissed open. Stall owners’ voices were faint in the distance as they paraded sun hats and ice-lollies. A perfect summer day. Why hadn’t he called in sick? Cancelled the interview?
“Did you bring your identification documents?” Coleen asked.
He snapped his head up. “Documents?”
“Yes. I included the list of acceptable documentation in the email.” She looked a bit irritated. “Your passport?”
Crap. He’d been hoping she’d forget. “Do you have to see it now?”
Coleen’s apologetic smile had a life span of about a nanosecond. “Immigration rules.”
“Uh, of course.” Wale shoved a reluctant hand into his breast pocket. He fished out a passport that had once been vibrantly green and shook it lightly. The frayed edges coughed out a small cloud of thick, black powder.
He forced a smile. “I dropped it in a pile of soot on my way here.” Yeah right. More like good luck charm from Nigeria to distract immigration officers at Heathrow from staring too hard at the passport. They were usually wary of visitors like him coming into the UK: Immigrants with no prospects of ever returning to their country of origin. The charm had worked. Despite the filth, they hadn’t asked a question when he’d presented it. He placed the document into Coleen’s open hand. “Here you go.”
“You are a Nigerian citizen?” Coleen asked. She blew away some more of the black powder and flipped to the middle page. She studied the page for a long moment. Wale kept his focus on the space behind her head. To the right was an old Xerox photocopier churning out documents with an industrious hum. He stared at the papers as they floated unto the receiving tray, counting in sync with slow eye movements.
“Your UK residence permit is a temporary one? Expires in eight months?” Coleen’s eyebrows rose in a probing arc. “This is a permanent position.”
Wale swallowed, wiped his palms on his thigh. “I will be entitled to a permanent residency real soon.”
Jennifer suddenly perked up, fluffed the ruffles of the stripped orange shirt underneath her suit. “You certainly will. Won’t you?” Her Irish accent was more pronounced than usual. As it often was when she wanted to be sarcastic.
He stared pointedly at Coleen. “Syms & Syms offers work permits to foreign workers right? I was thinking of-”
“We don’t.” Coleen cut in with a frown. “Not anymore. We exceeded our quota for work permits last week. Are you expecting to get a work permit from us?”
Last week? Talk about bad luck. “No I am not. I was just asking for information purposes. My, uh, wife is a British citizen.” Stupid answer.
“If you are sure...I guess we can proceed.” Coleen looked at him as though she did not entirely believe him.
“Hundred percent.” Wale nodded vigorously. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Jennifer’s cold, cerulean eyes pierced Coleen with a look. “The applicant is an illegal immigrant, and the interview will continue?” She gave half a chuckle. “Is that how Syms & Syms works?”
Her words stabbed his gut. Illegal Immigrant.
Coleen’s eyes flicked between them as if to question Jennifer’s sudden coldness. “Andrea, until Wale’s visa runs out, he cannot be considered an illegal immigrant and will be treated fairly. Trust me, when his visa expires, we will know. And we will deal with it then.” She slid the passport across the table. Wale failed to catch it and the document smacked against the ceramic floor and landed by his feet.
Coleen continued. “Let’s get on with the interview?”
Jennifer spread her arms out as if to say “whatever.”
The veins in Wale’s head throbbed. Why didn’t he hit the delete key when the cursed job advert landed in his inbox? Because he was an over ambitious idiot with a bank account the size of a dried pimple, that’s why.
Coleen looked at him, an expectant expression on her face. “Well?”
He sighed with weariness, feeling as though he was about to be strapped to an electric chair for a crime he did not commit. Finally he nodded. “I am ready.”
***
“Africa!” Wale’s colleague called out as soon as he returned to the main office floor of Syms & Syms, the IT project management consulting firm that employed him. Wale groaned as Q stumbled through scurrying assistants and ringing phones towards the cubicle they shared. Q’s real name was Quaddam, but everyone called him Q. They had been working in the same department- Admin and Supplies- since Wale started at the company. Unlike Wale, Q loved the brain- deadening post office runs, monotonous stationary upkeep and general servitude to the entire company that had been their duties for a little over a year. The position gave Q an opportunity to be the first to hear office gossip while it was still sizzling. On the bright side, Q’s enthusiasm usually made Wale’s days slightly shorter and more bearable. But not today.
“Get lost Q,” Wale muttered. “And stop calling me Africa.”
Q gripped a bunch of manila files under his arm as though his life depended on it. “Not until I finish my investigation.” He wheeled a spare chair close and slammed his files on top of Wale’s desk, unsettling the dust around the pen holders.
“What is it?” Wale asked. He reached for a copy o
“Andrea Lennox interviewed you,” Q said, hardly noticing his lack of enthusiasm.
“Yeah?”
“She left a massive IT firm in Manchester to help shape things up here for a few months.”
“And?”
“Why travel all the way from Manchester to London? Syms & Syms has never been in the Times top hundred IT companies to work for.” Q let out a chuckle. “Or top five thousand.”
“Your point is?”
“My point is why?”
Wale returned to the magazine and fingered it; moving his hands across the images at a snail’s pace. ”I don’t know. Leave me alone.”
Q nodded but didn’t shift from his position. ”I see the interview didn’t go well?”
“It was a blast.” Wale replied in perfect monotone. “Go away.”
“Feisty.” Q wiggled his index finger. “Don’t worry, Wale. You’ll get the job you have always wanted. Then you will get promoted and leave me here all by myself.”
Wale placed his palm on his chest and feigned distress. “I’m heartbroken.”
“Okay.” Q sat bolt upright. “One more question and I am gone.”
“Five seconds.”
“Are you and Andrea related in any way, shape or form?” Q’s beady eyes shone with curiosity.
Adrenaline propelled Wale out of his seat. “Me and Jen-Andrea related? Why would you think that?”
“Just answer me.”
“Why?”
“Why do you Africans answer questions with questions?”
“Are you going to talk or not?”
“See what I mean?”
Wale took a deep breath. “This is not the time to muck about.”
Q tapped his chin and stared at the ceiling as though his answer was engrained in the perforated tiles. Finally, he lowered his head and said, “I just ordered an ID card for the new project manager.”
“So?”
“In her passport, her surname is hyphenated.”
Wale’s heart thumped. “What has that got to do with the price of fish?”
“Wait till I tell you,” Q said and then paused.
“I am waiting.”
“The first half of her name is the same as yours.”
“Meaning?”
“Her full name is Andrea Ademola- Lennox.”
The room whirled. Wale closed his eyes. “No. No way.”
“Yep,” Q said. “I saw it myself. Now what was that about the price of fish?”
CHAPTER TWO
“You did not know that you were still married to the woman?”
The question came again, this time with more concern. “You are certain?"
Wale stared into his cup of coffee and studied the specks of powdered milk that floated on the brown surface. “It’s complicated.”
He glanced at the immigration lawyer, offered a hint of a smile and looked around the office. The sign on the door was supposed to read SULTAN SOLICTORS. Two O’s were missing from the word “Solicitor”. A dozen cartons stacked with files that Wale assumed were pending immigration applications and appeals littered the small space. Folded magazine cut outs and posters detailing the latest immigration moves from all over the world smeared the cream wall-papered walls.
Wale sat on a chair with a cushion as thin as a leaf, at a table with scuffed edges. Sultan, a mug of coffee on the table in front of him, sat on the only other chair in the room. The room was so warm it felt like being in a burning tin and a musty odour attested to the accumulation of dust.
The solicitor spoke in his thick Nigerian accent. “What do you mean by complicated? How is that possible?”
Wale shrugged and said, “We didn’t divorce. I left. So technically, we are still married. It’s crazy that she’d want to take up my name. She doesn’t even like the name.”
The Solicitor rubbed his balding head, his hand going back and forth in a slow rhythm. His sweat stained shirt threatened to burst at the seams where he wedged his tummy against the edge of the table. “Tell me the whole story. Leave nothing out.” He picked up a piece of paper from the file, held it under his nose. “When did you two meet?”
“Two years ago,” Wale said. He hesitated, then added, “I came into the UK on a six-month tourist visa. The day it expired, immigration officials came knocking at my door at five in the morning. I jumped out the window to avoid getting caught and deported. Had to hide at my friend’s house for a couple of months.” He winced at the thought. There was still a twinge at the base of his foot from the boulder he’d crashed into when trying to escape. “Jennifer and Stanley my friend, were neighbours.”
The solicitor looked as though he’d heard all this before. “In order to avoid being deported, you had to marry Jennifer, a British citizen?”
Wale shrugged again. “I hardly knew her but she offered to help. It was a contract. I pay her two grand; she marries me and gets me the passport. No strings attached.” He paused, breathed to ease the contraction in his chest. “Of course we had to live together to fool the immigration officials. But we had separate rooms.”
“No hanky-panky happened between you two?” The solicitor asked with an exaggerated wink.
Wale let his gaze wander to a recent USA visa lottery advert on the wall. “Twice. She’s a very attractive woman. I am not made of wood.”
Wale ignored the smirk on the solicitor’s face. “I got a temporary residency permit a few months after we got married. Then the trouble started. Jennifer made crazy demands. She wanted us to be a real married couple with babies and all. No way mate, that wasn’t part of the contract.” Wale pointed his finger to his head to drive his point home. “That woman is a psycho.”
The solicitor picked up his mug and took a loud slurp. “I see.”
“She threatened to frame me for rape and report me to immigration if I didn’t continue to have sex with her.”
“But you’d done it once-twice. Why didn’t you do it again?” The solicitor bent his neck to a painful-looking angle and winked again. “Or was it not good?”
“Jennifer was desperate for a baby. She was taking hormone pills. I don’t know why.” Wale shook his head as though he couldn’t believe it himself. “I mean why would she want a stranger to father her kids?”
“So you ran?”
“Had to.” He tasted the coffee, made a face and placed it back into the saucer. “Again, no choice.”
“But this morning Mrs James Bond turns up at your office. At your promotion interview?”
“She did.”
“You are sure it was her?”
Wale raised an eyebrow. “Am I sure?”
Even if someone yanked his brain out and deep fried it, how could he forget her striking features? The raised mole on her chin? Or cheek bones so high up her face that she looked eternally proud? Or the flawless white skin, now in summer touched with a bit of a tan? Or the light blue eyes that constantly twitched, especially the left one.
“Hundred percent certain,” Wale said. “It was her.”
“Do you know how she got a job in your company?”
“I don’t know. That’s the thing. I don’t know if it is because I work there. I did everything I could to stay hidden from her. But she could have spoken to my friend. He knows where I work.” He paused, mulled over the idea. “Jennifer is one of the best project managers in Manchester. Her resume is amazing. Microsoft would hire her in a beat. Syms & Syms wouldn’t even think twice if she expressed interest in working for them.”
“Did you pay her the two thousand pounds?”
“I could only afford one hundred.”
“One hundred what?”
“One hundred thousand pounds.” Wale sighed. “Of course one hundred pounds.”
The solicitor made a show of scribbling in his legal notepad. “You paid one hundred pounds out of two thousand, and you wonder why she searched for you?”
Wale closed his eyes, rubbed his temples. “I’ll pay her the dough. But I don’t think Jennifer came because of that. Money has never been an issue with her.” And that’s exactly what worries me.
“This is not good at all.” The leg of the solicitor’s chair creaked as he leaned his bulky frame back. “But nothing is impossible with Sultan. I can help you.”
