Worlds Apart Read Free Page B

found a gate. I didn’t know if it was the right one and I didn’t care. Kicking hard against the bars, I lifted myself up. I didn’t care about the pain (nothing came close to the imam’s caning) – I just had to get out of there. I jumped down the other side of the gate and sprinted down to my street.
    The skies darkened above. It felt later than the time I normally returned from mosque. My mind raced for excuses to give at home but I couldn’t think of any. I imagined Mum worried sick, thinking I’d been run over by a truck and getting Dad out of bed to go and find me.
    It made me run faster, wanting to stop them worrying. I slowed down as I got close to the house, calming my breath, relieved to be on safe territory. I imagined them stood inside waiting for me and opening their arms for a hug, glad to see me alive.
    I spotted Dad’s silhouette in the front room through the net curtains as I walked up the garden path. He wassat with someone, which was strange for this time in the evening. Before I had a chance to knock, the front door was flung open. Mum’s face looked down at me like thunder.
    ‘I’m sorry, Amma,’ I quickly offered, following her inside. ‘The imam had us reading very late tonight and I ran back as quickly as I could—’
    ‘Where’s your scarf?’ she interjected with a stern tone.
    I touched the crown of my head, racking my brains. It must have fallen off during the chase. I was not going back to find it.
    ‘You were reading so hard your headscarf fell off?’ Mum offered.
    I opened my mouth to tell her I’d left it in the lobby of the mosque when I put my shoes back on but she got in before me.
    ‘You are so good at reading you don’t need your book any more?’
    My heart skipped a beat as I looked down at my grazed hands. I must have dropped it when running across the netball court as I pulled the elastic up on my trousers.
    ‘I left them both at mosque, Amma,’ I blurted. ‘I’ll bring them back home tomorrow.’
    Mum didn’t respond; she just stared at me. I couldn’t figure it out, then suddenly the front-room door opened and Dad came out, followed by the imam. My imam.
    I couldn’t believe he was here with my dad putting up a united front against me. I wanted to tell Dad not to believe anything the imam may have told him about me not being at mosque tonight because it wasn’t true. But Dad didn’t even look at me. Instead, he turned his back on me and left the house with the imam.
    Panicked, I ran to the kitchen where Mum had disappeared. I cared less what she thought, but she was the only way to my dad. I could hear voices inside and pressed my ear on the door. My heart slumped as I recognised Auntie Pataani’s voice. I couldn’t stand her. She was fat, loud and stank of coconut oil. She wasn’t my real aunt, thank God, but a friend of Mum’s who I had to call ‘Auntie’.
    I imagined her sat on her big bum, feet up on the pouffe, stuffing her face with samosas and gossiping about everyone. Her nickname was ‘Telephone Box’ because she spent her days cruising around town looking for Pakistani girls wrongfully out of school, then she would dive into the nearest telephone box and ring their parents.
    ‘Thoba Thoba,’ I heard her say through the door. This was her way of warding off the ‘evil spirit’ that had got into me and was causing me to behave in such a way. ‘That is terrible news about your daughter. No parent should have to go through this. Where does she get it from?’
    My mum began giving her a rundown of all the women in Dad’s family.
    ‘You always get one that takes after the mother and one taking after the father,’ she told Mum wisely. ‘Your other daughter has taken after you, of course. She is a very good girl.’
    ‘I don’t know what to do with this one,’ my mum said in crisis mode, ‘she’s trouble.’
    I clutched the doorknob tight. No, I’m not!
    Mum carried on: ‘The school have already complained that she hit a boy on