Dance to the Tune

It is 2 am. The kind of hour that belongs to people with nothing to hide or everything to lose. Alero was somewhere in between, though tonight she had convinced herself she was neither.

The club was loud and generous with its light, strobes cutting through smoke, bodies pressed close, the bass sitting deep in the chest like a second heartbeat. She was having the time of her life with Cindy, Sarah and Idara, the four of them taking up space the way women do when they have earned it. They had all met at Covenant University, but Alero had known Idara the longest, since they were thirteen and awkward and figuring out who they were going to be.

It was the Ogunyemi family that had made it possible. Alero’s father had driven for Chief Adebisi Ogunyemi for over twenty-five years,  not just driven, but served, the way men of his generation understood service, with his whole self. The family loved him for it. But it was Alero they had taken into their hearts like something of their own.

When Mrs. Ogunyemi found out that Alero was not in school,  that her two brothers were being educated because they would be the pillars of the family tomorrow, while she would become another man’s wife and, in the meantime, assist her mother at the butcher shop, she was quietly, firmly appalled. A girl can do exactly what a man can do, she said, in a tone that did not invite argument. And just like that, Alero was enrolled in Idara’s school, and the two of them became inseparable almost immediately. Her parent thankful the responsibility had been taken form their hand.

Whatever Idara had, Alero had. They moved through those secondary school years like sisters, sharing clothes, secrets, and the same laugh at the same jokes. But despite everything they shared, they could not have looked more different. Alero had skin so light it seemed to catch the sun and hold it,  so fair that the running joke when she was younger was that she was one step away from being an albino. Idara was her opposite. Her dark skin had a seamless glow, the kind that didn’t need light to announce itself. It was said that if you looked at Idara’s skin at night, you could see the moon reflected there. But it wasn’t just the skin. Alero had curves that arrived too early,  a waist, hips, a body that announced itself before she was ready for the attention. Idara had always been the opposite: slight, angular, the kind of girl people called a late bloomer as though it were a consolation. They were the same age but carried themselves like they were following entirely different manuals.

Alero had learned early to tuck her wants away, to shrink her desires and be grateful quietly and without complaint. Idara walked differently. She walked like a girl who knew her father’s name and exactly what it was worth.

The first time Idara heard Alero being bullied for her complexion,  told she must have been the product of her mother’s infidelity, Idara did not flinch. She turned on the bullies and told them, finger pointed, that if she ever heard another word of that rubbish, she would hire private investigators to dig dirt on each of their families and expose them. They never said anything again. Idara was not the kind of person who laughed easily, but with Alero she laughed until her belly hurt — over nothing, over everything. Only Alero knew the version of her that told jokes, that teased, that let her guard down completely.

When Idara left for university in America, the twinning had to stretch. It could not follow her all the way there. But the Ogunyemis put Alero in Covenant University — one of the most expensive schools in Nigeria — and would have rented her an apartment too if the school had allowed it. Instead, she got a dorm that was comfortable enough, and that was where she met Cindy and Sarah. Idara came back to Nigeria every chance she got. Most of those chances, she spent with Alero.

By then, there were three of them. Jide had entered the picture,  Idara’s twin brother. When Idara found out he was hurting Alero, she did not hesitate, and she did not take his side. She went straight back to Lagos, reported him to their parents, then took a cutlass and pursued him around the house, daring him to ever raise his hand at Alero again. He was shipped off to Canada shortly after. Alero never heard from him again.

Or so she thought.

Fifteen years of chosen family. Twenty years of being loved by the same people, over and over. Tonight they were celebrating Alero’s promotion,  Chief Marketing Officer, the title she had worked for and earned,  and the club had become theirs, the champagne coming in rounds, the DJ reading the room like he knew exactly what they needed.

He did not know what was already waiting in her phone.

Idara signalled to the waiter for another round, and the champagne came like it had been waiting for permission. They were partying hard tonight, really hard, the kind of night that reminds you why you live in Lagos and nowhere else. They hadn’t all been in the same room in about three years, and Idara had only flown in the day before, so there was something delicious about being here together with nowhere to be and nothing to answer to.

Then the DJ dropped Sexy Girls From My City and something animal took over.

They all screamed Lagos!! at the same time, jumping to their feet in their Rene Caovilla heels, holding their chests, laughing at themselves for it. Don’t get it wrong,  they were all very bougie, expensive babes, the kind of women you could smell money and elegance from across the room. But tonight the bougie had permission to be loud. The champagne had seen to that. The free bottles and the ones they were paying for had blurred into one long golden evening, and nobody was counting anymore.

Then Alero’s phone vibrated.

She looked down. A new number. But the same message — I know your secret — followed by pictures. She hadn’t panicked when the first set arrived that afternoon while she was still in her Banana Island apartment. Those pictures told only half a story, and she had wondered if the blackmailer even knew the full one. She blocked the number and moved on.

But here it was again, cutting through her joy exactly when she had managed to push it away.

Her heart dropped before her mind could catch up.

She stared at the notification without opening it, bargaining with herself. Hoping it would be just as bad as the first and no worse. Because worse meant collapse. It meant the life she had carefully built,  quietly, deliberately, at great personal cost,  would be pulled apart overnight.

The face ID failed. Maybe the heavy makeup, maybe the sunglasses she had forgotten were still pushed up on her head. Either way, her face had become a stranger to her own phone. She typed her password instead, fingers fidgeting against the screen.

It wasn’t a picture.

It was a video.

She pressed play.

Five seconds. That was all it took. His face filled the screen , clear, unmistakable, the face she had spent three years guarding like it was her own life, because it was. Her hands went cold. The phone suddenly felt too heavy, like it had absorbed the weight of everything she stood to lose. She stopped the video. She couldn’t watch any more.

Around her, the club kept moving, bodies swaying, hookah smoke curling slowly toward the ceiling, laughter rising and falling in waves, and none of it reached her. She was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere very quiet, where the only sound was the slow unravelling of everything she had built.

Oh my God. The words left her lips before she could catch them. Nobody heard. Nobody turned. The music was the same music it had been thirty seconds ago, when she was still a woman celebrating her promotion and not this, whatever this was.

Idara caught her eye from across the table and gestured for her to stand up. Come on, get up. Alero just stared back.

Idara picked up her phone, typed something in her notes app and held the screen across the table.

babe are you ok?? Why are you not dancing?? Stand up and gbe body this party is for you!!

Alero looked at the words for a moment. Then she typed back.

I think my period is coming. Major cramps. I think I need to go home.

Idara was already standing, already nodding toward the back. She mouthed: toilet.

The bathroom was doing the most, as Lagos bathrooms in places like this tend to do. Rose-gold fixtures, a mirror that made everyone look like they had better skin, a cluster of girls taking pictures near the vanity, another group animatedly discussing a man at a nearby table who had ordered drinks for them and looked, by all accounts, very put together.

Idara turned to face her the moment the door swung shut behind them.

“Tell me the truth. What is going on?”

Not a question. Idara had never really asked questions.

“Nothing, I swear,” Alero said, and her voice was steadier than she deserved. “I just felt a jolt of pain, and I think I’m soaked. I didn’t bring anything with me, and I really don’t want to ruin tonight sitting here uncomfortably. We’ll have dinner soon, I promise.” She kept her face still, knowing Idara could read her like a road she had grown up on.

Idara studied her face the way she always had. Like she was reading something written in a language only she knew.

Then she nodded. “Okay. Take care of yourself. I’d come with you, but I can’t leave Cindy and Sarah.”

“Stay with them. I’m fine.”

“Can you drive? Should I call a driver?”

“I can manage. I’m not that drunk.”

She drove home with her hands tight on the wheel and her mind somewhere far ahead of her. The roads were free. Her thoughts were not.

Who would be watching her? Who could be doing this?

At the first red light, she texted the number: what do you want. The typing indicator appeared. She held her breath and watched it at the red light. Then it disappeared. No reply.

She called Mr. X immediately. It rang out. She tried again before turning into the estate. Still nothing. She placed the phone face down on the passenger seat and did not try again.

She walked into the building with her Chanel bag in one hand and her Jimmy Choos in the other, heels she had taken off before she started driving.

The apartment was the kind of beautiful that asked to be noticed. Every surface considered, every corner intentional — the interior decorator had made sure of that. Anyone looking in from the outside would wonder what kind of woman lived here. The G-Wagon in the lot, the designer bags arranged without apology on the shelf, the overseas receipts she didn’t bother to hide. They would assume it was the job.

They would be partly right.

Mr. X had been generous in the way that men with a great deal to lose sometimes are — quietly, completely, in ways that rearranged your life before you fully understood what was happening. He had given her the apartment, the car, and the title of Chief Marketing Officer she currently held. She was no longer ashamed of any of it. She was a small girl with a big God. It had taken her a long time to say yes to him. She hadn’t wanted to. But after a hundred failed job applications,  despite a first-class degree, the economy had given her nothing back. She refused to go back to the Ogunyemis with her hand outstretched after everything they had already done. So when she finally made her choice, she made it on her own terms. She chose Mr. X.

What she felt toward him was not love exactly. It was something closer to protection. He had far more to lose than she did, and she had always understood that. If he fell, she would fall with him. She had built too much on this foundation to watch it crack.

She sat on the sofa and tried his number again.

Nothing.

The blackmailer’s number sat in her phone like something with a pulse. She stared at it without calling. Panic moved through her chest in slow, tightening waves,  she felt her breathing change, go shallow, go fast. She walked to the kitchen, found a paper bag, pressed it to her mouth and breathed into it until her lungs remembered their rhythm. She was used to the panic attacks. This was not the first time. She tried Mr. X one more time. No answer. She went back to the sofa, looked at the boxes she had ordered earlier that week, still stacked by the wall, still unopened. There was nothing she could do right now. She picked up her scissors and began working through the tape on the first box.

Then the doorbell rang.

She set the scissors down. Looked at the time. Looked at the door.

It rang again.

Her heart lifted,  stupidly, hopefully,  Mr. X – and she crossed the room without checking the monitor, pulled the door open, expecting his face.

She tried to close it the moment she saw who it was. But Jide was faster. His foot was already in the frame, his shoulder already against the wood, and he pushed it open the way men do when they have decided the door is not going to stop them.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. She was already backing away.

“I should be the one asking you that.” He moved toward her with a slowness that was worse than rushing. “How did you get past the gate? I had your name removed—”

“I have a friend,” he said simply. “He called them for me.”

“Jide—”

“Did you leave me for him?” His voice dropped, quiet and sharp as a blade. “Alero. I loved you. I wanted to marry you. You could have had anyone. Why him? Of all the men in this world, why did it have to be him?” He slapped her.

The sound of it filled the apartment.

She held her cheek. Kept her eyes steady on him. “Were you the one who sent me those pictures?”

“You blocked me.” He said it like it explained everything. “I had to get a new number.” He slapped her again. “How could you do this? After everything I gave you.”

“I didn’t leave you because of him.” Her voice was shaking, but she did not stop. She needed him to hear this, even now, even here. “I left you because you were going to kill me one day. You’re too violent, too controlling. I never felt safe with you. With him, I feel safe. Whatever the cost of that, I choose it.”

Something behind his eyes went very still.

Then he was on her.

He moved like a man who had been holding this back for a long time. He hit her the way he always had,  with the full weight of someone who had convinced himself it was love. She fell. He pulled her up before she could catch her breath. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t get air. His hands closed around her throat and squeezed. The room began to tilt. The edges of her vision darkened slowly, the way a light fades before it dies completely. His face was above her, mouth moving, but the words no longer reached her. Everything was happening from very far away.

She thought: at least it’s just Jide. If I go, the pictures go with me. The secret stays buried. Mr. X stays safe.

The scissors were on the table.

She had set them down when the doorbell rang.

She reached slowly. Carefully. Her fingers found the handle while his hands were still at her throat. She gathered every last thing she had left.

And drove them into his neck.

He made a sound she would never forget. Not a scream, something underneath a scream, something that had no name. He stumbled back, hands flying to his neck, and she gasped air into her burning lungs, once, twice. He hit the floor. The blood came fast, spreading darkly across the tile toward her feet like it was looking for her. He reached up and held onto her feet. He was asking her to call an ambulance. His voice was already thin and strange.

She stood over him in her club outfit,  the same one she had been wearing when the DJ played Sexy Girls From My City and the night still belonged to her, and she watched him until he stopped moving. She needed to be certain.

She should call the police.

The thought arrived. And right behind it: they will investigate. They will find out who Mr. X is. He cannot be found in this.

She sat down on the floor. She didn’t know how long she was there. The apartment was very quiet. The world outside kept turning without her permission.

Eventually, she stood. Tried his number. Nothing.

She walked to the kitchen. Looked at the knife. Looked at Jide. Made her decision.

She had spent enough Saturday mornings at her mother’s butcher shop to know where to begin. She took a long swallow of tequila from the bottle at her bar and felt the boldness settle over her like armour. She dragged a tarp from the storage cupboard and rolled him onto it. The gatemen didn’t know he had come up,  he had slipped in through someone else, arrived unannounced. He was the blackmailer. The pictures would die with him. This could still be contained. She would have her life back.

She was deciding where to start when she saw it.

Something small. In his breast pocket. A pen, black, ordinary, except for the light at its tip. Red. Blinking. Slow and steady and patient, the way cameras blink when they are watching.

She picked it up. The light pulsed in her hand.

She checked his phone. Nothing was being transmitted. But a text had arrived.

Gotcha, two laughing emojis, one devil.

The sound that left her was not quite a scream. It was the sound of understanding arriving all at once,  sudden and complete, the way a building doesn’t fall gradually but all at the same moment.

Someone had sent him here. Someone had watched everything. Someone had wanted a front-row seat to her destruction.

Oh my God. Oh my God. What do I do—

And then the sirens. Outside. Already outside, already at the gate, already here.

The walls pressed inward. She heard neighbours’ doors opening onto the corridor, felt the building coming awake around her. The banging on her door arrived like something that had always been coming.

Open up.

She stood on the same spot. Could not move. Could not speak. The door came open anyway, forced, and then there were people in her apartment: voices, hands, and it felt like it was happening to someone else entirely, like she had floated slightly to the left of her own body and was watching a woman in a blood-soaked sequined outfit standing very still in the centre of her beautiful Banana Island apartment while the police moved around her.

On a night she should still be celebrating.

She needed Mr. X. She needed a lawyer. She needed Idara.

She needed to wake up.

The processing was nothing short of humiliating.

She was told to strip. Hands on her breasts, legs apart. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead like something dying, barely illuminating anything. The room smelled of dust, sweat and old paper, the smell of things that had been left too long in one place.

“Open your legs!” The female officer had brown teeth and was chewing something aggressively, jaw working in slow circles. When Alero met her eyes, the woman’s face darkened. “You dey look me with bad eyes? I go wooze you now. You think say here na your posh Banana Island? Na zanku you dey, my domain. Oloshi.”

“When do I get my phone call?” Alero asked carefully. “I need to contact my lawyer.”

“Eh, eh! Bisi, see this mugu she dey speak English.” The officer circled her slowly. “My friend, I said bend down. Make e no be say you hide a butcher knife inside your body. I see wetin you wan do that guy. Even Jesus no fit break you out of here — hard evidence dey. Video as you wan start to butcher that man. Thank God say we come quick quick.” She paused, letting that land. “You sure say na your first one? Me dey wonder. The confidence wey you use hold that knife.” She hissed.

She kept talking. The smell kept coming. Alero fixed her gaze on the wall and waited for it to end.

“Oya, see your new clothes, fashionista.” She tossed a folded bundle at her, hissing under her breath as she turned away. “Bisi, I dey come. Make me lodge our new guest.”

The officer,  Bukky, Alero would later learn her name was Bukky, led her down a dimly lit corridor, keys jangling at her hip, the sound filling the narrow space between the concrete walls. The floor was worn smooth by countless footsteps before hers. The air grew cooler with each step, the kind of cool that had nothing to do with comfort.

“When do I get my phone call?”

“Ogbeni, no dey yarn for my ear. When D.P.O say make we give you, we go give you.”

“But I need to call my lawyer—”

Bukky turned and slapped her. Clean, unhesitating, the sound bounced off the walls before Alero even registered the pain.

“No bail for you. You be hardened criminal. Shut up before I really deal with you.”

Alero pressed her fingers gently against her cheek and said nothing more. She followed in silence, listening to the jingle of keys, the distant cough of someone further down the corridor. Bukky stopped at a door, fitted the key into the lock and turned it with a heavy metallic click.

“Oya, enter.”

The door slammed shut behind her with a clang that seemed to go on longer than it should.

The smell hit her before anything else, sweat, damp concrete, disinfectant that had long stopped working, air that hadn’t moved properly in years. The room was smaller than her bathroom at home. The walls, once cream, had darkened into patches of grime and damp. A single barred window sat too high to see through, letting in only a weak strip of light. A foam mattress lay directly on the concrete floor. Plastic buckets and battered bowls were pushed into the corners like afterthoughts.

Is this even legal? she thought. Should human beings be made to live like this?

She held her sleeve against her nose and tried to breathe.

Hours moved like they were being dragged. The strip of light from the barred window shifted slowly across the floor and began to fade. She counted the cracks in the wall. She asked twice about the phone call and was ignored both times. Every set of footsteps approaching the cell made her sit up straight, certain they were coming for her. Every time they passed, the disappointment settled a little heavier.

She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to ignore the ache spreading across her lower back.

Then Bukky’s silhouette appeared at the door.

“Oya, come. Make your call.”

Alero didn’t say anything. She was afraid that if she spoke, the opportunity might dissolve. She followed silently back to the charge desk where an old landline sat on a scarred wooden table.

“Na, only one person you fit call. Fast fast.”

She already knew who the first call would be. She dialled without thinking,  the number she had always dialled when things fell apart.

It rang out.

She dialled again.

It rang out again.

She stared at the phone. Then at Bukky.

“So all this ginger wey you dey ginger since na nothing?” Bukky said, with quiet satisfaction.

“Please — can I call another number? This one didn’t connect.”

“Since the person is not picking, you fit call another person. One.”

Alero dialled Idara.

It rang once. Twice. On the third ring, she picked up, voice bright and unbothered, music behind her, glasses clinking, people talking over each other.

“Who is this?”

“It’s me.”

A brief pause. “Me who?”

“Idara. It’s me.”

“Babe,  why are you calling from a strange number?”

Alero turned slightly away from Bukky, lowering her voice to almost nothing. “I’m at a police station,” she said, her voice barely holding together.

Silence. Then: “Hey. Hey, don’t cry. What is going on? What are you doing in jail?”

“Idara, please.” Her voice broke on the second word. “Can you come? I’m in serious trouble.”

“Of course. I’m on my way right now with the lawyer. What happened? Which station?”

“They brought me to the mainland. This place feels like a dump. I don’t understand why they brought me here.”

“I’m coming. We’ll resolve this.” The line went dead.

Alero walked back to her cell with something loosening in her chest for the first time all night. The Ogunyemis would move mountains for her. That much she had always been certain of. She lay down on the mattress and tried to ignore the smell, the dampness, the ache in her back. She hadn’t slept. The night had been too loud inside her head for sleep.

She was just beginning to drift when the officer returned.

“You get a visitor.”

She almost ran.

She followed Bukky back through the corridor, barely seeing it, her mind already outside this place, already in the car with Idara and the lawyer, already explaining herself, already being believed. The officer stopped outside the visitor’s room and pushed the door open.

Idara was already there.

The relief was so sudden and so physical that Alero’s knees almost gave. She crossed the room and sat across from her oldest friend, the most familiar face she had seen since this nightmare swallowed her whole.

“I brought food,” Idara said. She placed a cooler on the table between them.

“Thank you, but where is the lawyer?”

“Don’t worry about that. He’s coming. Eat first.”

Alero’s stomach answered before she could. She opened the cooler: jollof rice, still steaming, piled with beef and plantain, her favourite. Idara handed her a juice pack and a bottle of water. She ate the way hunger demands, fast and graceless, rushing in spoon after spoon,

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Alero asked between mouthfuls.

“I’m just watching you eat,” Idara said. She was smiling faintly. “Slow down, baby.”

Alero looked up.

“Why aren’t you asking me any questions?”

“I spoke to the D.P.O when I arrived. I got the full picture. I tried to tell him you wouldn’t hurt anyone if you had a choice.”

“Exactly,” Alero said, relief flickering across her face.

“But who do you think the real blackmailer is?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’ve been going through everyone I could have offended, and I just—”

Idara smiled. Then she started laughing. Softly at first, then harder, past the point where laughter is still laughter, into something that had no warmth in it at all.

Alero stopped chewing. She just watched.

“You don’t know how long I waited for this,” Idara said.

“What do you mean?”

Alero set the spoon down slowly. Something cold moved through her that had nothing to do with the room.

Idara tilted her head, the smile still holding. “Is it not clicking yet? Darling.” She leaned forward slightly. “You thought you could sleep with my father for three years and just get away with it?” The laugh came again, soft, genuine, like something was truly amusing her. “After everything my family did for you. After everything.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was level and quiet, which was far worse than shouting. “I found out 3 years ago. I saw his message on your phone. I thought about killing you. But that felt like mercy. My mother loved you like a daughter. She treated you like her own blood. And you went and slept with her husband.” She looked at Alero the way you look at something you are no longer sure you recognize. “What kind of person does that, Alero. What kind of person are you?”

The rice turned to nothing in Alero’s mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then louder, her voice cracking open: “Idara, I am so sorry,  it was pressure, things weren’t working, I didn’t,  please, please forgive me—”

“I do forgive you,” Idara said, simply and without feeling. “I’ve done everything I set out to do. And honestly, it worked better than I expected.” She paused. “I sent Jide. I thought he would rough you up a little. Scare you.” The smile returned,  that same steady, unreadable smile. “I didn’t expect you to kill him.” She slammed her palm flat on the table once. “You killed my brother.” Then the smile again, like a door closing. “But thank you for that. It made everything much cleaner. Between us,  I never really liked him. Too tactless.”

Alero could not speak. Could not move. Tears rolled down her face as she kept saying I am sorry, it was the devil. Idara, please don’t leave me here, please, she held the hem of her dress. Pushing her off, Idara continued.

“My father won’t be answering your calls. He is focusing on healing his family. No lawyer is coming.” Idara rose slowly, smoothing her clothes as she stood, unhurried, like a woman who had nowhere to be and nothing left to prove. “I arranged for them to bring you to this station. It is a slum. And I will make sure no reputable lawyer touches your case,  self-defence or not.”

It was only then that Alero truly looked at her. The all-black outfit. The black Birkin was resting on the table’s edge. The dark glasses she had kept on the entire time, indoors, in a dim visiting room.

She had dressed for a funeral.

“Take your time with the food,” Idara said, lifting the bag onto her shoulder. “I have to go now. I was at a celebration when you called. I almost didn’t come.” She paused at the door. “But I couldn’t miss this view. It was worth every minute.”

She walked to the door and knocked twice for the officer. Then she stopped. Hand resting on the frame. She looked back one last time at Alero,  at the girl her family had chosen, had dressed, had educated, had loved like their own for twenty years.

“Enjoy it,” she said quietly. “That’s the last good meal you’ll eat for a very long time.”

The door closed behind her. Quietly, the way dangerous things often do.

Alero watched her go.

Shock came first. Then denial. Then something broke open inside her, and she began to scream.

She screamed until the wardens came. She screamed while they tried to hold her down. She screamed while she fought against their hands, against the walls, against the knowledge that the family she had built her entire life around had dropped her without looking back.