Sometime in May

5. A Wrinkle in Time

The weather was clear as they rode away on the scooter. Streets bustled with traffic as birds swooped across the sky. A gust of wind greeted them as they dismounted at the car park. They rented a mat from the convenience store by the sea and headed towards the beach, where the sea awaited them. They wandered along the coast, listening to the wind and the rising waves. With each step, the crowd thinned until they left civilisation behind and it felt as though they were the last people on earth.

Ayo unfolded their mat while Noor unwrapped her scarf, revealing her long curls at the nape. Beneath the towel, the sand kept the day’s warmth.

Noor looked out at the water. “It’s a nice view.”
“Yeah. It’s slower here.”
The waves sang a song of the sea—a steady, familiar motion in the ocean that pulsed against the shore.
Noor looked out at the water. “I...um...I’m really sorry about going through your stuff. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s okay,” Ayo traced a pattern in the sand with her toe. “I shouldn’t have yelled. It’s just...seeing those letters brought up some bad memories.”
Regret clenched in her. Noor exhaled and looked out at the surf. A question sat on her tongue, her fingers fidgeting.

“Can I ask, if it’s not too much...what actually happened with your dad?”

Ayo fell silent, her focus dissolving into the distance. She had been holding it all in for so long, and if she didn’t speak now, she didn’t know when she would get another chance. She looked at Noor, searching for any sign of judgement or disinterest, but found only curiosity. And in the gaps between her words, the outline of her story began to emerge.

“I lost my twin brother, Tayo, a few years ago. After that, my father couldn’t...he just left.”
Noor shifted slightly on the mat, turning towards her.
The waves quietened. Perhaps they were listening too.

Ayo scooped a handful of sand, watching the grains jostle and fight to slip through her fingers, eager to return to the earth. Noor watched the movement, grounding herself in its rhythm.
“Tayo was bright, funny, brilliant...everything was nice back then.”
A gust of wind swept across the shore as she listened.
“In those early years, my parents’ marriage was strong. Courteous, loving, attentive. At least, until things started to get worse.”

Noor shifted closer, listening.

When Fisayo fell pregnant, Kayode joked about wanting a son, and Fisayo hinted at getting a daughter. They laughed and her belly kicked in response. As it grew, each contraction felt like a question. Then, the fraternal twins arrived—a boy and a girl.

Unfortunately, Kayode lost his job when the law firm downsized to cut costs. He struggled to find new employment amid slow hiring, so Fisayo stepped in to pick up the slack, leveraging her international business. Their families hadn’t supported the marriage: Kayode’s parents wanted him to marry a fully Yoruba woman, while Fisayo’s parents worried that a man without strong Ghanaian ties wouldn’t honour their heritage.

Alone in the face of cultural pressures, the couple learned to navigate work, parenthood, and each other. They had no close friends to lean on. Fisayo was away too frequently to cultivate deep roots and Kayode was far too ashamed of his dwindling status to let anyone see behind the curtain of their marriage. They became a closed circuit, their world shrinking until they were the only witnesses to their own slow unravelling.

As the children grew, Fisayo resumed her career. She was often away on business, leaving Kayode to handle the nappies and the lull of an empty house. Without meaning to, they began to measure love in effort, each trying not to be the one who fell short.

“It was hard to live in a place where looking like a family mattered more than actually being one,” Ayo sighed.

Ms Fisayo frequently returned from her travels with engaging stories and photos of tourist attractions, her finger pointing out landmarks that Kayode’s uneventful life couldn’t rival. She always arrived with suitcases full of intercontinental gifts—extravagant peace offerings for her absence. Yet, no amount of global treasure could ever compensate for the time she had signed away from her children.