INSIDE STORY

CHAPTER 2

Janelle's apartment is a very well spaced one-bedroom flat, which she effortlessly keeps too tidy for a non-OCD patient. Her room smells of lavender and some kind of peppermint, there is a fluffy light pink rug in the centre of the room with designs to match her window blinds. She has a mini-library at the far end of her room directly opposite her bed with books covering topics that many seldom read, neatly arranged in alphabetical order. Next to the book shelve is a wooden reading table and a chair; obviously pink in colour, on which there is a book open at page 205 with the title: CHAPTER 11 – THE MYSTERY OF SEX TRANSMUTATION, written boldly on it. Very close to one of her windows is a very small makeup table with a mirror on which she currently sits and applies light make up to her face.

Fully dressed and ready for work, she makes her bed, completely dressing it till it's wrinkle-free, kneels down and spends a little over five-minutes praying; mostly in tongues, then stands and exits the house.

Monday mornings always made Amaka feel good because her direct boss at the office had all the answers to the many troubling life issues she was going through. She didn't find it comfortable talking to the HR at her office if there were any work-related issues and definitely wasn't comfortable talking to anyone else but Miss J. She always makes the effort to be in the office before her boss and is somewhat concerned that Miss J is strangely not at work at her regular time.

Janelle walks into the office building, trying as much as possible to avoid eye contact with any of her colleagues; she instinctively checks her watch only to discover that she wasn't entirely late at all, she smiles and resets to a queenly I've-got-it-all-together gait. The hallway of the office building is very quiet this morning as always. The mad rush begins sometime at noon when all the customers and important clients throng the hallway needing explanations to certain packages her firm offers. Soon as she opens the door to her office, Amaka is startled, "Oh, Miss J," she says as Janelle walks in and sits on the sofa directly opposite the office table.

"What are you looking for," Janelle asks as Amaka resumes her search in the file cabinet. "The Chukwu brother's company portfolio...here it is," she says with a smile, lifting the document up in the sky and closing the file cabinet, it's very obvious that something isn't right with Amaka that morning and beneath her smile is a story she wants to tell Janelle but maybe now isn't the time for that. Putting the file under her armpit, she arranges Janelle's table and shoots her another fake smile before leaving the office.

Janelle's office is nothing like her room, except for the very tidy nature the both of them share in common. There is a giant-sized mahogany table to the very end of the wall, leaving enough space for a smaller table with two sofas flanking the sides, where one can have a mini-conference discussion. She eventually stands and goes into work mode, filing documents and typing away on her office computer for the next 5 hours.