This text is an extract from The Other Side of Truth written by Beverley Naidoo and published in 2000. This novel tells the story of a Nigerian family, The Solaja: Papa, Mama, Sade and Femi. This family is torn by the death of Mama (an assassination) and the children are forced to flee to London.
In text 4, Sade and Femi are with Mrs Bankole, a woman who had accepted to pretend that they were her children in order to flee safely.
The scene takes place in Victoria Station at first, then in a café.
The characters in presence are Sade, Femi, Mrs Bankole, Mr “Bad Temper” (a man in relation with Mrs Bankole) and a waiter whom Sade and Femi called “Machine Lady” or “The white-capped woman”.
In this excerpt, Sade and Femi have their first steps in England. They are also confronted to Mrs Bankole desertion.
My commentary can be divided into three parts.
Firstly we will see the ignorance that Sade and Femi suffered from. Secondly we will study Mrs Bankole’s desertion. And finally we will turn on the author’s style.

In this passage, we can’t close the eyes to the ignorance that Sade and Femi suffered from. Indeed from the start, they are ignored by the persons in the station, as one and all are in a hurry: no one has time in favour of people around them “people were hurrying in all directions” (page 50).
Then they are mistreated by “Machine Lady”, the waiter at the café. She doesn’t seem to be happy at working as she doesn’t look to her customers: “without looking at the children” (page 51). Sade compares her to the other waiters she has ever known with Mama and Papa, whom “often talked and joked with them” (page 51).
Afterwards Mrs Bankole doesn’t really pay attention to them, she acts like she would have prefer to be alone, as she “was silent” and spoke “forcefully” (page 49).
This ignorance presumes that something wrong is going to happen.

Definitely, this ignorance raises the alarm: Sade and Femi were going to be forsaken.
First Mrs Bankole’s