IT HAS NO GENDER

CHAPTER 1

Sandra took a deep breath as she exited the luxurious bus which had brought her straight from Asaba, Delta State to Edo State. It was already after 10am, the sun was high up and burning, she knew it would rain later and gave herself a pat on the head for deciding to travel early. She knew her husband Dare would be at work at this time so she resorted to Calling Abigail, her only friend.
       Being the only child, all her mother's attention was focused on her, she had no time to make friends or play like children her age, she met Abigail on her campus in the university and they instantly clicked, even her mother who was a picky person loved Abigail and took her as a second daughter or should it be a first as Abigail was older ity two years. Abigail was unmarried and in no relationship, she claimed to be a career lady and would not marry until she had enough to show for all her school years. She owned an optical clinic worked as a nurse in the university of Benin teaching hospital.
      Sandra was lucky to have arrived on her off day unless she would have had to drag her heavy boxes to the road side to board one of the rickety buses with abusive drivers who charged extra fee for your baggage and if you are lucky to have non of your valuables broken, you would have to cross the road if you lived on the other side making two,three trips depending on how many bags you carried and another problem awaited you on the other side, you would need a taxi or a bike or a tricycle commonly called 'Keke' to take you to your house depending on the kind of road that led to your house as 9 of 10 streets are decorated with portholes and during the rainy season becomes your very own ponds, sometimes your homes get flooded too depending on the area you lived and if you lived very far inside, you'd have to pay as much as 600 hundred naira as opposed to the normal hundred naira to board a bike to take you out. Sandra was happy she wouldn't have to go through all the stress as she had a car which was given to her by her mother as a wedding gift and her husband Dare also had a car.
      Abigail arrived 10 minutes later as she was in the market close to the bus park. She and Sandra loaded the boxes in the trunk and head home. She wanted to hear all that happened during the service as though the almost one hour phone call they had occasionally did not give enough information. Sandra was too tired to even answer her, she would give up when she is tired. When she opened her eyes about thirty minutes later, she realized she was in front of her home which was completed a year ago,it was a contribution from the both of them.she couldn't remember how she had dozed off, she must be really tired she concluded.
        Another problem presented itself, the key to the gate was with neither of them and Dare was an hour away from them, Sandra would have died from fatigue and hunger before he arrived. The only other alternative was to take the spare which was hidden in a small opening in the upper part of the gate, if one was not told it was there, it would be pass off as a small error by the welder of the gate. This solution proved to be a challenge as well as the height of Sandra and Abigail combined wouldn't be halfway through as they both looked like mice in front of the towering gate of about sixteen feet. After 10 minutes of stacking blocks they took from the next building which was under construction, they got the keys and unstacked the blocks taking them back to their original position. By this time Sandra wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep, she had spent half her night making sure all her belongings were packed and had woken up early so as to make it home before noon and had eaten only an egg roll and drank a can of Fanta since. Immediately she got inside, she left Abigail to help her unpack and fell on her bed drifting off to sleep. When she woke, it was already 2 o'clock pm, she quickly had her bath and left to the sitting room where she found Abigail watching her cartoons on the cable decoder. She went to the kitchen and could not find the word to thank God for bringing Abigail to her life as she opened the pot of steaming jellof rice. As they both are lunch, they caught up on the things they must have missed during their phone call. Sandra with great reluctance finally told Abigail of the message she has been receiving, she was not one to reveal the problems of her matrimonial home, it was something her mother taught her, if she made the world know of her problems, they would use it against her.
     Abigail finally calmed after a fit of cough she had as she choked on a spoonful of rice when she heard the information. She was angry at Sandra for keeping not from her, if she had known, she would have tailed the husband and found the photographer, that was how much the friendship meant to her. She asked Sandra why she kept it a secret, Sandra simply thought the ladies were possible buyers as Dare was a renowned estate agent so she thought nothing of it. That was a lie on her part, she thought so much of it, so many possible explanations ran through her head and with the help of her mother was able to convince herself that the women meant nothing. But there was no need for Abigail to know that, she already convinced herself and that was that.
     Abigail however did not believe the bogus answer she received, she told Sandra plain and simple that Dare was cheating on her.

_____vote and comment If you enjoyed reading this chapter. This is just the first chapter, it gets better. Tell me what you think about the characters.______

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