The Flat with No Address ｜Bluebell

IkeChukwu Henry

The day the ride-hailing driver circled her street three times and canceled, she realized the city did not know where she lived, even though she had been sleeping there for weeks.

Ademola would later remember that sentence as if it were written on the inside of her skull, a private inscription. At the time, she stood by the gate, phone in hand, heat pressing against her back, watching the car icon dissolve into nothing. The road was red earth and promise, still half-claimed by bulldozers and weeds. New houses rose beside empty plots like teeth spaced too far apart. This was Lekki in its hurried becoming, a place always arriving and never quite here.

Photo by Alicia Connelly on Unsplash

She had moved into the flat three weeks after the divorce was finalized, choosing it because it was quiet and because no one she knew had ever heard of the street. The estate agent had said, with a shrug that felt like reassurance, It will be big very soon. The flat was on the second floor of a pale building that smelled faintly of paint and dust. There were already people living there—she heard radios through the walls, smelled frying onions in the evenings—but the building itself seemed reluctant to announce its existence.

When she tried to order curtains online, the delivery app refused her address. When she filled out a form at the bank, the dropdown menu rejected the street name, blinking red like a reprimand. Letters she mailed to herself, just to see, returned, stamped address not found. The city, with all its noise and appetite, did not know how to reach her.

At first, this felt like mercy.

Marriage had made her visible in ways she no longer wanted. She had been someone’s wife, her name often spoken with his attached, as if she were an extension cord. Their flat on the mainland had known them well—the neighbors, the security man, the woman who sold bread downstairs. Everyone had watched their arguments ripen and spoil. When she left, she carried her clothes and a quiet terror that she did not know who she was without being witnessed.

Here, in the flat with no address, she could be unrecorded. She could wake without explanation. She furnished slowly: a narrow bed, a secondhand table, two plates instead of six. She liked the way the light fell across the tiled floor in the mornings, how it made patterns she did not have to share. She learned the rhythms of the area—the generator that coughed awake at dusk, the call to prayer drifting from somewhere beyond the plots, the persistent sound of hammering from a building always under construction.

Sometimes she walked in the evenings, nodding at faces she did not yet kn ow. There was a woman on the ground floor who swept every morning with a seriousness that suggested ritual. There was a man who sold roasted corn by the junction and greeted her as sister without waiting for permission. They all lived slightly sideways from the city, like objects placed just out of frame.

Weeks passed. The novelty of invisibility thinned. There were inconveniences that felt almost accusatory. When the electricity bill did not come, she worried not about payment but about proof. When she tried to change her address on an official document and the system refused her, she felt a small panic rise in her chest. What did it mean to live somewhere that could not be named?

At night, memories crept in uninvited. Her former husband’s voice, clipped and precise, telling her she was too quiet, then too loud. The way he used her presence as a mirror for his moods. She had thought leaving would make her lighter. Instead, she sometimes felt translucent, as if even her own hands might pass through her.

One afternoon, while struggling with a leaking tap, she met a man in the next flat. He was holding a small toolbox and wore a shirt stained with paint. He asked if she needed help, his voice gentle, as if not to startle her. When she thanked him, she noticed how easily he had found her door, how naturally his feet had known where to stop.

“I know this place,” he said, smiling, as if it were a simple fact. “It confuses people, but it makes sense once you walk it.”

After that, they greeted each other in the stairwell. Sometimes they shared oranges, peeled and divided with care. He told her he worked in installations—nothing permanent, always adjusting to new sites. He laughed when she mentioned the missing address.

“Cities forget people all the time,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you are gone.”

His words stayed with her. She began to notice that some people never hesitated when coming to her flat. The woman who sold groceries nearby found it easily. A neighbor’s child knocked one evening to ask for water. These small recognitions felt like stitches, holding her in place.

Still, there were days when the urge to disappear pressed hard. On those days, she enjoyed that no mail arrived, that no driver could find her. She imagined herself thinning into the walls, becoming part of the unfinishedness of the area. It felt dangerous and comforting at once.

One morning, she woke from a dream in which she was calling her own name across a field and hearing nothing back. The silence frightened her. She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the building wake—the scrape of chairs, the hum of voices. The flat was real, she reminded herself. Her body was real. But was that enough?

She invited the man next door for tea, a small, deliberate act. They talked about ordinary things: work, the heat, the way Lekki kept stretching itself. When he left, he paused at the door.

“If you ever need someone to find you,” he said lightly, “I know the way.”

That night, she considered leaving. She could pack her things and move somewhere officially recognized, somewhere that appeared neatly on maps. The thought felt both safe and unbearable. She realized that what she feared was not the absence of an address, but the absence of being held in someone’s awareness.

In the end, she stayed.

She stayed and learned that home was not always a matter of records and coordinates. Sometimes it was the sound of footsteps that knew where to turn. Sometimes it was being greeted without directions. The city might not yet know where she lived, but someone did. And for now, that was enough to keep her from vanishing.

About the Author

Ikechukwu Henry is an Igbo Nigerian writer whose writings tackle the issues of environmental and climatic crises, family dynamics, queerness and speculative otherworldliness. He was fifth place in Christian Speculative Fiction Prize, Shortlisted for The Oriire Folktale Prize and has stories published in, but not limited to, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari Review, Lampblack Magazine and others. When not writing, he can be found searching for the next magazine to submit to.

A Note from our Editorial Team

This story explores the strangeness of intimacy and invisibility, creating a complex window into a deceptively simple subject. The editors enjoyed how obvious themes of belonging and visibility are threaded through with more delicate strains of womanhood, surveillance, and absence. A sense of tenderness holds the piece together, using language in soft, surprising ways to envelop the reader in a setting familiar in its alienation. The flat with no address often feels more real and welcoming than the rest of the sprawling city, alive in the awareness of its inhabitants.

It can be difficult to write these days without reflecting on how to acknowledge the cold grip of war tightening around us. Over the past few years we have witnessed bombings, massacres, blockades, forced famines, and genocides. For many, none of this is new — war has always been part of their lives. It takes on many forms: economic warfare, siege and starvation, civil wars and mob violence, the trauma of a past that reproduces itself, or the struggle to put such memories to rest. Wars are also fought on a more intimate scale, within a person, between two people, or passed down through generations.

Meanwhile, “peace” has never seemed so distant. The word is often used in mockery of its value, a tool cynically deployed by the biggest aggressors to license further war. Does such a concept still have a place in our world? Can we reimagine how we wish to draw it into existence?

In a recent video, the Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa described young Gazan women who braved unspeakable dangers to attend her writing workshop. Wondering why they would put themselves at such high risk simply to be able to write, she says: “they came to touch the lives that they thought they might still have, even if it was just for a few hours.”

We want to hear your takes on war and peace, and what these words mean to you. As always, we strongly encourage you to interpret the prompt as broadly and creatively as you wish. War does not have to mean the clash of states with bombs, guns and death. Peace does not have to mean a mere cessation of physical violence. If you take issue with the prompt itself, or anything else here, write about that. Our goal is to foster conversation, not shut it down.

Bluebell are now looking forward to receiving a wide range of interpretations and creative imaginings from all of you. SUBMIT HERE UNTIL APRIL 30TH：https://tally.so/r/q4PE4O

Bluebell Magazine is a dynamic platform showcasing new talent from around the world. Our editors, from the UK, China, India, Zimbabwe and the US, met at the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Master’s Programme. We were inspired to build an international community of writers across genres who bring new perspectives to challenge, complicate and expand traditional narratives. We are looking for high-quality writing that pushes at intellectual, political and imaginative boundaries, drawing fresh voices into conversations across borders.

Feel free to subscribe us on Substack: https://bluebellmagazine.substack.com/

Web: https://www.bluebellmag.com/

小紅書(shū) RED 新生代創(chuàng)作大賽特邀三明治為“文字復(fù)興”單元聯(lián)合征稿， 年齡不限，體裁不限，最終得主可獲10 萬(wàn)元?jiǎng)?chuàng)作獎(jiǎng)金。詳情請(qǐng)點(diǎn)擊鏈接。

三明治位于上海徐匯區(qū)建國(guó)西路煥新的"靈感"空間，為上海文藝學(xué)術(shù)活動(dòng)提供免費(fèi)空間支持，

【往期活動(dòng)】