My boyfriend, Agyeman, traveled to Accra to start all over again. We had been dating while living in the same town. I got a good job offer in Accra and moved there for work, leaving him behind. We maintained the relationship. I went back to visit often, and he also came to visit me. He was working at one of the government agencies and, according to him, wasn’t experiencing any career growth.

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He visited one day, and we talked about the possibility of him moving to Accra to work. Accra had been good to me. Aside from my regular job, I had started a small shop in front of the house I lived in. It was small at first, but two years later, it had become the go-to shop in the community. I spoke to the landlord, and he allowed me to break into the adjacent room and expand the shop. So I was doing very well.

When he discussed moving to Accra to start over, I agreed. The plan was for him to come, find a job, rent his own place, and later we would get married. He was convinced he would have a better chance of pursuing job opportunities once he was in Accra. I opened my doors to him and let him share my space with me.

When he arrived, I put him in charge of the shop. He supervised the lady who worked there and made sure everything was properly accounted for. He did the job so well that I realized the salesgirl had been stealing from me. We made almost twice the sales we had made before, and we no longer had issues with stock going missing or being unaccounted for.

For close to six months, he managed the shop without looking for a job.

I was worried. That wasn’t the plan, but he told me not to worry because he was on the lookout for a major opportunity. Aside from taking care of the shop, he cleaned, washed, cooked, and served meals. He genuinely made my life easier, so I suggested that we should get married.

After all, we were already living together, and everything was going well.

He told me he wouldn’t want me to be the one paying for our wedding. He was the man and wanted to do what a man should do.

So we agreed that I would pay him a salary and also give him a commission based on the shop’s profits. That way, he could earn his own money and run his life the way he wanted.

To be honest, ever since he came and the shop started doing well, I took my attention off the business and left everything in his hands.

He handled the restocking, bank deposits, payments to suppliers, paid himself, and balanced the accounts. I accepted whatever figures he presented as the gospel truth.

Two years after living with me, I told him we should get married, become partners in the business, and look at expanding it. It could even become his specialty so that, later on, I could resign from my job and join him full-time.

He opposed the idea of marriage and asked me to give him one more year and see what opportunities might come up.

One evening, I received a call from a lady who used to be one of my suppliers. She told me I owed her GHC20,000 worth of stock, and the debt had been outstanding for over three months.

“Is my husband aware?” I asked.

She replied, “He’s the reason I’m calling you because he no longer picks up my calls.”

Not long afterward, another supplier who had been very supportive when I started the business also called. He complained bitterly that I was no longer paying him and was avoiding conversations about the debt.

He advised me, “I think you should come back and pay attention to the business. Things are no longer the same.”

When I confronted Agyeman, he brushed their concerns aside, saying they were simply being impatient.

I trusted him until the salesgirl told me one day that she wanted to resign.

I asked what the problem was, and she said she hadn’t been paid for two months. Sometimes she had to beg Agyeman for several days before receiving even half of her salary.

Then she made a statement that jolted me awake.

“All this started when you began opening the other branch. All his attention has gone there.”

Another branch? Where? How? When?

I checked the company’s account, and there was almost nothing left in it. My heart started pounding as though I had just run a marathon. I confronted him. “What’s going on? The account is almost empty. We owe suppliers, and we can’t even afford to pay the shop attendant. What’s happening?”

He gave me what sounded like a flawless explanation of where the money had gone. He said he had recently paid a supplier a large amount because the supplier’s goods were cheaper.

I still didn’t mention the “new branch.” Whenever I called the salesgirl, she would tell me he wasn’t around. He had also stopped cooking and cleaning. That didn’t bother me in itself, but it confirmed that something had changed. I decided to follow his movements.

There was an okada rider I often worked with, so I asked him to keep an eye on Agyeman. He was the one who discovered the shop and took me there. Agyeman had opened a shop bigger than mine. He had brought his elder sister to manage it, rented a place for her to stay, and even bought a motorbike for deliveries and errands.

I couldn’t stop talking to myself. My heart raced, and my mind became so noisy that it felt like I was standing in the middle of a busy marketplace. The very next day, he came to meet me at the shop. I was already seated there, waiting for him. The moment he saw me, he started shaking and almost lost his balance. “So this is what you’ve been doing with my money, right? You lived with me, yet you were ready to bring me down and use me as firewood, right?”

He couldn’t finish explaining himself before the police came and picked him up. There was nothing left in my account, yet I still owed suppliers. He had even taken a loan in the name of the business without my knowledge. I couldn’t even begin to calculate how much I had lost. I had virtually nothing left in my name.

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

I’ve since taken back control of my shop and also recovered every cedi that was in his account. It has taken me more than two years to recover, but by God’s grace, I didn’t sink. What he did eventually gave me the opportunity to expand, though it was a painful kind of expansion.

I’ve resigned from my job and now run the business full-time. As for him, ask what he’s currently doing back in our hometown. He’s a betting ambassador and a drinking master. The last time I saw him, I could barely recognize him. We could have built a future together, but he chose a selfish path that ended up destroying his own life.

—Yayra 

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