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glass were cars and other taxis. No motorbikes.
    Pamela was breathing hard, her eyes brimming with tears.
    “Jade, what …? Why …?” She massaged the crown of her head gingerly, and Jade noticed one of her immaculately enamelled nails had been torn off, leaving a pink, jagged line.
    “Don’t talk now,” she said. “Later.”
    The taxi driver was busy peeling a banana with his knee propped against the wheel. While he ate the fruit, he conducted an animated conversation with the man in the passenger seat. Lots of unbroken eye contact, reminding Jade of the way David liked to drive.
    When he had finished, the taxi driver flung the banana skin out of the window and, still steering with his knee, began to peel an orange.
    The vehicle felt wallowy on the road, its uneven progress a testimony to ancient shocks, balding tyres, brakes worn down to the rim.
    Jade remembered a newspaper article she’d read recently about Toyota Quantum panel vans that had undergone cheap, illegal conversions into death-trap minibus taxis. The seats were welded to the paper-thin body of the vehicle instead of to the chassis, and there was no rollover bar. This meant that in the event of an accident, the passengers could easily be crushed; their legs snapped like twigs as the seats broke loose.
    Suddenly Jade realised that the loud, unpleasant-sounding rattle she’d noticed ever since climbing inside the taxi was coming directly from the row of seats upon which she sat.
    Taking a deep breath, she tried to view the situation in a more positive light. Bad as the driver was, and unroadworthy as his taxi appeared to be, at least nobody on board was trying to kill them. So, for the time being, they were safer.
    It was all a matter of perspective.

6
    The taxi driver joined the highway at the Grayston Drive on-ramp and veered off it again—there was no other word to describe the manoeuvre—at the Marlboro Drive exit. Traffic was backed up at the light, but that didn’t deter him. He swerved into the emergency lane and accelerated past the rows of stationary cars. Just ahead of them, another taxi pulled out and did exactly the same, forcing their driver to slam on the brakes. The vehicle slewed sideways, tyres squealing.
    Pamela’s eyes were shut tight, her lips moving. Jade wondered if she was praying.
    A couple of blocks further on, one of the passengers shouted out a request to stop. Responding instantly, the taxi driver headed straight across the double-lane road and juddered to a halt.
    “Let’s get out here,” Jade said. She’d had enough.
    They were in Marlboro Gardens, a relatively new industrial suburb. She guessed it had been planned to provide easily accessible jobs for the residents of Alexandra township. On the opposite side of the main road, Jade could see what looked like the outskirts of the township itself. Narrow, crisscrossed roads, small houses, a forest of electrical poles. No match for the large mansions in nearby Sandton, but far better than the tumbledown shacks that had made up the original township residences.
    Marlboro Gardens was dusty, with the feel of a place still under construction. Tall signs had been planted alongside the main road, advertising companies manufacturing plastic piping, engine parts, skirting boards, and pieces of equipment so obscure that Jade couldn’t even guess at their intended use.
    One of the signboards was for a coffee shop in a retail centre down the road. They walked there slowly, Pamela shuffling along because the strap of one of her silver sandals was broken.
    The shop was empty, apart from two men in golf shirts seated at a table near the entrance, both peering at a laptop. A ceiling fan whirred at high speed, fluttering the edges of the Italian flags that were draped over every available surface. A male voice— Pavarotti, perhaps?—was singing “Nessun Dorma” in the background. Jade gently steered Pamela over to a corner table where they would have a clear view of the shop’s