Daddy's Girl Read Free Page A

darlings,’ is what Madame Merle had said in her posh voice.
    Another thing that would make her mother strip her moer . Two things! She’d forgotten to give her mom the paper. And the picking-up time had changed. Yasmin felt shame wash over her.She tried so hard to do everything right, to make her mother happy, to make her smile like she used to. But everything she did just seemed to make her mother angrier. Ever since her daddy had kept her for the weekend and that Aunty Ndlovu had come with the police papers that said her father was bad like the gangsters he was meant to catch, things had been even worse.
    Yasmin smoothed open thenotice that Madame Merle had handed out. The notices were only mailed if you missed a class. ‘Saving money, darlings!’ said Madame Merle. ‘Do you think a person can eat from teaching ballet?’
    Her mother wouldn’t know that the school was closing early today because of the performance of Persephone . Calvaleen was meant to be the star, Persephone. But she’d have got the notice in the post becauseshe had stopped going to the older girls’ class a long time ago. Yasmin missed her. She crumpled the paper. She didn’t like to think about girls who disappeared. She didn’t like to think that her mother was on shift and that she would shout at Yasmin if she phoned her. No one would come to fetch her for a long time.
    She was going to be in trouble again. She knew it.
    She could hear MadameMerle’s voice.
    ‘One, two, three.’ Madame Merle’s voice cut across the music. It was the end of the dance: swan-like in their white skirts, the girls would be skimming across the room, their necks elongated, trailing their arms behind them.
    ‘Like air, girls. You’re ballerinas, not bricklayers. Jeté, jeté, jeté.’
    The tight burn in Yasmin’s throat told her tears were coming. She tooka deep breath and made herself think. She was a big girl. She could make a plan. She unzipped her emergency money pouch and looked at the coins in her palm. Two fifty cent pieces. She repeated the cellphone number she needed to dial and stood on tiptoe in front of the call box in the passage. She slotted in the first coin, then the second.
    ‘Oh Eight Two,’ she whispered. ‘Five Four Two TwoOh Oh Seven.’
    The coins clicked down the gullet of the call box. Yasmin’s tummy unclenched when the phone began to purr.
    ‘Faizal.’
    ‘Daddy.’ A lilt in her voice.
    ‘Leave a message.’
    Her father’s voice for other people.
    The call box swallowed the last coin, cutting the connection before she could leave a message. She replaced the receiver. The piano had stopped. Mister Henrywould be closing the lid, gathering his score. His eyes were always watery behind his glasses. He smelt funny. Calvaleen had told her. Yasmin didn’t want to have to wait with him. She hoisted her pink rucksack, then slipped past the security guard and through the gate to wait until her mom came.
    The afternoon sunlight slanted between the Roman pines lining the steep street. Yasmin did notlike to look at them. They were like the trees in the dark Russian fairytale forests in her book. Forests where cannibal crones like Baby Yaga Bony Legs lurked, waiting for young girls. The street was empty; only one car near the park. Dog walkers. Yasmin could hear barking. She told herself that an hour was not so long, not while it was still light.
    She listened to Madame Merle herding theolder girls into the parking lot. When the security gate opened, unleashing the minibus with its cargo of sylphs, Yasmin pressed herself deep into the bougainvillea hedge. She put her hand to her mouth, sucking the bright bead of blood where a thorn had pierced her skin.
    The saltiness reminded her how hungry she was. She had nothing in her bag but a peanut butter sandwich from yesterday. Thebread was dry and the peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth, but she took another bite as she watched two bergies make their way up the steep hill. The woman