I left the building elated. An American neuroscientist was very willing to invest in a Ministry of Education contract, and this new mugu sounded like another long-term dollar dispenser. The packaging was getting to a stage where I would need to schedule a meeting with him in Amherst, Massachusetts.

I walked past some other embassies on my way to the car park at the end of the crescent. Even the embassy of Bulgaria gates were besieged with long queues. The US and the UK – and perhaps Ireland – were understandable, but why on earth would anyone want to run away from Nigeria to Bulgaria? As I reached the car, I heard someone shouting my name.

‘Kings! Kings!’

I turned. In that instant, I forgot all the sinister plots I had devised in murderous daydreams. All the diabolical strategies I had composed in midnight moments of pain and anger vanished from my mind. I beamed like a little boy lost who had just been found by his mother.

I ran screaming towards the sweet sound of my name.

‘Ola! Ola!’

We rushed into each other’s arms. We hugged like old friends. I looked her over from head to toe.

‘Wow! Ola, you look…’

I stopped. She was as fat as a dairy cow. There were light green stretch marks tattooed into her swollen cleavage.

‘You look lovely,’ I said, and that was the truth.

‘I had two babies, that’s what happened,’ she replied with a satisfied smile. ‘You, how are you?’

‘I’m fine.’ I could feel myself still grinning stupidly. ‘Honestly, you’re the very last person I imagined I would bump into today. I just came for my American visa interview.’

She nodded.

‘I came to renew our British visas – me and my children.’

‘Wow. Ola, it’s so good to see you. Why don’t we sit somewhere and have a proper chat. I hope you’re not in a hurry.’

She agreed. We walked around in search of somewhere to hang out. The complex housed a number of shops, business centres, and eating places, but most of the restaurants were dingy – obviously designed with only the waiting drivers in mind. Suddenly I remembered that times had changed. Ola and I did not have to put ourselves through this.

‘Why don’t we go somewhere nice in town?’ I asked. ‘We could go to Double Four or Chocolat Royal. Or wherever else you want.’

I was bold to throw the offer open. Unlike those days, now I could afford it.

‘No, I’m OK with anywhere here,’ she said and smiled. ‘I’m not that hungry, anyway.’

We chose the least dingy restaurant of them all. The air smelt of a mixture of fresh fish and locust beans. Large and small flies buzzed and perched about with alarming sovereignty and audacity. A sweaty, matronly waitress who looked like she knew all the flies by name galumphed to our table. Eating anything in that place would have been like signing a treaty for the invasion of my digestive system.

‘I’ll have a Coke,’ I said.

‘Diet Coke for me,’ Ola said.

I handed the matron the highest denomination naira note I had in my wallet. She grumbled and dug into her belly region in search of some change.

‘You can keep the change,’ I said, loud enough for Ola to hear just in case she had been distracted.

‘Thank you, Oga!’ the matron beamed. ‘Oga, thank you very much!’

‘Kings, Kings,’ Ola joked. ‘You’re now a big boy.’

I smiled. The drinks arrived immediately, served directly from the bottles, with a suspicious-looking straw sticking out from the neck.

‘But Kings, if anybody had told me that somebody like you would ever do 419,’ Ola continued, ‘honestly I would have said it’s a lie.’

Strangely, this was the first time someone who knew me, someone whom I did not work with, had told me to my face that I was a scammer. Nobody ever mentioned it. Even my mother, despite all her misgivings, was still in the realm of hunting for euphemisms. There was something emancipating about the way Ola had put the elephant right on top of the table. I would not have to spend our time together being furtive.

‘I wonder who’s been telling you these things,’ I said with mock shock.

Ola laughed.

‘How won’t I hear? You know Umuahia is a small place. When a maggot sneezes, everybody hears, including people outside the town. Anyway, I hear you’re still humble and level-headed. Unlike many of these other loud 419 guys.’

I sniggered.

‘Ola, the things that change us are quite different. I always find it funny when people say that money makes people proud. If you check it, poor people are some of the proudest people in this world.’

My father, for example.

Ola kept quiet. Then she nodded.

‘I agree with you, you know. Poor people can be soooo proud. There was a time back in school… that time I joined the Feed the Nation people… I don’t know if you remember?’

Like almost everything else about her, I remembered it clearly.

‘When we used to go out every Sunday to feed poor people in the streets. One time, there was this man who came and asked us for his own pack of rice and sachet of water. We gave him. Then he asked us to give him another one for his wife.’

They asked the man to go and bring his wife; they were only supposed to feed those physically present. He explained that his wife was ill. They asked him to imagine what would happen if everybody collected an extra portion for a spouse who was ill. There would be nothing for those who actually came.

As Ola spoke, a huge fly came and took up residence on her left ear. I wanted to stretch out my hand and frighten it away, but for some reason, I did not.

‘Do you know that the man got so angry with us?’ The fly ran away but returned almost immediately. ‘He told us that we were insulting him, that we were calling him a liar. That did we think it was a big deal that we were giving him food?’

Then he flung the rice and water on the floor in front of them and stormed off.

‘Can you imagine?’ she concluded.

She had narrated the story to me the very same day it happened. Still, I shook my head and tut-tut-ed in all the right places as if I were hearing it for the first time.

‘Like I said before, I’m quite surprised that somebody like you is doing 419. You used to be so soft and innocent. How do you cope with swindling all those white people of their money? Don’t you feel guilty?’

I shrugged. The fly left her ear at last.

‘Well, I guess I just don’t think about it too much,’ I replied.

‘But how can you not feel guilty?’

She appeared truly bemused. What was there to be guilty about? Was anybody feeling guilty about the artefacts and natural resources pilfered from Africa over the centuries? My mugus were merely fulfilling their role in the food chain.

‘So how’s married life?’ I asked, changing the topic.

‘Oh, everything is fine,’ she replied quickly. The smile that should have accompanied her voice came some nanoseconds after she had spoken. ‘My husband opened a new headquarters in Enugu, so we moved from Umuahia almost immediately after we got married.’

She paused.

‘The kids and I will be leaving for London by next weekend.’ Her face lit up with excitement; emotion had now returned. ‘We’ll be there for about two weeks and then we’ll go on to America.’

She rhapsodised some more about the forthcoming holiday trip. I asked her what she was doing at present. All the excitement left her voice in a deep sigh.

‘My husband doesn’t want me to work. He wants me to just stay at home and take care of the kids and it’s really frustrating. Everybody has tried talking to him but he’s been adamant.’

Apparently, the man’s decision had taken her by surprise. I could have warned her for free. His actions perfectly fitted the profile of the average, uneducated Igbo entrepreneur.

‘What type of job would you have wanted to do?’ I asked.

‘I’d like to work in a large organisation… Something related to my degree. Or maybe just get one of these bank jobs that everybody seems to be getting these days. Anyway, I’ve already made up my mind. As soon as my youngest child starts school, I’m going to look for a job.’