My Instagram Love

Episode 6

“Relax. It’s fine.” Tunde looked back into the screen and forced a smile then he continued speaking. “I’m not even sad about the fact that death took her away from me, or the fact that we didn’t fulfull most of the promises we made to each other, but the fact that Alice never even got the chance to meet her very own mother like most children are privileged to meet and know theirs. She’s got nobody else to rely on but me and just me alone. I won’t even lie to you that everything is perfect in my house, Lola, because it’s not been easy doing the work of two parents and nurturing her to be a good and God fearing child the way I want her to be. Sometimes, I walk into her room and I catch her staring at her mother’s pictures and when I collect them from her, telling her all sort of reassuring quotes, all she does is cry her eyes out while she begs me to give the pictures back to her. Other times, she sketches the pictures on a cardboard paper and brings them to me to see her artwork, even though the paper itself must have been tainted with little drops of tears. I knew she felt so lonely as any other child in such a situation would feel, so at a certain point, I made a decision to get married again just to please her but now I regret taking that decision.”

“Why?” I asked, furrowing my brows as I listened with rapt attention. “Don’t you like your new wife or something?”

“Point of correction, she’s not yet my wife.” Tunde answered, preparing to dive into proper explanation. “She’s just my proud and unapologetically rude fiancée. Francesca is her name. She used to be so sweet and lovely from the start of our relationship, but now–” he trailed off and shook his head without saying anything else.

“What happened now?” I persuaded him to speak, letting my bloating curiosity have the better half of me. “What went wrong between you both?”

“In one word, pride.” Tunde replied and added again: “Francesca is what anyone would call a wolf in sheep’s clothing. At first, she’s the beautiful, sweet, coolheaded, easy going and jovial lady, but once you get to know her true character, you’d so wish you never got too close to her in the first place. She’s so spoilt and rude. So useless!”
“Hey, Tunde!” I chipped in almost immediately, bulging my eyes in a rather cartoonish way. “That’s not a good thing to say about someone you intend to get married to. Come on, snap out of it!”

“I wish you could see quarter of what I’m passing through in the hands of Francesca.” He continued lamenting despite my disapproval. “She’s so full of herself. So immature. So inconsiderate. So–”
Before he could even complete his sentence, we both heard a slight push at the door of his room and before we could both blink our eyes, the stunning fair-skinned angel herself walked in defiantly. I assumed she must be the ‘spoilt and inconsiderate’ Francesca he’d been telling me about all along, judging by her inappropriate dressing which barely even covered her laps, and by the stale look plastered on her face plus the excess makeup she was wearing.

As much as I tried not to jump into conclusions concerning her supposed bad character as Tunde had explained, she soon confirmed it by the next drastic move she took. She walked briskly towards Tunde’s position and then stood behind him, squinting her eyes into the laptop’s screen. The cold glare I received from her devilish eyes could be compared to the frightening look of a Walking Dead zombie character.

“Ugly idiot. You again?” She snarled, pointing the index finger of her left hand at the screen menacingly. “I thought I told you to leave my man alone?”

I didn’t know what to say to her. I was as clueless as a baby deer, glued tightly to my spot on the bed, staring at her mean and uninviting face. She ignored me and looked at her fiancé’s face instead.

“Tunde so you have a strong mind like this?” She asked rhetorically, folding her hands as she stepped closer to him. “I kept my laptop in my wardrobe and you had the guts to take it to do a pointless video call with this hideous street rat? With my hard-earned data?”