The store attendant rushed to Onukwube as she stepped past the glass doors. Her plastic bathroom slippers made an embarrassingly sharp sound as they smacked the glossy tiles, and then a grating one as she shuffled towards the waiting area.

The girl's face was set in a carefully neutral expression, and Onukwube felt laughter claw itself up her raw throat. She bit her lip, re-opening a healing sore, and let the pain wash over her with grim satisfaction.

"How can we help you Ma?"

Onukwube had watched, as she sat in her car for exactly six minutes, as women - and some children - walked through the doors and were immediately seated. None had been quizzed like this. She felt no surprise though. She'd hid her old, frizzy all-back under a black scarf, and her sludge-gray boubou was clean, but she'd not been able to take a shower, barely managing instead to clean her face, under her armpits and between her legs with a towel that had been soaked in hot water and wrung out. All the YSL Libre and Maison Frances Kurdjikan in the world could not hide the scent of spit and snot and sweat and dirt from her skin. Her slippers were dusty, her lips cracked and scabbed, and her hands shook perpetually now, like an old woman's. She looked like one of those 'newly mad' people whom people pointed and whispered out. Women broken by their husband's infidelity or driven insane by excessive studied or even simply used for rituals by heartless, ambitious relations. In time they'd take off their clothes and their hair would grow into a matted mass and their bare feet would toughen into something like an elephant's hide, but in the first few days of their insansity they looked almost normal. Almost.

In response, Onukwube reached into the black polythene bag she held and brought out a yellow-and-black stripped one. From inside that one she extracted a wad of cash so enormous her hand couldn't close across the crosswise girth. She didn't shake it in the girl's face, but it was close. And all at once she was looking through the girl's eyes as the woman in front of her changed from a disturbed woman to be gently but firmly herded out to a prized customer, eccentric and strange and with lamentable personal hygiene, but a prized customer nonetheless. Perhaps an illiterate market woman who'd not quite been able to have the 'localness' civilized out if her. Or one who didn't care, knowing her money would speak for her.

The girl stretched out her hand like an obliging usher.

"This way madam, this way."

She led her through another smaller set of glass doors, these ones a frosted brown shot through with gold, and now Onukwube was in the heart of the sanctuary.

Around her, opulent outfits sat on delicate wire hangers. They came in a whole constellation of colours, lilacs and ceruleans, fairy pinks and deep emerald greens. Some were embroidered all over with sequins, others made from gossamer silk that looked like a touch would cause them to melt. There were little suits and ball gowns and tiny versions of dresses that had recently appeared on red carpets.

More clothes were wrapped in paper and plastic behind glass doors in closets that stood against the wall. Onukwube decided she would leave the store with one of those. She would take a perverse statisfaction in purchasing that sheltered dress and ripping it from its cocoon, its safe place.

Adannaya would have made her bed every day for a month to be here. She would have done her homework on time and even eaten the dreaded beans and unripe plantain just to experience this secret heaven, even with no guarantee that she'd get a dress. And once here, she would have gazed up at Onukwube with her honey-brown eyes and trembled her lower lip, and they would have left with at least two dresses.

Onukwube bit her lip again, and this time she tasted blood. This was her hair shirt, her leather whip of self-flagellation, her punishment for failing in her ultimate duty as a parent.

Because she had failed. By letting her six-year old go on an excursion to the newly-opened Garden City Beach Resort, she'd broken the cardinal rule of parenting 'Trust nobody with your child'. She'd been in the office when she got the call, heavy-lidded with fatigue and craving the warmth of the evening breeze on her face after hours in the air-conditioned bank.

Her feet had just begun to seek out her heels under her desk, in preparation of close-of-day. When her phone rang. Her relief had been palpable when she saw it was her daughter's teacher, not another client that would mean extra hours. She'd answered, expecting to hear about a delay on the road that would mean they were not yet back in school. Instead, Miss Janet's hoarse voice had delivered the news that the water had churned and frothed, the waves had been strong, something had gone terribly wrong; and nothing had ever gone right in Onukwube's life again.

"What type of dress are you look for, Madam?" The Attendant asked, steering her towards a furry, coffee-coloured sofa that would have been more at home in some Big man's parlour.

"As you can see, we have everything. Princess gowns, local and imported, traditional dress for cultural day, even foreign costumes like kimonos and saris. Everything you need to dress your little princess. And if you've got a prince, we can…"

"White."

The girl flinched a little from the hardness of Onukwube's tone, but her smile stayed firmly in place.

"Of course, is this for a wedding?"

"No."

Onukwube's own smile was an obscene mutation of the one that was now slipping off the girl's face, and she saw her eyes go to the bag of money Onukwube held in her hands, as if in search of reassurance.

"Alright Ma. What is it for please? To pick the right dress, we need to know…"

"It's for a funeral."