ANJOLA’S P.O.V:
Anjola loved weddings.
Not in the desperate, “God when?” way people sometimes assumed once a woman crossed twenty-seven and had the audacity to attend somebody else’s marriage without looking personally offended by it.
She just genuinely liked them.
There was something about a wedding that made people suspend cynicism for a few hours.
Nobody stood while the bride walked down the aisle calculating divorce statistics.
Nobody listened to vows thinking about irreconcilable differences.
For one afternoon, everybody agreed to believe love could work.
Anjola found that beautiful.
Tunde and Lamide’s wedding made it particularly easy.
The joining was small.
Small by Lagos standards, which still meant enough people to fill the intimate chapel Lamide had chosen, but there was none of the usual wedding madness.
No distant aunties fighting over reserved seats.
No politicians arriving twenty minutes late with six security men and the expectation that everybody should be grateful.
No MC turning the ceremony into a comedy special.
Just family.
Close friends.
People who actually knew them.
Anjola got there early. Of course she did.
I mean it was a wedding!
She sat three rows behind Tunde’s family, close enough to see the front properly without being close enough for anybody’s auntie to assign her an emergency responsibility.
The chapel was beautiful.
White flowers. Greenery. Tall candles in glass cylinders along the aisle. Cream ribbons tied around the chairs. Everything soft. Nothing screaming.
Very Lamide.
Anjola settled into her seat and looked around. She recognised more people than she expected.
Some from church. Some from the overlapping Lagos social universe where everybody seemed to know everybody through one cousin, one colleague, one former classmate or one badly attended birthday dinner.
Her phone buzzed.
Dele.
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