She texted only at night to wish me a good night. During the day, she would disappear. She would not even answer the messages I sent her. At night, around 10 p.m., when I was about to sleep, she would text to ask how my day was and then wish me a good night, saying, “Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.”

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I asked one evening if she was a vampire who only came out at night. She sent laughing emojis—more of them—and said she was working at a place where phones were not allowed until they closed, which was why she disappeared.

We had met at an event in Sunyani, where neither of us lived. She told me she lived in Accra, and I told her I lived in Kumasi. We exchanged numbers and became friends. In my mind, I was hoping something good would come out of it, something more than friendship because I liked her the moment I saw her.

One night, when she appeared to wish me good night, I seized the moment on the phone. “I know you’re tired and want to sleep, but can we talk for a while? There have been questions I’ve been meaning to ask.”

I asked if she was dating. She replied, “Oh no, as a man, you don’t have to ask a lady this question. You just go ahead and say what’s on your heart and let the lady tell you whether she’s dating or not. So if I’m dating, I wouldn’t know what’s on your heart for me. Say it.”

I proposed that night, while all she said was, “Awwww.” I insisted I wanted an answer. She told me the night was far spent, so we should use the next night to talk about it. She came very early that day, around 6 p.m. We talked about my proposal, and she said she had been married before, but if I didn’t have a problem with that, then she was also fine.

She said she had been married for over four years without seeing her husband. They got married, and the man traveled abroad. She didn’t see him again until she decided four years was all she could waste in the name of marriage.

We started our relationship that very day. It was tough because of her work. We dated for almost four months before we met again physically. She traveled to Kumasi to visit. She spent a week with me. It was during that week that I concluded she was indeed a woman I could share space with for many years.

She wasn’t boring. She had creative ways to bring fun into the house. She was very clingy too, just the way I wanted my partner to be. She wouldn’t sit at the west while I sat at the east. She would move to my side, place her head on my lap, and we would talk.

We dated this way for about six months when she got pregnant. She was with me when she did the test. She panicked when she saw the result. I was calm. I knew this might happen along the way, the way we couldn’t stay away from each other when we were together. I asked her what next, and she asked me, “Do you want to be a dad when you’re not married?”

I answered, “We didn’t plan for it to come, but it came, so we can also do other things we didn’t plan just to accommodate the pregnancy.”

She said she wasn’t ready to carry a pregnancy at her age when she was not married. She also didn’t want to rush me into marriage because she got pregnant. When I asked about the way forward, she told me to leave everything to her. She would handle it.

We were still talking about the pregnancy days later, begging her not to let it go when she asked, “You’re still talking about something that is long gone? Let’s think about the next one when we are finally married. This one is already gone.”

I was shocked at the ease and swiftness with which she let it go. All this while, I didn’t know where she lived in Accra. She was the one coming to visit all the time. She said her job wouldn’t allow it, and when she had the time, she wanted to move from Accra to a quiet place, so she preferred coming to my place instead.

I insisted on seeing where she lived, and she finally agreed that I could visit. I spent two evenings with her. She didn’t introduce me to anyone. She kept me inside until the day I was leaving because she didn’t like to go out. We could have spent a week together, but she insisted she wanted to use the rest of her off period to visit her parents to talk about me.

A little over a year into dating, I wanted more than we had, but she didn’t seem to want any progress. When I insisted, she started withdrawing from me. She would miss my calls and not respond. She no longer appeared at night to say good night. When I asked what the problem was, she said it was busy schedules from work that were getting in the way. One day, I called her phone, and it was off. All day, her phone was unresponsive. I thought she had blocked me, so I used another number. It was the same thing.

This continued for a week. I couldn’t take it any longer, so I decided to travel to Accra and look for her. I knocked on her door several times and tried to look through the window to see if I could spot someone inside. Then a lady came out of her room to see me. She said, “She’s no longer here. She traveled.”

I saw that lady during my two-night stay there. She saw me too, but only on the day I arrived. I asked where she had traveled to, and she said, “Her husband came for her. She’s in Canada now.”

My heart started beating from left to left as if I’d lost the right side of my heart. It didn’t beat. “Husband?” I asked, with a mixture of pain and curiosity.

She wasn’t a divorcee like she told me. She was actually married and even had a child with her husband. Her husband came for the child first, and just a year later, came for her too. When we were busy dating and making plans, she was only using me to while away time, waiting for her husband to take her away.

I had wanted to stay the night, but heartbreak wouldn’t let me think straight, so I went back to the station, bought a bus ticket, and sat in the bus with my broken heart sitting next to me, almost smiling. “Oh, I get it now. No wonder she got rid of the pregnancy quickly as if it was nothing.”

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So many thoughts, but what could I do or who would I explain my story to? It was at that moment I realized I knew very little about the woman I thought I was going to marry. I didn’t know any of her friends, didn’t know her parents, and not even where she worked.

It’s my fault I got played, but I know one day I will meet her somewhere out of the blue. She will have so many questions to answer.

—A.B  

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