By Sunmola Olowookere

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A bizarre friendship is brewing in our neighbourhood. Our elders will say ” what kind of friendship can exist between a dog and a Leopard’s cub?” Such relationship is likely to end up a disaster.
The dog must have an ulterior motive as it is not known to be cordial with the class of Leopard hence the dog’s closeness with the Leopard’s cub must taken with a pinch of salt. It must be treated with caution. Of course, when the Leopard discover the dog around its cub, all hell will be let loose.
We are reliving such a scenario in our neighbourhood as a married woman and a bachelor are close friends. We see the woman as the dog while the bachelor gets the appellation of the Leopard’s cub.
Their friendship is such that they also visited each other at home. Mostly, the woman goes to his house. She would leave her shop and went to the bachelor’s house purportedly to charge her phone.
Oftentimes, she would not even deem it fit to wait for a response after knocking before barging into his room. This attitude made ladies that would have been his wife to leave angrily. They felt he should caution the woman but he would do nothing of such.
However, when she comes in and see him watching film, she would settle herself on one of his chairs and watch along shamelessly not caring what the neighbours would think or say.
The bachelor is a corp member who lived in our neighbourhood during his service year and usually buys good from the married woman’s shop. He often kept the key to his apartment with her. They were very close.
The strange part in their relationship was the woman going to spend time in his house when he would be home alone and her husband might have gone to work.
However she would get very angry whenever her daughter of 18 years goes to visit him. She would threaten to beat her. The daughter was usually puzzled and would ask her “mummy, but you go to his house, why can’t I go there?”
The woman would have no answer to this. She would only repeat her warning that she must not go there.
Their friendship was all the more strange because they did not know each other before and their age gap was enormous; over ten years.
Yet the woman felt no qualms in visiting the bachelor. She would visit his apartment and sit inside for hours watching film. This has made her a laughing stock before her neighbours who believed that she was having an affair with someone who could easily pass for her son.
The bachelor’s current girlfriend was not comfortable with the relationship and had complained about it to her boyfriend but there was no change. It eventually caused a rift between them.
Residents wondered what they do coupled up inside the room. Some felt that they were probably having an affair. She usually goes to his house when her husband had gone to work. She would take food to him. Perhaps that was the reason why the bachelor had never married.
He was probably getting all his needs supplied.
At a time, their “friendship ” took on a twist as the husband of the woman got a whiff about his wife frolicking with the bachelor. He became very bitter and he began to act strangely towards the bachelor although they had been cordial before.
The husband could not openly fight because he had no proof of infidelity against her. However, he warned his wife sternly to desist from visiting the guy’s house.
While some people believe that they were only having an affair, others claimed that she was using the guy for Juju to make sales in her business.