A Love Like Ours

In A Love Like Ours, Fred and his pregnant wife Ifunanya live in Lagos, where Fred is jobless and Ifunanya works, telling him she cannot sit still while he begs her to rest. She hides her pain until one night he finds her crying on the stairs, saying something like needles is poking her stomach. Her promotion and raise make Fred bitter, and he sees himself as a charity case, so their home fills with arguments about money and his joblessness. The stress brings on a miscarriage, Ifunanya blames herself, and Fred holds her, but the comfort does not last. Fred sees a message from Dickson, a male colleague, asking if Ifunanya got home safely, and he accuses her of acting like an unmarried woman. Their nights turn cold, Fred stays out late drunk, and Ifunanya threatens to throw him out. When she needs the car for an important presentation, Fred has already sold it, so she is fired. She comes home early and finds him in bed with another woman. Fred taunts her, says the car sale was only the beginning, and when she blames him for stressing her into a miscarriage, he pushes her down and presses a towel over her face until she is motionless. He packs a suitcase and flees. Ifunanya survives, though injured and heartbroken. She tells a close friend that Fred emptied their joint bank account, took her ATM cards, and left her jobless with no way to pay for the house. At thirty-five she says she is broken and heading for divorce court, praying she never meets Fred again because one of them would die. Her friend says she will bounce back, but Ifunanya is too angry and hurt to listen, saying there is nothing left to process.