Victoria was a beautiful young lady who just graduated from her University. She decided to visit her uncle living in the big city of Onitsha. Her uncle had built a house in the city where he lived with his family. He rented out some apartments in his big house to some tenants from whom he collected rent at the end of every month. He also owned a private car as well as a fleet of vehicles that plied from Onitsha to other towns as he ran his flourishing transportation business. He was among the wealthy ones in town.
Victoria enjoyed every bit of her stay with her uncle and his family. They always had enough to eat and drink, and Victoria wished she could stay on and on, but her stay would soon be coming to an end because she had to go for the compulsory National Youth Service program which would keep her away from Onitsha for the next twelve months.
Innocent was one of the tenants living in Victoria’s uncle’s house. He was a young trader, who was in the soap business. He was doing so well in the business that the soap manufacturing industry from where he procured the brands of soap he sold, appointed him one of the distributors of their products.
Innocent was already looking out for a lady to marry, and when he saw Victoria, he fell in love with her, and began to think of proposing to her. It began by engaging her in lengthy discussions each time he came home from his shop. With time, Victoria began to pick interest in him, and also saw him as a man she would love to spend the rest of her life with.
As time went on, Innocent started taking her out for dinner. Their love for each other began to grow and blossom. Every so often, Innocent would come back from his shop holding a bag filled with gift items for Victoria.
Victoria’s uncle soon noticed what was going on between Innocent and Victoria. One day he called Victoria and asked to know what was going on between herself and his tenant. Victoria explained that the young man was showing interest in her and was always buying her gifts. He asked her whether he had proposed to her, but she replied in the negative. He then warned her seriously, never to make herself loose by ever sleeping with him. He cautioned her to be very careful with young men of this city who were always out to ruin the future of young ladies by deceiving them with false promises. She assured him that she was being careful.
Not long afterwards, it was time for Victoria to go back home to her parents in the village to prepare to travel to Kebbi State for her National Youth Service. Before, she left, she promised Innocent that she would be visiting whenever there was any holidays period in which the authorities gave them permission to travel.
Victoria’s love for Innocent had grown so deeply that she was wishing he could propose to marry her. She had seen him as a very promising and enterprising young man with a potential to become very rich. And so, when the day of her departure arrived, Innocent gave her a huge sum of money for her journey and they parted.
After the initial one month of preparatory training at the Kebbi State Youth Service Orientation camp, Victoria was posted to a secondary school to teach chemistry as her primary assignment.
The Principal of the school was very delighted to welcome Victoria. The school had not had a chemistry teacher for a long time, and so Victoria’s posting was a very big relief for the Principal and the students who had looked forward to studying chemistry.
The Vice Principal of the school was a young man of about thirty years old. He was also the English teacher, and was not yet married. He had not begun to think of marriage yet because he had not saved up enough money to embark on such a venture. He soon fell in love with Victoria and was often engaging her in lengthy private chats. He began to pay frequent visits to her most evenings when lessons at school were over.
Soon their relationship became more intimate and Victoria started getting uncomfortable. She was still in contact with Innocent who also kept assuring her of his love for her.
Close to when the one year program was coming to an end, Victoria noticed that she had become pregnant for the Vice Principal whose name was Peter. She wept bitterly and was filled with shame.
When the Youth Service ended, she went back home to her village to confront her parents with the unwanted pregnancy.
Words cannot describe the amount of vituperations and humiliation that her disappointed parents poured on her. She wished that the ground could open and swallow her away from the anger of his father who told her in a note of finality that she must marry that Vice Principal who impregnated her. She felt that her world had ended, for she never went back to Onitsha again, and had to cut off from Innocent who felt very devastated when he learnt that Victoria had become pregnant for another man while on her National Youth Service at Kebbi State. And so Victoria became the wife of Peter, the Vice Principal till this day.