By midday I was wearing jeans and a shirt I could stain without caring. I was not returning to Kelvin’s apartment to collect memories of love. I was returning for the things that had given me a professional name before he ever became part of it.
The caretaker opened the gate when he recognized me, but he did not look at my face for long. He had heard the voices the night before, or perhaps he knew that every couple had an argument before the neighbors knew the whole story. I asked whether Kelvin was there.
“He’s inside,” he said. “He said you’re coming for the inventory.”
“I told him I was coming for my things.”
“He said inventory.”
The word landed harder than I wanted it to. Kelvin had already given what had been my life the name of a spreadsheet.
I climbed the stairs instead of taking the elevator, which hesitated every time it reached the third floor. The apartment door was open. Kelvin stood in the corridor with two sheets of paper in his hand, as though he were waiting for me at a company meeting. His hair was combed, his white shirt buttoned only two buttons from the top. He did not look like a man whose engagement had ended yesterday.
“You’re here,” he said.
“I’m here for my things.”
“That’s why I prepared a list.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
He let out a long breath. “Zawadi, let’s not make this difficult.”
I looked past him. The spare-room door was shut, and its lock was new, bright silver without a scratch. I tried the handle. It did not open.
“You changed the lock?”
“After the movers left.”
“Why?”
“For security.”
“Whose security?”
The caretaker pretended to inspect the corridor bulb. Kelvin turned over one of the sheets. “We can go in together. Everything will be taken out in order.”
“You locked my room and now you’re talking about order?”
“It wasn’t your room. We were both using it.”
I laughed without humor. Inside the spare room was a rack where I kept wig cases, boxes of clips, client documents, and products I bought wholesale. Before leaving the salon, I had moved part of my equipment there because Kelvin said the apartment was our home. Now our home had become a place with a lock that belonged to him.
“Open it,” I said.
“We’ll open it with the caretaker present.”
“Open it now.”
Kelvin took a key from his pocket. He did not look surprised that I noticed he had it. He opened the door and stepped aside. The room had been arranged in a way that did not match my memory. My bags were lined against the wall. Kitchen boxes were piled in front. In the corner was the small sofa I had chosen at a shop in Manzese, now covered in plastic.
I took out my phone and opened the photographs I had made before the movers came. “This is my document box. These are my clothes. This is the work kit.”
Kelvin looked at the pictures without touching my phone. “Take what is clearly yours.”
“That’s what I’m going to do.”
We opened the first box. Inside were product invoices, my passport, course certificates, and an old client notebook. I put the documents in my file and photographed every page before closing it. Kelvin raised his eyebrows.
“Do you think I would take your certificates?”
“I think I don’t want anything of mine somewhere I can’t reach it.”
“Have you started seeing me as an enemy?”
“You changed the lock before giving me time to leave.”
He wanted to answer, but the caretaker came in with the inventory sheet. “Let’s mark them. Whose is this?”
“Mine,” I said.
“And this?”
“It’s shared. We bought it with both our money.”
Kelvin shook his head. “We’ll talk about that one later.”
“No. We’ll write it down now.”
I took a marker and divided the things into three groups: Z, K, and P. The Z items were my work equipment, my clothes, and my documents. The K items belonged to Kelvin. The P items were shared, like the dining table, microwave, and sofa. Every time I put down a letter, I felt an old shame being stripped from the object. I had once believed that putting names on property meant you did not trust love. Now leaving a name off was how you abandoned yourself without evidence.
When we reached the cabinet beneath the window, I saw a square of dust where something had been. I stopped.
“Where is my brush case?”
Kelvin continued turning the pages. “What case?”
“The black one. It has a brown handle. Brushes, combs, and pins are inside.”
“That went to the warehouse.”
“The attendant said it wasn’t on the pallet.”
“Maybe you collected it another day.”
“I never collected it.”
“Zawadi, a lot of things went with the movers. I don’t know every box.”
“You arranged the move.”
“I arranged the household things.”
“And you knew which things were work equipment?”
He looked at me. “I knew you were leaving the salon.”
“I left the salon, not the work.”
There was a short silence. The caretaker moved the paper closer to the window. I opened my gallery and searched for a photograph of the case. I found it on the salon table, its new lock still bearing the shop sticker. The date was two days after Kelvin sent my first support payment of the month. I went to the cabinet and photographed the empty space.
“This case isn’t on your inventory,” I said.
“Then we’ll look for it.”
“Where?”
“At the warehouse.”
“The attendant said it wasn’t in the large consignment.”
Kelvin closed the folder with slightly too much force. “You’re making one thing look like a conspiracy.”
“I’m not looking for a conspiracy. I’m looking for a case.”
I searched the storage room, the kitchen cabinets, and the small balcony. Every place showed signs of being moved: broken dust lines, tape left on the floor, a screw removed from the wall. I found two sandals, a jacket, an old charger, and an envelope belonging to three clients. I did not find the case. Kelvin stood in the doorway watching me, but he did not help.
When I came into the sitting room, he handed me a sheet of paper. “This is the list of what you’re taking when you leave.”
I read it. He had written one dryer, brushes—“one set,” files, clothes, documents, and personal effects. At the end he had written: “No claim on furniture or household appliances.”
“You wrote this for me?”
“I’m trying to prevent an argument.”
“You left out the case.”
“Because I don’t know where it is.”
“Then don’t write that I took it.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I’ll correct it.”
“Correct the inventory date too.”
“Why is the date a problem again?”
“Because yesterday I saw a warehouse booking from three weeks ago. Today I see a spare-room lock changed before I arrived. Everything you call ‘sudden’ has a date.”
His voice dropped. “You didn’t want to hear it.”
“And you decided I shouldn’t know.”
I took the verified items: the document file, two work shirts, the dryer in the box with my invoice, the brushes bearing my mark, and the client notebook. I left the shared things there, even when I felt like taking the sofa out of anger. The caretaker signed the temporary sheet, and I signed beneath the list I had corrected by hand.
Kelvin stood near the door. “You can stay with your mother until you calm down.”
“I don’t need advice about where to live.”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. I stayed here on your money for a period I thought was part of our plan. Now I’ll find my own way.”
“I sent support last month.”
“And this month’s support was not sent.”
He closed his mouth. I had not named an amount because I was not ready to turn everything into a money argument in front of the caretaker. But I knew those days had passed. The support that had been called temporary had ended before he said the ending aloud.
As I lowered my bag on the stairs, Kelvin said, “Please don’t give people only one version.”
I turned. “I’ll know my version after I get all my things back.”
I left with the dryer, the file, and a small brush bag. When I reached the bottom, the caretaker called me back from behind the gate.
“Someone came to collect a box last night,” he said. “I didn’t know whether it was yours.”
“Who was it?”
“He had Kelvin’s key. He didn’t carry many things.”
“Did you see a black case?”
He thought. “I saw a box with yellow tape. But I didn’t read the label.”
I took one step back, then stopped. Kelvin had not called to tell me someone had come. When I opened yesterday’s message, I found the same sentence: “Your things are in the warehouse.”
I asked the caretaker to send me everything he remembered, then left before my anger made me take something that was not mine. As I walked toward the parking area, I knew I had left the apartment for the last time without a key to return. I had carried the essentials, but I had left behind a large space with no answer.
The caretaker brought out the visitor book and tried to remember the moving company that had come. He said they had arrived with a printed list, not with a sudden instruction to carry everything. I asked him not to guess who owned the box; I needed only the date, the number of people, and whether Kelvin had signed. He wrote a few details by hand, then said he could not give me a copy of the book without the building’s permission.
When I returned to the corridor, I checked everything I had taken. The certificates were inside the file, the dryer was secured, and the client notebook was in my bag. I called Tunu and told her I could start her trial shift, but I did not mention Kelvin. When Lulu called, I told her the apartment was no longer a safe place to plan tomorrow. I stayed in the parking area until my heart settled, then sent Kelvin a handover message listing the missing case and the things I had left behind. He did not answer. I knew even his silence would become part of my chronology.
Kelvin said he had never seen that case—but Zawadi remembered that he was the one who had bought its lock.
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