MAKESHIFT HUSBAND (COMPLETE)

CHAPTER FOUR

*
Back in the house at Sabon Layi, Zainab was beside herself with worry. She paced up and down their bedroom.

Kamal was with another woman right now. She glanced at the phone and felt like yelling when she saw the time.

1:40AM.

That's it! She slowly sank to the floor like a deflated balloon. "Kamal has finished me" she murmured to herself and started to cry.

She tried everything she could to delay him from leaving but at 11 he snapped at her and left the house.

She wondered what they were doing at this time. Was he holding the woman in his arms? Was he kissing her? Did he let his tongue glide over hers just like he did with her?  Was he touching her? Or worse! Were they....

She shook her head again.

Kamal would never do that to her. He was a man who kept to his words. He told her he would never sleep with the girl and she had to trust him.

"But he didn't promised you. He only said he wouldn't and what man would resist a woman? Especially a man with a huge appetite like Kamal and the woman's his wife?"

A voice in her head whispered and Zainab started to cry. From this day henceforth, her man wouldn't be hers alone. She wouldn't be the only Mrs Kamal.

It was all that stupid woman's fault. What did she do to her groom that had him cancel the wedding at such a last minute? Besides, was Kamal the only man she knew? Why didn't get anyone to just pose and marry her? Why did Sher had to get Kamal?

Maybe she had been sighting him for a long time now.

Unable to sleep for the whole night, Zainab spent the hours conjuring different thoughts and methods she could send the new woman out of her house as she had decided already. She would never share her husband with another woman.

Kamal had been created for her and she for him. There could be no third party between them. She would never allow that to happen no matter what it took or what she had to do.

She was so engrossed in her thoughts that even when the adhaan was called, she didn't hear at all until the Liman started to lead the prayers.

She sprang to the bathroom and performed ablution. Once she was done praying, she would make special call for help and she knew just the person who could help.

She hardly took time to make her du'a as she rushed through her prayers. However, she hesitated when she held the phone.

Was it still too early to make the call?

She would call Kamal first.

The phone rang but no one answered. She called five more times yet they all went unanswered. At the sixth call, it was finally answered.

"Hello Honey"

"He's taking a bath"

Zainab didn't realise that the phone had slipped from her hand until she heard a crack.

He was taking a bath!!

Kamal was taking a bath instead of praying. Which means something had actually happened between them last night.

While she had been unable to sleep, worried and concerned on how they would handle this hot potato, Kamal had actually eaten the potato and digested it.

Kamal had touched a woman intimately. The woman wasn't her. She was someone else.

Her head felt heavy and she used her palms to support it. Her  husband, the three years of love and intimacy now had a third person. How could he do this to her?

_But it isn't his fault. Who knows if that girl seduced him or drugged him. You know Kamal ai_

She convinced herself that her husband wasn't to blame. That outsider was. The woman who came into their lives and was threatening to disrupt everything they'd built.

Clenching and unclenching her fists, she reached a decision and made the call.

There's no going back now. 
*******

Hajiya Salma leisurely enjoyed her chilled drink of foster clark as the maid massaged her legs. She had never felt so better in her whole life.

Abdulhaqq walked in and sat down close to her. He greeted her and she frowned.

"Abdul have you been smoking again?" Since the wedding got cancelled, she was starting to loose her son. He took to smoking and was hardly at home.

Abdulhaqq lowered his head silently. Of course he had been smoking away his regrets but they would only come back to him as quick as he inhaled fresh air.

"I knew I was right to have insisted you cancelled the wedding. That girl is a bad influence on you. Just look, you didn't marry her and you are smoking so what if you had gotten married? Would I be getting news that you've been arrested with cocaine?"

"Mummy Maryam has nothing to do with this."

"And you're still defending her. Not to even mention the wealth spent on those boxes you left her and now she's gone ahead and married another man with them"

"She got married?" Abdulhaqq was shocked.

"Of course she did" Hajiya salma frowned even deeper. He heart really ached when she remembered that her son didn't take back a single naira from what he had spent in preparations then the wild thing went ahead to marry someone else with them.

"Mummy" Abdulhaqq called again. "Who did she marry? I've been asking you"

"Oh" Hajiya Salma scoffed. "Just some low life like herself. I heard it was her brother's friend, Kamal something"

Abdulhaqq closed his eyes and leaned back on the chair. So many emotions were rolling inside of him now, regret being the most prominent of them.

Why didn't he listen to her? Why didn't he find it in him to forgive her? After all he also had his own skeletons too.

Everyone must have committed mistakes in the past but as long as they moved on, then it was okay.

Why didn't he forgive her? Just why did he go ahead and cancel the wedding?

He felt his head spinning, the air around him was getting stiffer and too heavy for his nostrils.

"Abdulhaqq!"

His mom calling in the distance was the last thing he heard before the darkness overcame him.