ARDENT

Chapter 36: Lovebirds

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SEWA’S P.O.V

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The interior decorator’s name is Bisi Adeyemi.

She comes recommended by Lady Aurora. Which means she comes with a specific standard attached, the standard of a woman who grew up in a Milanese family with three generations of art patronage and has opinions about space that are not casual opinions. When Lady Aurora says a decorator is good she means: this person understands that a room is not a collection of furniture. It is a position.

Bisi arrives at the Maitama house on a Tuesday morning in the first week of February with a leather portfolio and the calm of someone who has done this long enough to know that the most important thing she will do today is listen.

Romeo and I are already there when she arrives.

We have been there for twenty minutes. Walking through the empty rooms again, the way we have been doing since January, each time finding something new in the emptiness. A way the morning light moves through the study that we had not noticed before. The proportion of the living room that becomes clear only when you stand in the centre of it and turn slowly. The garden visible from the kitchen window at an angle that makes it look like a painting.

Bisi shakes our hands.

She looks at the house.

Then she looks at us.

“Tell me this”, she says, “I don’t want to know what you want the house to look like. Tell me how you want it to feel.”

Romeo and I look at each other.

This is, I realise, the question.

We sit on the floor of the empty living room because there is nowhere else to sit and we talk.

Not to Bisi initially. To each other. She has a notebook open but she is not writing yet. She is listening to the conversation between us with the attention of someone who knows that the real brief is never the one people think they are giving.

“Warm”, I say. “Not decorated warm. Actually warm. The kind of warm that arrives when a space has been inhabited by people who love each other.”

“Art”, Romeo says. “I don't want decorative art. I mean art that was chosen because it means something. Pan-African. Nigerian. Some of my mother’s early watercolours if she will give them.”

“High ceilings kept clear”, I say. “No hanging things that crowd the space above you. I need to breathe upward.”

“Books everywhere that are being used”, he says. “Not display books. The ones with the broken spines and the margin notes.”

“Fresh flowers”, I say. “Every Friday. There needs to be a vase in the living room and one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom that gets filled every Friday.”

“A reading chair by the study window”, he says. “Already decided.”

“The dining table”, I say.

We both pause.

The dining table is not a small decision for either of us and we both know it.

My table seats six and I have eaten alone at it more times than I counted and it is coming with me to this house because it is mine and it has history and I am not leaving it behind. But in this house it is not going to be the table where I eat alone. In this house it is going to be the table that is always in use. That always has people around it. That has the specific warmth of a surface that has been present for every important meal and conversation and ordinary Tuesday dinner of a life being lived fully.

“The dining table seats six”, I say to Bisi. “It is coming from my apartment. I love and I hop it stays.”

Bisi writes something.

“The kitchen”, Romeo says. “It needs to be a kitchen for two people. Room to move without negotiating.”

“We both cook”, I say. “Separately and together. It needs to hold both.”

“You two are such a beautiful couple. So sweet to see. You look like you've been lovers for lifetimes.” Bisi says.

Romeo and I say nothing. We just keep staring at each other communicating silently before he places a kiss on my forehead.

“What else, Lovebirds?” Bisi says.

We look at each other.

“It needs to feel like us”, I say. “Both of us. I want it to look like a compromise between our aesthetics — an integration of them. His quiet intention and my—”

“Curated abundance”, Romeo says.

I look at him.

“This man, you have been waiting to use that phrase”, I say.

“Since November oh”, he says.

Bisi is writing steadily now. The real brief arriving in the conversation between us as she knew it would.

“One more thing”, Romeo says.

We both look at him.

“There are two rooms”, he says. “On the first floor. Good light. Garden-facing.”

He pauses.

“We want them ready to be children's rooms when the time comes. Not decorated as one yet. But designed with the possibility built in.”

The empty living room.

The February morning light.

I look at Romeo.

He looks at me.

The possibility built in.

Bisi closes her portfolio.

“I have what I need. For now”, she says.

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ROMEO’S P.O.V

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After Bisi leaves we stay in the house.

This has become a pattern. We come for a meeting or a walkthrough and then Bisi or the contractor or whoever leaves and we stay for another hour just being in the space. Neither of us has named this. It is simply what we do.

We end up in the study.

The room with the bookshelves built into every wall.

Floor to ceiling.

Empty shelves waiting for the books that have been accumulating in two apartments across Abuja for years — mine in Wuse 2, hers in Maitama — that are going to find their way here eventually, that are going to fill these shelves and make this room the room it is supposed to be.

Sewa runs her hand along one of the shelves.

She does this every time.

I have noticed this. She does not comment on it and I have not asked. Some things are private even in intimacy and this appears to be one of them. Whatever she is feeling when she touches the empty shelves is hers to hold until she is ready to name it.

She turns.

“Romeo”, she says.

“Yes.”

“I want to announce the foundation this week”, she says.

I look at her.

“This week?”, I say.

“Yes.”

She looks at the shelves.

“I have been waiting for the right time and I realised that I have been using the right time as a reason not to move. The building is progressing. Roli has the registration. The first case — the Nasarawa girl — is already being handled.”

She pauses.

“It is real. It has been real for months now and I think it is time for it to be public.”

I look at her.

This is Sewa who resigned from the Ministry. Sewa who called her father on a Sunday morning and said I am ready. Sewa who does not wait for the perfect conditions because she has learnt, through the hardest months of her becoming, that the perfect conditions are a story we tell ourselves to avoid the vulnerability of beginning.

“What is the plan?” I say.

“A post”, she says.

“On the channel. Not just Instagram — YouTube. A proper video. Me talking directly. The name. The mission. The land. What we are building and who it is for.”

She pauses.

“And you. I want you in it. I don't want you in it as a feature. I want you in it as a co-founder. Because that is what you are and I am not going to make you invisible in something you are building with me.”

I look at her.

“Sewa”, I say.

“Before you say it—”

“I was not going to say no”, I say.

She stops.

“You were not?”

“No”, I say. “I was going to say: whenever you are ready, I am ready.”

She looks at me for a moment.

Then:

“This week.”

“This week”, I confirm.

She nods.

She turns back to the empty shelves.

She runs her hand along them again.

This time she speaks.

“I keep thinking about the children”, she says.

“The ones the foundation is for. The ones who are going to come through those doors when the building is ready.”

She pauses.

“I want them to have shelves like this. Full ones. Books they are allowed to touch and read and keep. Not display copies — real ones. With their names written inside.”

I look at her.

At the woman who drove to three markets for the right beans.

Who called a stranger in Lagos for forty-five minutes about a recipe.

Who is standing in an empty study running her hand along empty shelves and thinking about children who do not yet exist in this space but who she is already making room for.

“We will fill them”, I say.

She looks at me over her shoulder.

“Both sets of shelves”, I say. “These ones and theirs.”

She holds my gaze.

“Yes”, she says.

SEWA’S P.O.V

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The video takes three days to make.

Not because the words are hard. The words have been living in me since the Nasarawa case file arrived in my inbox and the twelve-year-old girl’s school fees was paid across a dinner table without announcement.

Not because the concept is unclear. Because I wanted to get it right. The right that means: when the children this is for are old enough to watch it, they will understand that someone saw them before they arrived.

I film it in the Kuchigoro land.

Outside. The three acres behind me. The construction visible. The skeleton of the main building rising, Dotun’s team moving through the frame in the background with the energy of people building something they believe in.

No ring light. No studio backdrop. No produced version of myself.

Just me. The land. The morning.

Romeo stands behind the camera.

Not in front of it. Behind it, holding the space the way he always holds space, present without performing presence.

I look directly into the lens.

I take a breath.

I speak.

“Okay, so. This is Sewa Coker. You know me from this channel — the outfits, the life updates, the talking stages that went nowhere and the ones that went somewhere and all the messy, beautiful, ordinary in-between.”

“For the last few months I have been building something I did not post about. Not because I was hiding it. Because some things need to be built quietly before they can be spoken about loudly.”

“Children. Children have a special place in my heart since I was a child and saw kids my age who couldn't go to school because their parents couldn't afford to. Who couldn't eat proper meals, read good books, obtain good education, and live life well.”

“This land behind me is three acres in Abuja. On it we are building a home. Not a house — a home. For children who have been told, by circumstance or by cruelty or simply by the neglect of systems that were never designed to see them, that they do not deserve one.”

“Dropouts. Children from the street. IDPs. Survivors of abuse. Children whose cases sit in government files going nowhere because nobody is fighting for them with both hands.

“I am fighting for them with both hands. Me and my co-founder. And every member of this team”

“The foundation is called Imani.

“Imani means faith. The belief that what is not yet seen is coming. For children who have been told the opposite their whole lives — Imani says: it is coming. You are worth it. Someone sees you.

“We have the land. We have the building. We have a legal team. We have funding. We have a co-founder who said yes to this vision and has been building beside me every day since.”

“What we are building is real. And it is for them.

“If you want to be part of it — watch this space. The work has begun.”

“My name is Sewa Coker. And I am just getting started.”

Romeo does not say cut.

He lowers the camera.

He looks at me.

The land behind me. The construction. The Abuja morning.

“That is the one”, he says.

“Yes?” I say.

“You did not rehearse that one”, he says.

“No”, I say.

“It shows”, he says. “In the best way.”

I look at the land.

Three acres.

The building rising.

Imani.

“Romeo”, I say.

“Yes.”

“Post it with me”, I say. “Not just on my channel. On yours too.”

He looks at me.

“I do not have a meaningful channel”, he says.

“You have an account jooor”, I say. “Post it there. Even if one person sees it. The co-founder should be visible. Better still, we will collaborate to make the post on Instagram and YouTube.”

A pause.

“Okay”, he says.

We post it at 11 a.m. on a Thursday.

By 3 p.m. the video has two hundred thousand views.

By 6 p.m. it has passed five hundred thousand.

The comments arrive faster than I can read them. I have stopped trying. Roli is monitoring the legal inquiries. Three organisations have reached out already about partnership. Two government contacts from my Ministry days have sent private messages. A woman in Port Harcourt says she has a daughter, eleven years old, been out of school for two years, no funding, no case worker. Can Imani help?

I screenshot it and send it to Roli.

Roli responds in forty seconds.

On it, ma'am.

I put the phone down.

I look at the engagement ring.

I think about the day we met.

I think about the woman I was sixteen months ago — three to five talking stages a week, eating alone at a table that seats six, going to Paris when she needed to feel like someone else, running so consistently she had stopped noticing the running.

I think about the woman I am now.

Building.

Staying.

Present.

My phone rings.

Ọrọ.

I answer.

“SEWA.” Full volume. Full Ọrọ. “THE VIDEO. SEWA. THE VIDEO.”

“I know”, I say.

“I am crying”, she says. “My husband is crying too oh. He says he is not crying but he is absolutely crying—”

“Babe, I am not crying”, Mautin says, from somewhere in Lagos.

“He is crying”, Ọrọ confirms. “Sewa. Imani. The name. The land. The way you spoke about those children.”

Her voice shifts.

“This is it. This is what you were made for.”

“I know”, I say.

“You know”, she says. “You actually know.”

“I do”, I say.

A pause.

“Walk toward it”, she says.

“I am walking”, I say.

Romeo calls at 9 p.m.

“How are you?” he says.

“Full”, I say. “The good full. The kind that comes when something that has been waiting to be real finally is.”

“Yes”, he says.

“How many views on your post?” I say.

A pause.

“I do not check my notifications”, he says.

“Romeo.”

“I do not have a meaningful—”

“Romeo. How many views.”

A longer pause.

“Forty-seven thousand”, he says. Very quietly.

“FORTY-SEVEN—”

“It is your video”, he says. “They came for your video.”

“They came for Imani”, I say. “Which is ours.”

He is quiet.

“Forty-seven thousand people saw the co-founder”, I say.

“Yes”, he says.

“Good”, I say.

“Sewa.”

“Yes.”

“You were extraordinary today”, he says.

“In front of the camera. On the land. The words.”

A pause.

*You did not perform any of it.”

“No”, I say.

“That is the difference”, he says. “That is why it landed.”

I look at the ring.

The evening light.

“Romeo”, I say.

“Yes.”

“Q”, I say. “The next date. What is it?”

A pause.

“Quiet morning”, he says.

“Just us. No itinerary. No plan. We wake up in our separate apartments and we call each other and we spend the morning being quiet together over the phone. Reading. Praying. Existing in the same space from a distance. Before we go to work.”

I look at the ceiling.

“That is the most Romeo date on the entire alphabet”, I say.

“Yes”, he says.

“I love it”, I say.

“I know”, he says.

“Good night, Ro.”

“Good night, Tesoro.”

I put the phone down.

I look at the apartment.

The candles.

The flower bouquet from Friday, four days old now, still present.

The dining table that seats six.

The home that is waiting to be filled.

Imani.

The children who are coming

Inside: this is the life.

Not the arriving.

The building.

The daily, faithful, unglamorous, extraordinary building of everything that matters.

I blow out the candle.

I go to bed.

The ring on my finger in the dark.

Abuja outside, indifferent and continuous.

And somewhere on Kuchigoro land, in the February night, a building is rising.

Slowly.

Carefully.

With intention.

The way all real things are built.

Narrator's Nook

A home and a foundation are the same project.

Both require the same things — a clear vision, the willingness to begin before everything is ready, the specific courage of choosing meaning over convenience in every small decision.

Sewa and Romeo standing on the floor of an empty living room telling a decorator how they want the space to feel rather than what they want it to look like is the series’ argument for intentional living made domestic.

The Imani announcement is not a content moment. It is a covenant moment. The woman who built a platform on sharing her life is choosing, for the first time, to share her purpose. Not the curated version. The version filmed on land with a building rising behind her and no ring light and no script.

That is the difference between a brand and a calling. The audience felt it. Four hundred thousand views felt it.

And Q — a quiet morning together over the phone, reading and praying in separate apartments — is the date that tells you everything about who Romeo is and who Sewa is becoming. She was the woman who filled every silence. She is learning to sit in the quiet. Not because he asked her to. Because the quiet, she is discovering, is where God lives. And she is not afraid of it anymore.

She is building.

She is staying.

She is home.