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The chauffeur opened the door of the white Rolls-Royce for her. He bowed while she hopped in. He closed the door with his two hands, out of courtesy rather than necessity. Like a soldier walks to the station, he hastened his steps, making a semi-circle to the driver's door, opened and in no time settled down behind the wheel. He started the engine but couldn't move as he waited to take order.

"I have a plane to catch to Dubai." Aduni mumbled indistinctly.

Remi maneuvered the luxurious car out of the terrace of the palatial mansion and steered towards Muritala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

"Mind the route you take," she murmured, "I can't afford to be held up in traffic jam."

"Noted, Madam." He said professionally.

She must get to the airport and do a few necessary things before her airline's take off time which was due in seventy-eight minutes' time. She checked the bag which contained her personal effects and some documents. She flipped through the papers just to be sure nothing was amiss. She'd packed them inside the big black leather bag herself and knew everything was intact and orderly but just felt she had to reconfirm for the next phase of her life depended solely on this umpteenth business trip. She nodded confirmation, satisfactorily, as she put the documents back into the bag. Nothing must go wrong; for one thing, she had invested all her net worth in this topical trip, of which should she fail to arrive Dubai on schedule, the whole deal would be forfeited; for another, she felt it was high time she stopped flying incessantly round the world all in the name of business.

Many things puzzled her little mind. She didn't know why her sixth sense had been itching her for past weeks to quit her foreign trade. Maybe for this reason, maybe for that reason, she mentally pressed for clues but none was forthcoming. She didn't know why she must stop the business that had earned her million million of Naira but she'd learned to follow the dictates of her intuition from so many bitter life lessons of the past. It was part of her growing up education to trust and obey her intuitive perceptions at the expense of logic. She dare not go against it even as she was clueless of the reason behind the premonition to give up the very cool money-making venture of gemstone trade, across the boarders, which had made her what she was.

"After this trip I'm going to quit," she thought decisively and again wondered on myriad of likely reasons for quitting. "Maybe a plane crash is imminent," she thought out loud as the Rolls-Royce Phantom slowed down towards a T-junction that linked the highway to the airport. She spontaneously reproved the devil she thought was responsible for the thought, "God forbid! Satan, I rebuke you."

"What is that, Madam? He twittered.

"What did I inform you?" She promptly gave him a kick in the teeth. "Face front and concentrate on your driving." She paused and later muttered, more like advice, "you don't poke your nose into something that doesn't concern you."

He felt insulted as his heart thumped within him but chose to take the easy option and so bottled his emotion up.

She forced weird and scary imaginations out of her mind and filled the vacuum with a wide range of fantasies which overwhelmed her with sweet sensation: her new line of business, home based; endowment to her alma matter and...

And just then her phone rang. He chauffeured the car with so much concentration that he had no attention left to pay to anything else, not even to the phone that had just rung loudly. He put his foot down on the broad expressway more than ever before.

Seeing the number on the brightly coloured screen of her mobile phone, she was apprehensively hesitant to pick the call. The incoming call was from her private landline telephone and the phone was inside her bedroom. She remembered using the phone not quite twenty minutes ago. It was only her only child, her daughter, who was supposed to be in school by then, that could go near the telephone box," she pondered thoughtfully and as an afterthought, stuttered fearfully, "or-or maybe burglars too." In the mood of pessimism she picked it up, "hello."

"Mum..."

"Feyi, my lovely daughter, what..."

"Mum... accident..." Feyi was panting breathlessly.

"What? What did you just say?"

"There's blood..." She trailed off.

He accelerated still.

"Hello, hello, Feyi, my daughter." There was no more response. The line went dead and the mother called back but the daughter didn't pick it up. She sighed deeply. After five eternally long seconds of helplessness she commanded in full cry, "turn back."

"I should turn back?" He asked.

"You heard me right." She shouted frantically.

"Are you no more going to the ...?"

"Turn back," she flared up, "that's the order." She pouted in annoyance. "If anything happens to my daughter you will go for it!"

He calmly looked into the rear-view mirror, indicated left and put the brake on. He swerved the car to make a U-turn and then changed up. "Madam, are we going to her school or...?

She wouldn't let him finish up, "we're returning home." Many thoughts swirled tempestuously in her feeble mind. It was like a turbulent whirlwind in a corked bottle. If the tornado does not make its exit through the right channel, the fragile container will definitely blow up in shreds. No ifs and buts about it, Dubai had made a cheap exit out of her mind. Feyi was her only child, the would-be inheritor of her vast empire. She could sacrifice everything for the girl, or maybe it'd just crossed her mind. She bit her lips severely, the only self-administering punishment she could think of at the moment, for not giving the girl all the time and attention she deserved. A single parent, Adunni also cursed silently and vowed never to forgive herself should anything happen to her daughter.

"Gran-an-an-an-an-an." The phone rang again. She swiftly snatched it up from the seat beside her and bawled uncontrollably into the mouthpiece, "hello."

"Hi ma, I'm afraid we can't find your daughter in the school premises and it's unusual..."

"Listen, and listen good," she abruptly interrupted the caller, "if anything, anything I said, happens to my daughter, you're gone... all of you!" She pressed the red button in her phone to cut off the conversation before the caller could proceed.

She couldn't wait for the gate keeper to open it, she swooped down from the long car in disembarkation and swung towards the massive iron door which she flung open as if it was a mere cotton curtain. Despite her overweight body and imposing physique she climbed the stairs adjoining the sitting room downstairs and her bedroom upstairs in three long steps. Even then, a sudden urge to offer a fate-changing intercessory supplication before entering would not let her rush into the room.

As she peered in, she glimpsed her daughter lying face up on the bed, feeling like jelly. She couldn't run to meet the thirteen year old girl who seemed to have fallen into a trance from the look on her face. She was stuck to the door and her eyes were riveted on the motionless figure on the king-size bed.

"My daughter, Feyi, my lovely daughter," she called with tearful eyes.

"Mum," she gently spoke with a flinty look as she tried to stretch her body, "I have an accident, I think. I can't really say how it happened." She shifted her gaze away from her mother's troubled, tension-soaking eyes and then continued as if she was now talking to herself. "I couldn't have sat on a nail." She reverted her stare to her mother. "My panties suddenly got wet so I dipped in my hand to have a feel of what it was..."

The woman couldn't help the coming tears though she desperately tried to fight it back. "I'm a failure." She moved closer to the poor girl.

"Mom, it wasn't your fault. It was my carelessness. It won't happen again, I promise." She lied still on the bed. "How I wish you could forgive my carefree..."

"It's me that need your forgiveness..." Floundering, she sat soberly beside her on the bed.

"When I took off my hand, it was gory; bloodstained, it was. It scared the shit out of me. The flow is..."

"I failed in my responsibilities to you," she owned up, "but I'm now set to make it up for you..."

"I didn't want to feel ill at easy among my mates so I screwed up courage and dashed off without informing any teacher nor try to call a driver to come and pick me." The perplexed woman looked on through her tear-filled eyes as sunlight through water droplets to form rainbow. "I tried to contact Dr. Moses before I called you but I couldn't get through to him." Feyi recounted helplessly.

"You don't even need to call a doctor, it's a natural flow of blood." She felt she owed her an explanation and so sat up and offered it, even in detail.

dominicson:
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"You don't even need to call a doctor, it's a natural flow of blood." She felt she owed her an explanation and so sat up and offered it, even in detail.

I sent you a message boss, please check your email.