By Kehinde Fadipe

Amaka scrolled down the shopping app, her mouth moistening and heart rate quickening. The heels were six inches high and a rich shade of plum, with Roman cords that wove up the model’s foot, tied around the ankle and dropped down in delicious tassels. They were exquisite, sexy and completely impractical, but she visualised herself in them anyway and loved what she saw.

She glanced up at Rohit, whose face was half-blocked by both their computers. He was immersed in his work, munching on a granola bar as he typed, depositing millions of microbes into the cracks of his keyboard. Many of the staff on the credit risk floor of the bank were doing the same.

She dropped the heels into her basket; with her credit card details already stored, the transaction was over in seconds. The climax came with the confirmation email and thumbnail of her purchase; delight coursed through her body as she enlarged the image with her thumb and forefinger. Below it, though, was the cold truth of the money she’d spent: Charges will appear on your credit card statement.

The quiver of pleasure ebbed away. Amaka closed all her phone tabs and deleted her search history, a pointless and unconvincing action. The ‘thirty per cent’, ‘forty per cent’ and ‘sixty per cent’ discounts below each item had initially beckoned her closer; now they looked like little stamps of failure.

Next, she batted away her mother’s emails: an alarmist Daily Mail article about the cancer-causing ingredients hiding in most beauty products, a daily Catholic devotion and meditation, the details of their virtual Family Meeting in two weeks’ time. Seeing Ugo’s name, who had brought her up to never waste anything, to use and reuse, and who kept the protective plastic wrapping on everything she bought, filled her with guilt. It threatened to bring back all those memories of scarcity, when the unpredictability of their lives depended completely on her father’s money and whether it came through or not. One week, mother and daughter would squeeze into a cramped, doorless Danfo bus to get to school and work; the next, they could afford to collect Ugo’s freshly serviced Volvo from the garage and inhale its pine-scented air freshener and foamy leather polish. One week, Amaka would be treated to pizza and ice cream on Victoria Island, the moneyed part of Lagos with beaches, shopping plazas, and British and American schools; the next, Ugo would have to fan a charcoal stove to make their pancakes in their Surulere building complex, opening the kitchen door to release the itchy fumes. She and Ugo had to ration luxuries carefully and always made sure they had a constant supply of candles and matchsticks kept in the exact same place so they could move easily in the dark when the electricity was cut off. They’d fill every bucket and spare container with water, ready for the moment when they turned on the tap and nothing came out.

Something white blurred between her eyes and bounced off her forehead. A scrunched-up paper ball dropped into her lap.

‘Is your head OK?’

She glared at Rohit before following his eyeline to see their boss approaching.

‘Morning.’ Amaka flashed a smile at Indira, tucking her phone away.

‘Morning’, Rohit echoed.

‘Morning.’ Indira leaned on the partition, barely glancing at Rohit. ‘Have you got the numbers for the Toulouse report?’

‘Nearly there. I’ll get them to you today’, Amaka replied.

‘Good girl.’ Indira tapped the wall and crossed over to her office.

‘Good girl’, Rohit joked. ‘Are you her poodle now?’

‘And why not? I bet her poodle eats very well’, Amaka smirked. ‘And wears Louis Vuitton and gets regular manicures.’

She clicked the file open for the French mining company she’d been researching. It had a poor track record and its credit rating had been slipping for years. It was true that, although she’d been working just over a year for Indira, she’d been given more responsibility and autonomy than was normal for a credit risk officer of her experience, especially moving from the bank’s Lagos branch. Many of the other officers, including Rohit, had worked in banks in London, New York and Sydney before landing a coveted spot in Singapore, but on Indira’s team, Amaka was rewarded for her aptitude with financial ratios and statistics, not to mention her borderline obsessive research of companies applying for bank loans.

Rohit rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not sure who loves who more: you or her. Do you think she knows that we’ve been... ?’

‘No, and it needs to stay that way, please’, Amaka warned.

‘Everybody knows...’ He lowered his voice, teasing. ‘She’s not blind.’

‘That’s how they’ll pass me up for a promotion, because I was distracted. I came to Singapore to make money, not to find a husband.’

Rohit raised his eyebrows, amused. ‘Husband?’

‘You know what I mean’, Amaka said, suddenly flustered. ‘Husband, boyfriend. Same difference.’

‘So if I propose to you right now, you’ll say no?’

‘Can you stop? I need to work’, she retorted.

‘Everyone… ’ Rohit stood up, arms stretched wide as if to make an announcement.

‘Sit down! Rohit!’ Amaka hissed before doubling over in laughter.

He sat down, covering his mouth and pointing at her. ‘Your face!’

She kissed her teeth and tried to ignore him.

‘It’s OK’, he said when he’d stopped laughing and could speak again. ‘We’ve been dating for six months – I’m not crazy. Besides, my parents would kill me if I proposed to someone they’d never met.’

Amaka’s smile wavered. Her nerves returned whenever Rohit mentioned his family. Added to her usual relationship hesitancy was her certainty that few Indian families would welcome her with open arms.

‘That’s the first time you’ve smiled today’, Rohit said, not catching her dip in mood.

‘Really?’ She kept working.

‘Thinking about your family call next week?’ Rohit turned serious.

Amaka bristled. She regretted opening up about the family dispute over her father’s estate since his heart attack two years before. During a vulnerable moment late at night, her head on his chest and their calves entwined, she’d let him coax some of the details out of her, but the next morning, she’d felt resentful and spiky, while he thought the conversation had brought them closer. It was as though she’d exposed a tender bruise and let him knead it; every time his hand reached for it now, she wanted to smack it away. Her yearning to be part of her father’s family, to take his last name and be publicly recognised as the oldest of his four children, was a secret part of her no man before Rohit had ever been allowed to see.

‘What are you talking about?’ Amaka looked up. ‘I’ve been working.’

‘You just . . . don’t look very happy today. I thought maybe...’

‘I’m just tired, chill. And stop throwing stuff at me, it’s so Saved by the Bell.’

He laughed off her retort and wagged his finger. ‘Now you’re showing your age. Shouldn’t it be “so O.C.”?’

‘My friend, I have work to do’, Amaka chuckled, sending a document to the printer and standing up. ‘I know you spent your time in New York wanking off to that stick-figure Marisa-what’s-her-name...’

‘Amaka, that is an inappropriate workplace comment...’

Smoothing her fitted knitted dress down, she went to collect her document from the printer. When she returned, Rohit was speaking into his headset and staring at his screen, so she was able to watch him undetected.

She had never expected to meet anyone in Asia, let alone a Thailand-born Indian man. When she’d first moved to Singapore, she’d immediately noticed the absence of male interest. She was the exact opposite of whatever Asian men were attracted to, and white men only seemed to notice her after they’d had a few drinks. The only real attention she’d received since moving was from a married Nigerian pastor on a business trip from Malaysia, and that interaction had been more entertaining than offensive, a source of laughter for her and Dara weeks later.

For the first few months in Singapore, she’d felt invisible – and it had been beautiful. She’d been desperate to escape the entitled idiots in Lagos, with their wandering hands and loose morals who saw any single girl as fair game, many of whom had been in their element during her short trip back to Lagos over Christmas. Worst of all, her mother’s friends constantly judged her, warning her that there were five girls for every eligible man in Lagos, so she needed to conduct herself carefully to attract a good one. She’d left all that behind and stepped into... nothing. Zero. Bliss.

It hadn’t taken long, though, for the anonymity to turn to insecurity. This was probably why she’d been open to Rohit in the first place.

When they’d first met, the only things they’d had in common were their jobs and the fact that they’d both been international students in the US (public college for her, Columbia for him). Their work friendship had changed from easy banter to something more charged when she’d realised that his questions about her outfits, weave changes and Wendy Williams obsession were actually him flirting. They’d kept it playful until one night, in a taxi from a dinner Indira had held in her colonial black-and-white house, he’d kissed her and she’d kissed him back. He was easy to be with, gave her plenty of space and was a fantastic person to have something light and fun and obviously short-term with. He was a good listener, too, with his cute, American-tinged accent courtesy of the international school he’d attended in Bangkok. Her sharp barbs – which had turned off so many guys in Lagos – just seemed to amuse him.

Rohit had made it clear that he wanted to have a family and that he wanted children young. They were still in the early stages of their relationship, but was dating really this easy? Did men just say what they wanted? How could she be certain it was her he wanted and not just someone for the next stage in life? One thing Amaka knew for damn sure was that she’d make a terrible wife and mother: she was selfish and vain, and the more serious their situationship became, the worse it made her feel.

Her mother’s voice was never far from her ear, pressuring her to settle down with ‘the right kind’ of man – someone dependable and trustworthy and definitely not like her father. Though Ugo had never said a bad word about Chukwu, beneath her loyalty was the constant, subtle advice to make better decisions than she had, to not derail her life or bring shame on her family, like ending up a single mother in a tiny flat on the wrong side of town.

The real problem was not the unspoken fear of how Ugo would respond to Amaka getting serious with someone from India, but the warmth that had begun to spread in her when she was near him, the yearning to fold wordlessly into him, to blurt something stupid or reveal something intimate. More and more, she had to remind herself of who she was and who she wasn’t. She wasn’t a weak, lovesick twenty-year-old or a pathetic heroine from a mushy Hollywood movie, and she definitely wasn’t about to give power over her emotions to a man. She was an Igbo girl; as her mother constantly reminded her, she may have grown up in Lagos surrounded by Yorubas, but she was from the East. She didn’t have time for nonsense.

Rohit took off his headphones. ‘So it turns out I was right about K. W. Holding’s mitigation risks. You remember the company in the Philippines?’

‘I’m busy, Rohit.’ Amaka avoided his eyes.

Excerpt from “In Such Tremendous Heat” copyright © 2023 by Kehinde Fadipe. Published by Dialogue Books.

About the book: Basking in Singapore’s non-stop sunshine, low tax rate and crocodile Birkins on every other arm, Dara, Amaka, and Lillian are living the dream – until their carefully constructed lives are upended by a handsome and mysterious new arrival . . .

Dara, a workaholic lawyer, is on the brink of partnership at her firm when Lani, a new hire from Geneva, is assigned to work on what should have been her career-making case. Amaka, a sharp-tongued banker, is in the midst of a painful family breakdown. An instant attraction to Lani, despite her lovely boyfriend, jeopardizes her last shred of stability. Lillian, a piano-prodigy-turned-housewife, is desperately trying to remain in Singapore after her marriage comes to a messy end. A chance encounter with Lani-a man who is inexplicably, impossibly, the spitting image of her late father-triggers a grief she’s spent a lifetime suppressing. Forced to confront the ghosts of their pasts, Dara, Amaka, and Lillian soon learn that unfinished history can follow you anywhere – even to Singapore.

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Kehinde Fadipe is a RADA-trained actress with stage and screen credits including Misfits (E4), Of Mary (Lesata Productions) and Ruined (Almeida Theatre). She began her writing career in the Royal Court Theatre's Young Writer's Programme while studying English at UCL and she has written and produced a short film, Spirit Children, starring Pippa Bennett Warner and Jenny Jules, which was screened in two international short film festivals. In Such Tremendous Heat is her first novel.

You can read our interview with Kehinde Fadipe here