Excerpt: The Talk of The Party by Foluso Agbaje

May 28, 2026

Peter had just put the last piece of eba and bitterleaf soup in his mouth when his phone started ringing. He was in the gatehouse, laughing with the other drivers as they washed down their dinner with cold bottles of beer.

“My Madam tell am make e shut up! Na so we take comot for there!” Sheriff, Koko’s driver said.

“You dey lie! That ya Madam wey get small voice,” Adam, Mide’s driver laughed.

“She just wind down her window like this.” Sheriff perched on the edge of the bench and mimicked Madam Koko pressing the button of her car window, with his nose in the air. “You have no right to ask us to pay to park here. You don’t own the land so you can’t create charges out of nowhere. You better let us out before I call the manager of this establishment.”

Adam almost fell on the ﬂoor laughing as Sheriff continued in his mock-shrill voice.

“Sheriff, you suppose be actor. You no serious abeg, make I pick this call,” Peter said, wiping the tears from his eyes.

All of Madam Bukola’s children were around and all of them, except Lala, had given him a tip. There was the usual pre-party excitement draped over the compound like a blanket of fairy lights as the family ate dinner inside the house. The soup the cook had served the drivers had been thick and full of assorted meat, just the way Peter liked it, and the air was still heavy with the spicy smell of the chicken suya being roasted on a ﬁre behind the kitchen.

He picked up the phone with his clean hand, placing his plate on the cement ﬂoor beside him as he leaned towards the wall to hear over the laughter. Blessing’s Madam’s number ﬂashed across the screen. Thinking it was Blessing trying to reach him, he started smiling.

“Blessing, I go call back. I won chop ﬁnish,” he said.

“This is Dami, not Blessing. Where is she?” Blessing’s Madam said.

“Ma?” The shock of hearing Blessing’s Madam’s voice was like being woken up from a deep sleep by a clanging bell.

“Don’t play dumb with me! Acting like you don’t know where she is! You better tell me before I call the police!”

Her anger passed through the phone like an electric current. Still trying to process her quick words, he stood as the impact of what she was saying hit him.

“I said tell me where she is! Or else I’m going to report you both to the police, right now!”

“Ma, I no know where Blessing dey. Please, Ma. She never tell me she don comot your place,” Peter said, unable to speak properly as his thoughts turned soft like the eba in his belly. Blessing didn’t know anyone in London, there was nowhere for her to go.

Her Madam was silent on the other end of the phone as his words sank in. Sheriff and Adam were also quiet now, watching him with wide eyes. Tanko came into the gatehouse and was about to start speaking when they shushed him.

“You’re sure you don’t know where she is?” her Madam asked. The doubt in her voice was even sharper than her anger had been and Peter ﬂopped down on the bench before his legs gave way. If he didn’t know where Blessing was and her Madam didn’t either, then where was she?

“No Ma, I no know. Please Ma, when last you see am?” Her Madam paused again. “Well, I’m in Lagos now. My mother-in-law said she went out in the morning and never came back.”

Peter was struggling to follow her words, and not just because of her accent. She and Madam Koko sounded alike, but this Madam Dami’s words came out so fast and loud like bullets from the old-fashioned guns the guards in his village carried.

“Abeg, sorry Ma, please I no understand,” Peter asked, hating how his voice shook.

Beside him, Adam patted his back. The other men in the gatehouse were watching the scene with unconcealed curiosity and pity.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to be of much help to me,” Madam Dami sighed. “I’ll have to call the police in London. I’ll let you know what they say.”

The phone cut and it was as if Peter had been thrown off Third Mainland Bridge in the middle of the night and left to drown. He immediately tried Blessing’s phone. Three times back to back and each time the sound of the phone ringing out was the only noise in the gatehouse.

Blessing’s Madam did not know where Blessing was, and neither did he. Peter was aware that the other men were saying words to him, but they were not words he could hear. Whatever they were saying was of no use to him. Instead, Baba Shiro’s face came to him like a ﬂashlight in the dark. Peter had not been to see him since the time that coughing disease had almost killed him. But he knew he could trust Baba Shiro: he was a healer and a wise man. He would have the answers the police in London could never have about his missing daughter.

“I gats go,” he said, ignoring the protests of the other drivers around him as he ran from the compound.

He walked down Bourdillon Road to the Falomo roundabout on autopilot, barely seeing the other commuters heading to their Friday-night destinations. Somebody under the bridge was roasting corn and playing loud music and he pushed past a group of boys dancing in the shadows of the ﬁre rising from the barbecue pit. As he stopped to hail a bus, he almost collided with a man carrying a large sack of empty bottles, his ﬂip-ﬂops slapping the pavement louder than the curses he threw at Peter.

The bus Peter hopped on sped off and he tried to concentrate as he gripped the back of the seat in front of him. As they drove across the bridge towards Marina, Blessing’s Madam’s angry voice asking, “Where is she?” kept playing on a reel in his head, blocking the surge of despondent speculation threatening to break into his consciousness. He tried Blessing’s phone again and this time it was switched off.

The bus dropped him near Apongbon Street and, still numb from shock, he moved quickly past the women sitting under umbrellas selling indomie and egg, the men selling pineapple slices wrapped in clingﬁlm and the area boys playing football, down the path to Baba Shiro’s house. As Peter turned into the dark street, he saw there was already a small crowd of people waiting in front of Baba Shiro’s narrow front door. The well of dismay building within him threatened to brim over as he joined the queue, ignoring the stink of the decomposing contents in the gutter beside him. The group of two men and a teenage girl who had been standing right in front of the house walked in and Peter watched them, hoping he wouldn’t have to wait too long.

He ﬁnally gave way to the disparate thoughts swirling around his head. The one that made it to the front of his mind and settled like a thrown stone was the memory of the ﬁrst time he had given Blessing the old toys from the Obaniles. She was just over ﬁve years old and couldn’t understand how they had so many toys they did not want, most of them still fairly new. But each time Peter came home with a bag of gifts, Blessing had been pleasantly surprised, marvelling at the generosity of these children who she had never met that seemed to have more than enough for themselves.

She had always been such a happy, grateful child. Always smiling. She never hid anything from him, so why had she disappeared without a trace? Surely, she would have told him if she was leaving her employer. What if she was taken, kidnapped for rituals or worse? Did things like that happen in London? He wished he had someone he could ask. He would have asked Madam Bukola, but the night before her big party would be terrible timing and he knew more than anyone else that rich people did not like to be disturbed with other people’s problems.

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