That evening, after Ivy and Grace had gone to sleep, Jason went to his study to read. He started with what lay on his desk, some business journals, but soon he had put down his Reading and was looking in his drawer for something else. The object was a tattered dairy, which had found it's way to Jason. The address on the inside cover was the only bit of writing still clearly legible in Lola's old dairy, yet he kept these torn and yellowing pages and would look at them from time to time. There was nothing new to read and usually he would end up dreaming about what might have been. What might have been had she stayed with him or had he joined her in the city or joined her in Dakar. And then then a door creaked, followed by the sound of flip-flops slapping gently against the wooden floor. It was Ivy on her way to the toilet."Lola" Jason whispered, turning back to the journal and thinking that had it not been for his mistake, had he known, had they known that the pregnancy would not ho

Eventually, on the third day, Jason found a way of walking alone with the old man. "So, what shall I tell you about my old boss, Lugard?" The old man smiled as he spoke. ""Even before the time whereby I started employment with My Boss, Lugard and his Lady, my father was in Lugard's service before me. He was the one who accompanied my Boss, Lugard Borgu, to claim it away from the French. You follow?" "Yes sir," Jason nodded, bemused by the man's obvious admiration for his old boss and wondering, as he continued recounting his stories, how much of his ways had been learnt from Lugard. "Sometimes, he would ask for my advice on international affairs."Jason nodded, finding this particularly interesting, as it was a side of Lugard not reflected in the diaries. Jason laughed, his mind now racing with questions as the man continued to talk about his time with Lugard. As he talked, Jason found himself thinking of his father. The more he listened to older people, the more he realized

He had come to his office early that afternoon to evaluate some documentation. After hours of glancing at papers with the help of the view, he straightened the remaining stack of papers and stood up to stretch. He glanced at his watch. It was late and his head hurt: time to go home. Not that there was anyone waiting for him there. Megan was away visiting relatives. Though he missed Megan's company. He did not miss her demands. She was bright but immature and petulant at times. He had begun to wish that she would find someone else - someone she could marry, which seemed to be the thing foremost on her mind. Jason ran his hand over the faded pictures that hung above his desk. Here was an old postcard he had brought back from Oxford with the colors of the Aureole now looking brown rather than the original bright white and yellow. Jason sighed as he put down the postcard and looked at all the other pictures pinned to the wall - the rest were Ivy creations hanging loosely on dry bits of Ce

She had said no the first time he asked her to marry him. But when he proposed again several months later, she managed to persuade herself that her initial reservations were foolish. He was, after all, her closest friend and it seemed only natural that they should marry. Eighteen years. She had grown to love him, but those things that she had not liked in the beginning never went away and what was, for a short time, the attraction of his older age soon disappeared as well. Now he was forgetful and prone to repeating stories. In his retirement he spent hours and hours in his men's clubs with his very English friends. He smoked and drank, and talked incessantly of holiday homes in the south of France. He no longer thirsted for Africa. And then there was something else, so small and trivial that it bothered Lola that she even noticed it, yet it was worse than all the other irritations, and always there. His smell. It cloaked the house and seeped into everything they owned: clothes, curta

Lola stared at her computer thinking of Jason's most recent letters. She had remembered something that her mother once told her about love, and she tried to remember when the conversation had taken place, deciding that it must have been late in the summer. They had been sitting in the garden, she with a book on her lap and Mother could have been telling any story, the mere cadence of her voice was enough to soothe, but it wasn't just any old story. In retrospect, Lola wished she had asked more questions, but at that time she could only think of how things related to her and Jason. Now she wondered what the story might have meant to Mother, and who might have told her the story. Her mother had told her that there was a saying that a person never married their first love. A person always married someone else, but later in life that person would be reunited with their first love. They apparently has a phrase for it: they call it the Pick-up-your-stick-and-standals marriage, which