Read Chapter 23: The Fake Date

Jazz pressed the phone to her ear with her shoulder, stirring rice in one pan while she waved smoke away from the frying onions with the other. “No, Mum, I’m not bringing anyone. It’s just a family dinner.”

“Auntie Yemi specifically asked if you were seeing anyone,” her mother said. “And I had to tell her no. Again.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

“You are thirty years old, Jasmin.”

“I know how old I am.”

“Then you know what she’ll say. And what I’ll have to sit there and listen to. About Daniel.” Her mother’s voice dropped. “She heard from someone—I don’t know who—that you two ran into each other. At some event.”

Jazz’s stomach dropped. She turned off the hob entirely. “It was nothing. We exchanged two words.”

“Two words is all it takes for Yemi to craft an entire novel. She’ll want to know why you didn’t reconcile. Whether you’re holding a grudge. Whether you’ve been too picky.” A pause. “She means well.”

“She means drama.”

“Either way, I need something to tell her. Something that doesn’t make me look like I raised a daughter who’s given up on love.”

Jazz opened her mouth to argue, but no words came. She hated that her mother could still make her feel like a child. And she hated that Auntie Yemi—who had been friends with her mother since university—had somehow transformed Daniel’s betrayal into Jazz’s failure to try hard enough.

Tom walked in through the back door, gym bag slung over his shoulder, hair damp. He froze. “Should I come back?”

Jazz waved him in, covering the phone. “No, it’s fine.” Then, on impulse, she added: “Mum, I have to go. I’ll sort something out.”

She hung up before her mother could respond, stared at the phone in her hand, and for the first time in her life, had a genuinely terrible idea.

“What was that about?” Tom asked, setting his bag by the stairs.

“Family dinner on Sunday,” Jazz said. “My aunt is going to interrogate me about my ex. My mother wants me to show up with a boyfriend so she doesn't have to suffer through it.”

Tom winced in sympathy. “That sounds brutal.”

“It will be. Unless…” She hesitated. The words felt ridiculous before they even formed. “Come with me. Pretend to be my boyfriend.”

Tom’s eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead. “Pretend.”

“One night. A few hours. You eat some good Nigerian food, charm my family, tell everyone we’re madly in love, and then it’s over. Nobody gets hurt.”

“Nobody except my dignity when I have to call you ‘darling’ in front of your mother.”

“You don’t have to call me darling.”

“I was being dramatic.”

Jazz crossed her arms. “Look, I’ve met your parents. I slept on their couch. I’ve seen the baby photos you promised to burn. I think you owe me a small, socially awkward favour.”

Tom considered this, then smiled—that slow, crooked smile that she’d grown dangerously accustomed to over the past weeks. “Fine. I’ll do it. But there are ground rules.”

“Name them.”

“One. This goes nowhere with Marcus, Miles, or anyone from the investor circle. Last thing we need is the rumour mill adding ‘secretly dating’ to our file of scandals.” He ticked off a finger. “Two. If Auntie Yemi asks about marriage, you’re the one deflecting. I’m not fake-proposing on top of fake-dating. My fake mother might show up with a fake ring.”

Jazz snorted. “Deal.”

“Three.” His voice softened. “If wearing this becomes too much—being around your family, explaining an invented history—you tell me, and we leave. It’s not worth the stress.”

Something shifted in his eyes. Genuine, unguarded. The way he’d looked at her by the cloakroom, when Daniel’s presence had stabbed through her composure.

She swallowed. “OK.”

“OK.” He clapped his hands together. “Now. What does your family actually need to know about me?”

---

By Sunday evening, Jazz had briefed Tom on everything: her father’s engineering background, her mother’s cooking preferences, Auntie Yemi’s obsession with grandchildren, and her cousin’s recent engagement—which was clearly the source of the comparison that awaited her.

They arrived at her parents’ terraced house in Peckham, Tom carrying a bottle of red wine and a bouquet of sunflowers he’d insisted on buying from the corner shop because “you can’t show up empty-handed to your girlfriend’s family dinner.”

“I’m not your girlfriend,” she hissed, ringing the bell.

“No, but Auntie Yemi doesn’t know that.” He winked.

Her mother opened the door before Jazz could respond, took one look at Tom, and beamed with the enthusiasm reserved for lottery wins. “Jasmin! You didn’t tell me he was so tall.”

Tom extended his hand. “Tom Ashworth. Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Okafor. Jazz talks about you all the time.”

“Does she now?” Her mother shot Jazz a knowing look. “Please, come in. I hope you’re hungry.”

The next hour passed in a blur of introductions, handshakes, and Auntie Yemi’s detailed scrutiny of Tom’s profession. He handled it with surprising ease, charming her father with talk about infrastructure projects, nodding along as her mother recounted Jazz’s childhood exploits, and even managing to laugh when Auntie Yemi suggested they were “getting on in years.”

“So what happened with Daniel?” Auntie Yemi asked mid-way through her third helping of jollof rice. “That boy was handsome. Such a shame.”

Jazz gripped her fork. “We grew apart.”

“Grew apart,” Tom repeated, reaching over and placing his hand on Jazz’s. His palm was warm, solid. “He didn’t deserve her.”

The table went quiet. Auntie Yemi blinked.

“He made her feel small,” Tom continued, looking directly at Jazz. “That’s not something anyone should have to forgive. Least of all someone like her.”

Under the table, Jazz’s hand trembled. She pulled away, took a sip of water, and forced a smile. “Tom’s very supportive.”

“Clearly,” her mother said, with a faint, lingering note of curiosity.

The rest of the evening passed in careful, pleasant conversation. Tom told her father about the startup—edited for compliance, of course—and even her mother seemed to warm to him despite her initial scepticism. By the time they stood at the front door, saying their goodbyes, Jazz had almost forgotten the act was an act. Almost.

Because when Auntie Yemi pulled her aside in the narrow hallway, she whispered: “That one. He looks at you like you’re the only person in the room. Don’t lose him like you lost the other.”

Jazz opened her mouth to explain—that this was temporary, that they were colleagues, that nothing was real—but the words caught in her throat.

She didn’t want to correct her aunt.

She didn’t want to correct herself.

---

Later, outside the house, under the sodium glow of the streetlamps, Tom walked beside her with his hands in his pockets. The night air was cool, carrying the smell of rain and fried plantain from the kitchens up and down the street.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said.

“You were better than I expected.” She should have left it there. But something about the evening had loosened her tongue. “That thing you said. About Daniel making me feel small. How did you know that?”

Tom was quiet for a long moment. They reached the corner and stopped, facing each other. His breath rose in small clouds.

“Because I see how you are when you think you’re not being watched,” he said. “You bake bread when you’re stressed. You rehearse answers before you speak. You apologise for things that aren’t your fault.” He looked down at his shoes, then back up. “Marcus told me what he heard about why it ended. Between you and Daniel.”

Jazz stiffened. “He told you?”

“He’s not great at keeping secrets,” Tom said, softly. “I know he lied to you. Made you doubt yourself. Made you think you were too much to handle.” He took a half-step closer. “That’s the only thing he was wrong about. Because the problem was never that you were too much, Jazz. It was that he was too little.”

She was going to say something. She had a response ready, about boundaries, about keeping things professional, about the fact they were still only pretending. But when she looked up at him, the joke dying in her throat, he was closer still. His hand lifted, hesitated, and landed gently on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know this is supposed to be an act. But I’m not pretending that I like being next to you.”

Jazz’s chest constricted. She should step back. She should laugh it off, call the night a success, retreat to her corner of the flat and pretend none of this had happened.

Instead, she heard herself say: “Then what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. He just stayed there, holding her gaze, his thumb grazing the fabric of her coat. She could feel her own pulse in her temples.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m tired of acting like I haven’t been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

Jazz opened her mouth—to give him an answer, or to give herself an excuse, she didn’t know—but it was his phone that broke the moment. It buzzed in his pocket, sharp and insistent. He ignored it. It buzzed again.

“You should get that,” she said, stepping back.

He pulled out the phone, glanced at the screen, and his face went pale.

“What is it?”

“Miles.” He kept his eyes on the read-out. “He’s calling again. Third time tonight.”

Jazz’s pulse shifted from romantic chaos to primal fear. “Third time on a Sunday? That’s not good.”

“No.” Tom swiped to answer, pressing the phone to his ear. “Miles. Everything alright?”

There was a long pause. Tom’s expression darkened. His jaw tightened, the softness in his face replaced by something guarded.

“How do you know about that?” he said. Another pause. “No. I’m not going to guess. Tell me what you’ve heard.”

Jazz kept her eyes on him, watching the colour drain from his cheeks under the lamplight. When he finally hung up, he held the phone in a white-knuckled grip and looked at her.

“Daniel,” he said. “He’s been sending emails to Miles. About us. About the startup.” He swallowed. “Referred to it as a sinking ship he was smart enough to walk away from.”

Jazz recoiled as if struck. That night at the networking event, when Daniel had pulled out his phone—it hadn’t been a coincidence. He’d seen them together, seen Tom comforting her, and he’d decided to take something from her again.

“Miles wants a full financial review on Wednesday,” Tom said, voice hollow. “And he says he knows things we haven’t been honest about.”

The patched-together meal, the warmth of the evening, the almost-kiss under the lamplight—all of it shattered in a single sentence.

They weren’t just pretending anymore. They were pretending the walls weren’t closing in.