Nobody moved for a moment.
The hallway light was the kind that flickered faintly at the edges, the old fluorescent type that the building's management had been promising to replace for years. It made everything look slightly overexposed. The woman — Zara — stood at the far end of it with the sleeping boy against her shoulder and her eyes moving between Diane and Adrian with the careful attention of someone who had rehearsed this moment many times and found that the real version was nothing like the rehearsal.
Adrian said her name. Just that, flat and contained, and Diane heard in it a history she didn't have the shape of yet.
"Come inside," Diane said.
Both of them looked at her. Adrian with something unreadable, Zara with something that might have been gratitude and might have been suspicion.
"Come inside," Diane said again, steadier. "It's late and the child is asleep."
Zara came in. She sat on the sofa and arranged the boy carefully against the cushions and he didn't wake, just shifted and resettled with the complete physical trust of a small child who believes the world will hold him. Diane brought a glass of water without asking and set it on the table and then sat in the chair across from her and waited.
Adrian remained standing. Diane noticed that.
"His name is Tobenna," Zara said. "He's twenty-two months." She looked at Adrian. "I know what you're going to say."
"You don't," he said quietly.
"You're going to ask for a test. That's fine. I want the test. That's part of why I'm here." She wrapped her hands around the water glass without drinking from it. "The other part is that someone has been following me for three weeks. A man in a grey car. He's been outside my building in Abuja, outside Tobenna's nursery. Last week he knocked on my neighbour's door and asked questions about me." Her voice was steady but Diane could see the effort it was costing. "I have no one else to go to."
"Who knows about the child," Adrian said.
"Your father. He found out eight months ago. He came to my flat himself, very polite, very calm. He gave me a number to call if I ever needed anything and told me it would be better for everyone if I raised Tobenna quietly and kept his paternity private." Zara's jaw tightened. "I told him I wasn't interested in his management of my son's life. Two weeks later the grey car appeared."
The room was very quiet.
Diane looked at the boy sleeping on her sofa. The jaw, the forehead, the particular way his hands were curled loosely at his sides. She was not imagining the resemblance. It was simply there, plain and uncomplicated, the way certain truths were.
"How long were you together," she asked.
Zara glanced at her, recalibrating slightly. She had probably expected more hostility. "Eight months. It ended two years ago." She paused. "Before Lara."
Diane absorbed this without expression. She was building a timeline in her head and the timeline was becoming increasingly crowded.
"You can stay here tonight," Diane said.
"Diane," Adrian said.
"She has a child and someone is following her." She looked at him. "She stays tonight. We sort the rest in the morning."
He held her gaze for a moment. Then he nodded once and looked at Zara. "I'll have someone on the building overnight. Don't open the door to anyone."
He left without another word and Diane listened to the elevator open and close and then turned back to Zara, who was looking at her with an expression that was harder to read now.
"You're not what I expected," Zara said.
"What did you expect."
"I don't know. Someone who would have made me stand in the hallway." She looked at Tobenna. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," Diane said. "In the morning I'm going to need you to tell me everything you know about Chief Emeka Okonkwo. Every conversation, every visit, everything he said." She stood and went to get a blanket from the cupboard. "Because the man following you is connected to something larger and I think you already know more about it than you realise."
She handed Zara the blanket. Zara took it and looked up at her.
"He mentioned a name once," Zara said. "Chief Emeka. When he came to my flat. He was talking about keeping things clean and he said there was another party involved who would not be reasonable about complications." She hesitated. "He said the name O.A. and then stopped himself like he hadn't meant to say it out loud."
Diane stood very still.
"Did he say anything else. About O.A."
"Just that." Zara looked at her. "Is that important?"
"Go to sleep," Diane said. "I'll explain in the morning."
She went to her bedroom and closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall. Chief Emeka knew the name. Which meant he knew the codicil existed. Which meant the sealed letter had not been destroyed at all.
Someone had it. And Chief Emeka knew who.