I had recently been made redundant, and suddenly my days stretched long and empty at home. My husband, Deji, worked late most nights—Lagos traffic didn’t help. Sometimes he’d surprise me with a midday visit, but most days, I was alone.

My routine became predictable: sweeping the sitting room, boiling water for my Agege bread and tea, scrolling through job sites on my phone, maybe watching a Tunde Kelani film to pass the hours. My life was slipping into something painfully boring.

But one Thursday morning, everything changed.

The sun was already fierce. I was outside hanging laundry—the usual lace and George wrappers—when my new neighbour, Sodiq, struck up a conversation. He and his wife had moved in a few months ago. We’d exchanged “Good evenings” before, but this was the first time we truly spoke.

He was early thirties, clean-shaven, with that quiet confidence some Yoruba men carry without trying. We chatted for about twenty minutes by the fence before he excused himself and walked back to his own gate.

And then, silence.

The moment he disappeared behind his door, the compound felt suddenly, unbearably empty. The laundry basket sat half-empty. The sun was still hot. The same neighbour’s child was crying somewhere. But none of it reached me.

I stood there by the clothesline for a full minute, just staring at his closed gate. Then I carried my basket inside.

The house swallowed me whole.

No Deji. No children. No house help on Thursdays. Just the ceiling fan spinning lazily, the hum of the refrigerator, and my own thoughts growing louder by the second.

I dropped the basket on the dining table. I didn’t fold the clothes. I didn’t turn on the TV. I just stood in the middle of the sitting room, feeling the ghost of his handshake still warm on my palm. The quiet pressed against my ears. No one would come. No one would knock. No one would know.

That’s when the emptiness I had been carrying for months rose to the surface.

It wasn’t just boredom. It was deeper. A hollow space in my chest that had been growing since Deji started coming home after 10 p.m., too tired to even hold a conversation. When we did share a bed, he would turn the other way, mumbling about morning meetings and fuel queues. The last time we made love—truly made love—I couldn’t even remember. Six months? Eight? I had stopped counting because the counting hurt too much.

I had tried. Bought new nightwear. Cooked his favourite efo riro. Sat beside him on the sofa hoping he would notice. But his eyes stayed on his phone, on the news, on anything but me. At night, I would lie awake listening to him snore, my own body aching for a touch that never came. I had even reached for him once, my hand on his chest. He had gently moved it away. “Not tonight, dear. I’m exhausted.”

Those words repeated in my head like a curse. Not tonight. Not tonight. Not tonight.

So I had learned to swallow the longing. To push it down with housework and job applications and long naps. To pretend that I didn’t wake up some mornings already feeling the weight of another lonely day pressing on my chest.

But now, standing in that quiet sitting room after talking to Sodiq, the longing came roaring back.

Because for twenty minutes, a man had looked at me. Really looked at me. Listened when I spoke. Laughed at my small jokes. Stood close enough that I could smell his cologne—something clean and expensive. And for those twenty minutes, the hollow place inside me had felt… smaller. Almost full.

Now he was gone, and the emptiness was worse than before.

I sat on the sofa, pressing my palms together, trying to steady my breathing. He’s a neighbour, I told myself. A married neighbour. You are being foolish. You are lonely, not desperate.

But my body didn’t care about logic.

I felt heat creeping up my neck. A familiar throb between my thighs that I had learned to ignore. But today, it wouldn’t be ignored. My fingers trembled slightly as I tucked my hair behind my ear. I tried to think of Deji. Of our wedding day. Of the vows we made. I tried to think of Sodiq’s wife—the sweet woman who waved at me from her kitchen window.

Stop it, I commanded myself. Get up. Fold the laundry. Call your sister. Do something.

But I didn’t move.

My mind screamed no while my body whispered yes. I thought about going to the bedroom and lying down—just to rest, just to close my eyes. But I knew what would happen if I did. I could already feel the pull, the ache, the familiar surrender.

I fought it.

I stood up. Walked to the kitchen. Drank a glass of water. Sat back down. Folded one towel. Unfolded it. Folded it again.

The thoughts wouldn’t leave.

What if he held you? What if he pushed you against the wall? What if he said your name the way his voice dropped when he said “You look well today”?

I squeezed my eyes shut. Pressed my thighs together. Gripped the arm of the sofa until my knuckles turned white.

No. No. No.

But the emptiness was too loud. The months of rejection. The cold sheets. The nights spent crying into my pillow while Deji slept soundly beside me. The way I had started to feel invisible—not just to the world, but to the one man who had promised to see me forever.

Sodiq had seen me. For twenty minutes, I was not invisible. And that glimpse of being seen had cracked something open inside me.

I gave in.

I went to the bedroom, pulled down my wrapper, and lay on the bed. The sheets still smelled like morning. I closed my eyes, and Sodiq was there. His smile. The way he leaned on the fence. How his voice dipped.

I imagined his hands on me—how he’d unhook my bra, how his accent would thicken when he whispered. I imagined him filling every empty space inside me—the loneliness, the neglect, the hunger Deji had left starving.

My hips moved to the fantasy, and in that empty house, with no one to hear me, when the waves finally took me, I trembled harder than I had in years.

Afterwards, I lay still, staring at the ceiling. The silence returned. No footsteps. No doorbell. No evidence of what I had just done.

But something had changed.

Because even in my own imagination, Sodiq had reached a part of me that my own husband had abandoned. And for those few seconds of release, the hollow place inside me had felt completely, dangerously full.

I was still alone.

But now I knew what I was missing.

And that knowledge terrified me.

—

“I had just thought of him in a lustful way—my thighs pressing together, my breath catching—just moments ago at the thoughts of him

What if I can’t get hold of myself when next I’m around him?
I told myself I would be strong. I told myself it was a mistake.
And then I saw him again…
And then what i was scared of happened …”

 Continue in Part 2