January 19th, 2026.
9 p.m.
Life has a very fancy way of pulling jokes on every human being, Sometimes, the jokes would be harmless, merely making you roll your eyes in annoyance and move on.
The jokes could also be mild, simply making you chuckle and shake your head at your silliness; like when you forget your car keys on the table and only realize it after you had gotten to your car and rifled through your bag or pockets, swearing and cursing till your brain conveniently suggests that you may have left them back on the kitchen counter while you were preoccupied with stuffing a piece of toast in your mouth and downing orange juice at the same time.
However, life also could play the cruelest joke on you.
From a young age, I had imagined life to be an entity in a bespectacled human form, wearing an elegantly tailored suit with designer shoes to match. He, I always thought of life as a male, would be seated behind a desk carved out of mahogany and shined to perfection, with a cigar in his mouth and his fingers intertwined as he contemplated the various ways he could destroy everything good.
Seven years ago, life decided that I would be his next victim without bothering to obtain my consent. Not that he ever bothered to obtain anyone else's.
I wished that there was a way I could barge into life's office, take the cigar out of his mouth and slap him across the face as hard as I could.
...
January 21st, 2019.
10 p.m.
It was a cold winter night. I was curled up on the couch right by the fireplace watching the embers pop and the firewood crackle, wearing a cropped hoodie and sweatpants with a woolen blanket wrapped around me and warm socks encasing my feet as I sipped from a steaming cup of hot cocoa, regretting my choice of moving to Cambridge from Nigeria with my family to further my education in the prestigious University of Cambridge where I had scored a scholarship to study pharmacy after two years of attempts at gaining one.
If I had been aware of just how bad the cold was in Cambridge during the winter, I would have chosen a way warmer country to study at, but my decision to even study at Cambridge wasn't influenced by how revered the school was as my mother believed, rather, it was influenced by a line from the movie, IT.
"Your hair is winter fire, January embers. My heart burns there too," Ben, one of the kids in the movie, had written on the back of a postcard which he addressed to Beverly, a classmate he had a huge crush on.
Right after watching the scene, my sixteen-year-old brain immediately pushed me to look up universities in European countries where English was their lingua franca and also awarded scholarships.
A year later, I received an email from the University of Cambridge, notifying me that I had been awarded a partly funded scholarship. I can vividly remember how happy I was and how excited my mom and brother were when I informed them. My late father had set up a well-funded savings account for my brother and me. Thankfully, it was enough to fund the thirty percent of the bills I needed to pay, get visas for my mom and my ten-year-old brother and enable us to relocate comfortably.
I wasn't enrolled in any Nigerian university before the scholarship but I had been taking online courses in health education right after my secondary school graduation.
Moving was quite easy emotionally because I had no boyfriend, and all my friends from secondary school were already enrolled in universities across the country so there was no need to rethink my decision because of them.
As a cold wind blew in from a window in the living room that was not properly shut, making me shiver, I silently wished that I had someone or people to hold me back or encourage me to move to a warm country and forget about my IT inspired winter dreams.
Taking another long sip of my hot cocoa, I waited for my mom to call me for dinner as she and my little brother were making a special birthday meal for me to mark my eighteenth birthday. I had begged them not to make such a big deal out of it but as she had always done since my first birthday, she insisted on having a special family dinner. I never knew why we could not celebrate birthdays during the day.
"Francine!" She called. "Dinner is ready!"
"Be there in a second, mom!" I responded, lifting myself from the couch and sipping the last of the cocoa in my mug as I made my way to the dining table which was in the kitchen. Our three-bedroom house on Queen's road was not too lavish but it had a lot of room that provided enough privacy for each of us.
The minute I walked into the kitchen, my mom and brother blew air horns and screamed at the top of their lungs.
"Happy birthday, Francine!" The unexpected noise almost caused me to drop the mug I had in my hands.
Before I could put my heart back in my chest, they engulfed me in a hug. Whilst my mom was peppering my cheeks with kisses, my brother was placing a party hat on my head.
"Thank you, thank you," I said, trying to detach myself from her embrace which she refused to release me from.
"Mom," I said in my best cajoling voice. "If you fail to let me go, then how would I ever enjoy this wonderful birthday you have laid out for me? Biko, hapu m. Release," I said, forced to bring out the Igbo language that was usually reserved for whenever I wanted to curse people out in school without their knowledge.
That seemed to do the trick as she promptly let go and ushered me to a seat at the head of the table which was usually her spot and took a seat beside me once I was seated. I guessed that she allowed me to sit there because I had become a legal adult.
"Eze, I hope you helped mom to do some of the cooking o," I joked as I tousled his short afro.
"Of course! Unlike you, I enjoy cooking. That's my passion, not my purpose," He said smugly, sticking his tongue out at me.
"Look at this small boy," I chuckled. "Don't worry, once I graduate, find work and move into my apartment, I will take you with me so that you can be my chef."
"As long as you pay me handsomely, I will cook whatever you want, whenever you want," He said in a business-like manner that led to me smacking his shoulder.
"Children, please," My mom admonished. "Let us pray and then enjoy this meal that I worked very hard on, okay?"
"Okay, mom," I said with a bright smile.
"Yes, ma," Said Eze.
Just as we were about to pray, there came three sharp knocks on the door which activated my fight or flight as I knew that we were not expecting any visitors.