One day I returned from school and discovered that we had a visitor. But this visitor was unlike the others we’ve seen so far.

This guest seemed to be everywhere…in the kitchen, living room, even in the bedroom of the head of the house.

Who could she be? Then I heard the teenager call her name :

“Diana! Your stew is burning!“

That was when I knew the long awaited visitor had arrived. I was curious to see how she looked. She was talkative. It was so obvious even before I set eyes on her.

I pretended I needed a glass of water from the fridge in the kitchen and in going for it, I bumped into her.

“Hi! Good afternoon!” I greeted, smiling.

She wasn’t bad looking. A bit fair, a little skinny. Not too skinny. She seemed to wear a permanent smile.

“Hello! You’re the one writing BECE?” she asked.

They had told her about me.

“Yes.” I quickly confirmed, wondering what else they told her about me. Whatever she might have heard, she didn’t seem judgmental.

“Patrick, right?” she asked.
“Yes.” I replied, adding, “And you are Diana?”

“How did you know my name? “ she inquired, curious.

” Oh, Nelly talks a lot about you. She told me you’ll soon join us from the north. ” I explained.

She seemed pleased that I already knew something about her.

Nelly stood by, smiling. Now I no more thought of Nelly as “the teenager”. I now easily remember her name, which was difficult for me at first. She was surprised to see me chatting and chatting for minutes with Diana. We were heading into an hour. She rarely saw me talking. She was happy, intruding our conversations every now and then with, “Today dierrr, you’re talking saaaaa”.

I only smiled and said nothing to Nelly’s intrusions.

Chatting with Diana was nice. It was sweet. Especially after months of being in that house, having no one to hold meaningful conversations with.

We even ate together in the same plate. She was five years older than me, but we talked like age mates. I was controversial and she was argumentative. And so, the talks went on and on without any regard for the passing time.

Everyday after school, I was now in a hurry to come home. I had found a talking parrot to help me kill boredom in my new madhouse. I no longer felt traumatized when I thought of coming home.

I noticed the priest was watching me closely, though he acted pleased to see me open up for the first time in that house.

But I could sense his suspicion and watching eye. I was getting closer and closer to his sister and he began sniffing me from a distance to assure himself I didn’t smell of lust.

Truth was I had eyes only for my final exams, so engrossed in daydreaming and fantasizing about passing the exams with flying colours that I saw no Diana.

But Diana was determined to put herself within view. And I began noticing the efforts.

It began with her mistakenly bumping into the bathroom one day while I was taking my bath.

“Oh! Sorry! I didn’t know you were there.” She hastily apologized.

It sounded sincere to my naive ears, so I accepted the apology.

But similar mistakes were being committed at an alarming rate, and if my radars were initially sleeping, they were now fully awake, alert, calculating.

The offer was tempting… Act as if I didn’t know what she was up to and play along? Wasn’t a bad idea.

But the priest, he’s got eyes all over the house even when he was away, always looking for an opportunity to pounce. And I wasn’t going to be his prey. He might be a priest, but he wasn’t going to prey on me.

I was in a fix. Diana was in charge of food in the house now. The priest’s wife was pregnant and didn’t have energy for energetic activities like cooking. She had sort of retired from most of the house chores.

If I fell into the bad books of Diana, she was sure to take her revenge on the size of my meals and the frequency of my access to them.

I had to think, and fast!

But there were too many things to think about at a time. We had mock exams at school that I needed time to prepare for. We had an after school excursion that I was in charging of marketing and keeping records of payments for. I was a prefect at school and an incident that occurred between a teacher and a student during one of our classes needed clarifications and I had to write a report for the headmaster.

These were just a few of the many many things my little head had to process at once and produce results.

One day, I came out fresh from the bathroom, a towel over my waist. And when I entered my room, there was Diana, seated comfortably on the desk I sat to study.

The question I felt like asking her was, “What do you want?”

But people rarely give direct answers when asked direct questions. I had to figure out an indirect approach to getting the true answer out of her.

And I had a brilliant idea….