Becky flipped through the successive photo snapshots that were in here hand with mounting look of disbelief. She shook her head fervently, muttered 'Bastard' over and over again as she went flipping over the photos again and again till the contents had just about burned themselves into her memory.
"Becks," her lover Gladys called from inside the bathroom where she was at the moment taking a shower. "Becks, is anything the matter?"
Becky couldn't return a satisfying reply; her lips were just too numb for her to think up anything to say. As she was still flipping through the photos, several of them slipped from her hand and spewed over the floor. She gathered them up and carried them along to the bedroom. She paused to glance at her wristwatch which lay on a side table beside the bed. 11:24 a.m. it told her.
She and her lover had finished a bout of making love less than a couple of minutes ago. Gladys had soon got up and gone into the bathroom to wash herself up while she had decided on a little snooze before thinking about doing the same. Less than a minute later, there'd been a knock on their door. Becky had inquired who it was, but there'd been no response. Her immediate reaction as she rose from the bed to approach the door was fear. Fear that through some unknown means, her husband evidently trailed her and had finally found out her secret pastime. She was supposed to be out of town, visiting her cousin who'd recently put to bed. But instead she was here with her lover of five and a half months now, in a discreet hotel located close to the city's airport
She had remained in bed for up to a minute, hopping to hear another knock. When there wasn't any, she then got up, wrapped a towel over her nakedness and came round and noticed a white envelope sticking from under the door. She undid the lock and glanced out the corridor, but there was no one waiting there to surprise her. Locking it back, she picked up the envelope and unearthed its graphic contents of herself caught in flagrante with her lover in some other discreet spot outside the city they both patronised. The photos undoubtedly had been taken from a room across from theirs, as it showed the two of them locked in each other's arms, naked, on the bed.
Becky gnawed at her fingernail; the fear that was beating against her chest was overwhelming for her to ignore. Her husband was a well known public figure in the city; this would do more than ruin him if ever it got out, but as well ruin everything she could ever manage to salvage from her marriage. My God, what am I going to do now?
It was at that moment that the bathroom door came open and Gladys stepped out, still rubbing a towel against her wet and scattered chestnut-coloured hair. She had a smile on her lips and was about to say something nice when she caught the distraught look on her lover's face and knew that something had happened.
"Becks, wha --"
Becky made space for her to sit and go through the photos. Less than a minute later, she too wasn't feeling any happy any longer.
"Oh my God, Becks. Where on earth did these come from?"
"I don't know. I heard a knock on the door while you were still taking a shower, came over and found an envelope with all these in it."
As they went through the photos individually, Gladys then spotted a cell phone number scrawled behind one of the photos. She pointed it out to Becky.
"You think it's some type of blackmail?" she too had a lot to lose if ever such photos ever got to her won husband's table. How would she even dare to look her three-year old daughter in the face if such photos made it to a newspaper's printing press?
"Only one way to find out," Becky said. She reached for her handbag and unearthed her cell phone from within. She dialled the number and the moment it got picked it activated the speaker phone button for her friend to hear as well.
"Hello," a man's voice answered.
"Hello there," Becky said. "I don't know who you are, but are you the one who happened to slip some photos in an envelope into my room not too long ago?"
"Oh those photos. Did you and your friend enjoy them by the way?"