Chapter 2 - Chapter 1

You rarely see good things in the rear-view mirror.

A lesson I should have learned by now, but I flick a glance at the back seat anyway, watching my daughter break the rules. Her brother in the passenger seat beside me is just as bad.

"Guys, you know it's not screen time." I split my attention between the M1 and the two of them. "Put your phones away, please."

"Ma, seriously?" My daughter Zinhle's sigh is heavy with a thirteen-year-old's exasperation. "I just finished school and dance. Give me a break."

"Sorry, Ma," Siphesihle says, lowering his phone to his lap.

Zinhle expels another breath, like she's not sure who irritates her more, me for making the rules or her brother for following them.

"Suck-up," she mutters, gaze still fixed to her screen.

"Zinhle," I say. "That phone is mine if you don't put it away."

Her eyes, dark and gold-flecked, clash with mine in the mirror before she sets the phone aside. It's like staring back at myself. We're so much alike.

Skin as smooth and brown as polished walnut. Her hair, like mine, prone to curl and curl, always contracting at the slightest bit of moisture in the air. Same stubborn chin hinting at a will to match.

"She's just like you," my mother used to say when as a toddler Zinhle barrelled into mishaps despite my warnings to take care. When she'd pull herself up to run off again with fresh scrapes and bruises. "Serves you right. Now you'll see what I had to put up with raising you."