I dated him for five years and thought I knew everything about him. The one night, I saw a message on his phone from a woman saved as "Mum." It wasn't his mother. It was mine. I still haven't figured out why they were talking every night.

My colleague wanted to sell his car to offset his ₦1.8m house rent. Downgrade to something smaller. His wife said she would buy the car. “You will buy my car? Where did you see money?” he asked her. She said, “My brother raised ₦6 million for me last year to start a business. I fixed the money.” “And I wasn’t aware? You still collect ₦100k from me every month to take care of yourself?” It’s been two weeks now since he left the house. He said he is no longer interested in the marriage.

My girlfriend asked me one strange question three weeks before our wedding. “Would you still marry me if you found out I had been lying to you?” I laughed. I thought she was joking. “Depends on the lie.” She didn’t laugh. Instead, she looked down at her coffee and whispered, “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I asked her what she meant. She changed the subject. For the next three weeks, she became distant. She stopped leaving her phone on the table. She started taking calls outside. She’d smile at messages and immediately lock her screen when I walked into the room. I didn’t accuse her of cheating. I wanted to trust her. Then, five days before the wedding, I found a hotel receipt in her car. Two nights. Paid in cash. I confronted her. “Who were you with?” She started crying. “Please don’t ask me that.” That answer hurt more than any confession could have. “Were you cheating on me?” She shook her head. “Then tell me the truth.” “I can’t.” “Why?” “Because if I tell you, you’ll hate me.” I walked out. I didn’t call her that night. The next morning, she sent me one message: “Meet me at the hotel.” I almost didn’t go. But I did. When I arrived, she was standing outside one of the rooms. She handed me an envelope. “Open it.” Inside was a photograph. It was me. Sitting at a restaurant. With another woman. My face went pale. “What is this?” She started crying. “You don’t remember her?” I stared at the photograph. Then I realized something. I did remember her. She was my mother. The mother I’d told my fiancée had died when I was sixteen. My fiancée looked at me. “She’s alive, isn’t she?” I couldn’t speak. She pulled another photograph from the envelope. This one showed my mother. Standing beside a little boy. A boy who looked exactly like me. Except he was about six years old. She whispered: “You didn’t just lie about your mother.” “You lied about having a brother.” I sat down. And suddenly, her strange question three weeks before the wedding made perfect sense. She wasn’t asking whether I’d forgive her for lying. She was asking whether I’d forgive myself for lying first.

The woman in my compound was always borrowing salt. Every few days: “Abeg, you get salt?” At first, nobody thought anything of it. She borrowed from almost every apartment, and she was always smiling and friendly. But one evening, my neighbor noticed something strange. She wasn’t using the salt. She was giving it to someone else. We didn’t understand until we discovered where all the salt was going. This woman was putting the borrowed salt into small nylon bags and selling them to shops on the third street. 😂😭 So all those “Abeg, you get salt?” were actually business strategy. My compound was unknowingly sponsoring her salt business. 😂