Secrets, lies and social media: An excerpt from Yomi Adegoke’s hotly anticipated novel, ‘The List’
WORDS BY YOMI ADEGOKE
A perfect relationship, tested publicly.
Ola and Michael had met at a media networking event for Black Brits three years ago in the summer of 2016, when charts were dominated by the Drake songs that launched a thousand situationships – ‘Controlla’, ‘One Dance’, his feature on Rihanna’s ‘Work’. They hit it off immediately. She’d been pleasantly surprised when he asked her out a week later, announcing her impending date to the group chat with the second-best picture of him she could find on his Facebook.
In the first, he was at an Independence Day party with his shirt unbuttoned down nearly to his navel, sporting a small Ghanaian flag as a makeshift bandana. Ola wanted to avoid potential fuckboy accusations, so the one she chose was a black and white candid that made him look like a motivational speaker.
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“Ngl, he’s BUFF,” Ruth offered in the ‘St Augustine’s finest’ WhatsApp group. “But he looks like a fuckboy tbh LOOOL.” “He looks like he played drums at church,” Celie added. “And you know they’re the worst of all.”
They admitted he was gorgeous, at least. Michael was even taller than Ola at six foot two, with almond-shaped eyes and flawless skin. Underneath a meticulously groomed beard lay a carved-from-black-marble face. He was well-dressed, into details; never without a thin gold chain and a small hoop earring in his left ear that his mum hated and Ola adored.
His looks were all her friends agreed on when it came to Michael. Celie and Ruth weren’t ever sure anyone Ola liked was good enough for her, a reflection of their impossibly high standards (ones Ruth failed to maintain herself and perpetually celibate Celie didn’t have to consider) rather than her bad taste. So, she barely batted an eyelid at their view of him. Ola liked the way she felt around Michael. Looser, less herself but more herself. He was street-smart, funny and kind.
And, although she didn’t exactly like the fact that she always had to foot their restaurant bill, she liked even less what it said about her if she penalised him for it. “With this gender pay gap you’re constantly writing about, he really has no excuse,” Ruth said when they started dating.
“She’s not wrong,” Celie concurred. “The scripture says equally yoked, not, like, equally broke?” When Ola countered with by definition that would mean they were equally yoked, Ruth and Celie set their mouths in twin grim lines. They only seemed to be allied when they were disagreeing with her choices in men. At least the girls were hands-on with the wedding planning, helping Ola in every way they could, for which she was grateful. But she knew they still had reservations about him.
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Surely, they would be satisfied now Michael would be out-earning her with his new job. Ola hadn’t decided how she felt about that new reality yet – she’d put more money towards the wedding than he had, after all – but her happiness at his new role meant she hadn’t needed to.
She lost her train of thought as her phone began to vibrate again, with what seemed like increased intensity. She blindly reached for it and, wiping vanilla-scented cleanser from her face, slowly turned over the screen. The name FRANKIE W flashed furiously like a warning. Ola could see that alongside 148 messages, buried underneath a flurry of Instagram and Twitter notifications, she had 17 previously undisplayed missed calls. This confirmed it: she had seriously messed up. Defeated, Ola turned off the shower, wrapped herself in a fluffy turquoise towel and stared hard at the tiles of the bathroom floor.
Prior to this work hiccup, for the first time in a long time, she had felt at peace. Or however close she could get to that feeling. That real ‘on top of all wedding admin, everything ticked off the Google calendar, all bills paid’ peace was a sensation so foreign, she could never quite lean into it, never fully trust it. She felt safer when the storm finally arrived than in the calm before it.
That morning, Ola thought the storm was going to come in the form of Frankie summoning her for a chastising disguised as a ‘quick chat’ when she got in. But, it actually came minutes after she arrived in the office, at 9.30am on the dot, when her phone finally granted her access. She power-walked to her desk, eyes so low she wasn’t even sure whether Frankie was in yet. She unlocked her phone and the first four messages were, as she suspected, from Celie and Ruth. Characteristically animated, Ruth’s read:
EMERGENCY. PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE!
FFS OLAIDE!!!!! U BEEN ON TWITTER???
CALL ME ASAP HAVE U SEEN IT???1 HAVE U SEEN THE LIST?
Celie’s message, short and direct like her, consisted of only four words:
R u okay, Ola?
This is an edited extract from The List by Yomi Adegoke, published by Harper Collins. Out on August 2, preorder here.
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