OUR LANDLADY ALWAYS SNEAKS INTO MY FATHER’S ROOM EVERY MONTHS UNTIL I CAUGHT THEM
Episode 1

It started with footsteps—soft ones. Like whispers walking. Every last Sunday of the month, I would hear them. Sometimes around 11 p.m., sometimes closer to midnight. They’d creep across the corridor of our tiny two-bedroom apartment in Mushin, always stopping at my father’s door. At first, I thought I was dreaming. But the creaking hinges, the muffled sounds, and the gentle click of the door said otherwise. Our landlady, Mama Eunice, was a short, middle-aged widow with a gap tooth and a loud voice that made walls vibrate. She lived in the main building in front of our compound, and we rented the boys’ quarters at the back. She was the kind of woman who could slap your light bill out of your hand if it was unpaid. But to me, she always smiled—until I noticed the pattern.

My father was a quiet man. Since my mother died four years ago, he hadn’t brought home a woman, nor had he ever spoken to me about moving on. He worked two jobs to send me to school and feed us. He never even let me skip church. But something changed about him after those Sundays. He started acting nervous every month, cleaning his room, spraying too much air freshener, and asking me to sleep early. I was seventeen, but not stupid.

One night, I decided to stay up. I placed a chair near the curtain behind our window and left the lights off. I waited. At exactly 11:42 p.m., I saw a figure sneaking past the generator shed. It was her—Mama Eunice—wearing a long wrapper and holding a small purse. She didn’t knock. She just opened the door and slid in like she belonged there.

I froze.

What was a woman her age doing in my father’s room at night—again? That night, I didn’t sleep. I watched the door until it opened again around 3 a.m. She slipped out, adjusted her scarf, and vanished into the shadows.

My chest tightened. My head buzzed.

The next morning, my father acted like nothing happened. He greeted me, served tea, and smiled like usual. But I saw the lipstick stain on his collar.

I didn’t say anything for two more months. I watched the pattern repeat. The same day, the same time, the same strange behavior. And the worst part? After each visit, something in our house would suddenly “improve”—a new standing fan, a new curtain in the parlour, or bags of foodstuff appearing out of nowhere. That’s when I started to feel the weight of silence.

One night, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I waited again. But this time, I held my phone. I recorded the door. I recorded her going in. And when I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I knocked hard on my father’s door and barged in.

What I saw…

My landlady in a loose wrapper, sitting on the bed, startled like a thief. My father stood frozen, shirtless, eyes wide like a man caught in a spell.

“Daddy?” I whispered. “Why her?”

He stammered. She picked up her purse and tried to rush past me.

“You said you were grieving mum,” I said, voice shaking. “But you’ve been doing this for how long?”

My father said nothing. His eyes filled with something I couldn’t read—shame or helplessness.

“I didn’t want to lose the house,” he finally whispered. “We’re behind on rent. And she—she offered… this.”

I turned to the landlady, stunned. “So you’ve been collecting rent with your body?”

She adjusted her scarf and hissed. “You think your father is a child? He’s a man. A lonely one. And you—too small to understand how this world works.”

But I wasn’t too small anymore. Not after that night.

And what happened next… changed everything.

After that night, the silence between my father and me stretched like a wound that refused to heal.

He barely looked me in the eye, and I stopped eating his food.

The kitchen became a battlefield of clinking spoons and unsaid words.

Mama Eunice no longer smiled when she passed me in the compound.

In fact, she stopped greeting entirely.

The air around the house grew heavier, like we were all sharing a secret too toxic to breathe.

I went to school every day with questions eating my heart. Was my father really trading his dignity for our survival?

Was I supposed to pretend that my mother’s memory didn’t exist?

That the same man who read Psalms every Sunday night was lying with a woman who could barely spell “mercy”?

My grades dropped. My friends noticed I was quieter.

But how could I explain that I saw the woman who used to flog me for leaving the tap running, sitting on my dead mother’s side of the bed like she owned it? Days passed. Weeks.

One evening after school, I walked home to find a bag of rice, a new stove, and an envelope of cash on the dining table. I didn’t touch any of it. “Where did this come from?” I asked without raising my voice.

My father stood by the window, back turned. “God provides,” he said.

I almost laughed. “God, or Mama Eunice?” He flinched. “It’s not what you think—” “Then tell me what it is!” I snapped. “Is this rent? Is this love? Is this how men survive now?” He turned slowly, eyes bloodshot. “I’ve been trying, Chika.

I’ve tried every job, every hustle. I’m still owing rent. She said I could pay in… installments.” “With your body?” I asked bitterly. “With your silence?”

He sat down, burying his head in his hands. That’s when I saw it—the guilt had eaten him alive.

He wasn’t proud of it. He was drowning in it. But drowning quietly, as though shame should be kept like laundry—hidden and wet.

Later that night, I heard her coming again. I didn’t wait. I walked out into the corridor, stood in her path. “You’re not going in,”

I said firmly. She blinked at me like I was an insect. “Who are you to tell me what to do in my own compound?” “Then evict us,” I said. “If rent is why you’re sleeping with my father, then throw us out.

If not, leave him alone.” She looked me up and down with disgust. “Your father is not a child.

You should thank me he’s still a man.” “No,” I replied. “I should thank you for showing me how wicked survival can look in a woman’s body.” That night, she didn’t enter his room.

The next morning, she called in two boys and ordered them to remove our water pipe.

She doubled our rent notice and gave my father seven days to pay or pack.

I knew she was punishing us. But something in my father had also changed.

For the first time in weeks, he wore his shirt with buttons done properly.

He stood up straight, looked her in the face, and said, “You can’t use me anymore.” “You think pride can pay rent?” she spat. “No,” he answered, “but I’ll rather sleep under a bridge than keep dying in my own house.”

That day, he called his friend from church and got a temporary space for us in Agege.

We packed what we could and left before sunset.

The road ahead was uncertain. But it was free.

And for the first time in a long while, I saw my father walk like a man—not a beggar of affection or mercy, but a man learning to fight for his soul again.

We moved out of Mama Eunice’s compound with nothing but shame and plastic bags.

No van. No friends to help us carry our past. Just my father, me, two bags of clothes, and the heavy silence of betrayal.

The new place in Agege was a single room with cracked walls and no fan, but to us, it was freedom. I remember sitting on the bare floor that first night, sweating from heat, but feeling strangely… safe.

There was no scent of perfume lingering where it shouldn’t. No nighttime creaks. No fake smiles.

Just me and my father, trying to piece ourselves together.

The following weeks were hard. My father picked up carpentry work again.

He’d work under the sun and come home sore, but never bitter.

I, too, found strength. I sold sachet water after school, then tutored some of the younger kids in our new compound.

For the first time, we were surviving on our own terms.

And we were healing.

Until one afternoon, two months later, my father returned home with a letter—handwritten, folded, and smelling faintly of powder.

I opened it. It was from Mama Eunice. “I’m sorry,” it read. “I let desperation make me ugly.

I should have never dragged your father into my loneliness. Tell him he deserves better than what I offered.”

I stared at the letter for a long time.

Not out of forgiveness, but because it proved that some people carry their own guilt like scars no one sees.

I burned the letter. We never replied. Two years passed.

I graduated secondary school with distinctions.

My father had built a name for himself as one of the most trusted local furniture makers.

Life wasn’t perfect, but it was honest. One Sunday evening, as we returned from church, we passed by our old compound.

It had changed. New paint. A new gate.

But Mama Eunice stood outside with her walking stick, thinner now, looking older than time itself.

She saw us. Smiled faintly. “You two look happy,” she said. My father nodded. “We are.” And we walked on.

That night, I hugged him tightly.

Not because of where we were coming from, but because of who we had become. A father and daughter who had learned that dignity is louder than shame.

That no matter how deep you fall, you can still rise—together.

THE END