Daizy Star and the Pink Guitar Read Online Free PDF Page B

you, Beth, Willow, Murphy. You are the best friends ever, in the whole entire universe.’
    I fling my arms round them in a group hug. I knew they wouldn’t let me down! We pull apart, laughing.
    ‘What about a name for the band?’ Murphy asks. ‘How about The Custard Doughnuts?’
    ‘The Pink Guitars?’ Willow offers.
    ‘I like it,’ I say, ‘but we need something dark and sinister. We are a thrash-metal-punk band, remember? How about The Mouldy Meatballs?’
    ‘Or something really gross, like The Festering Scabs!’ Beth chips in, and we all turn and look at her.
    ‘What?’ she says. ‘I like it!’
    ‘It might be a little bit too gross,’ Willow says faintly.
    We’ll find a name, though. And we’ll practise like crazy, and get really, really good. And then we will win the Battle of the Bands – and stop my family from falling apart. Sorted!

Demo version limitation

D ad is packing his suitcase for Malawi. He puts in lots of shirts with short sleeves and hideous flowery patterns, those awful shorts he wore in Eastbourne in the summer and a pair of big flat leather sandals that show his pale, hairy toes. There is a floppy straw hat too, slightly frayed round the edges because Dad said there is no point in investing in a new sunhat when the old one is perfectly good. Perfectly hideous, more like.
      
    My dad is going to look like a madman when he gets to Malawi.
    ‘I’ll miss you!’ I tell him. ‘Do you have to go?’
    Dad looks serious. ‘It’s been a dream of mine ever since I was a student, Daizy,’ he says. ‘I want to travel, but it’s more than that – I want to give something back, make a difference.’
    ‘I wish you could just make a difference from here,’ I sigh. ‘I do understand why you want to help … I do too. I’ve sorted out some of my best books for you to take over. You said the kids out there don’t have very much.’

    Dad’s face lights up.
    ‘Daizy, that’s wonderful!’ he says. ‘These will be so welcome!’
    ‘There’s this old football and some kit and boots to go with it,’ I add, handing over Ethan Miller’s offering. ‘This yucky boy at school brought them in for you to take.’
    Then Pixie hands over an old rag doll and Becca donates a pair of pink fingerless gloves, and Dad smiles and says he is proud to have such thoughtful, generous daughters.
    ‘You will come back, won’t you?’ I ask.

    ‘Daizy!’ Dad exclaims. ‘Of course I will! I want us all to be together – you know that!’
    The trouble is, Dad wants us all to be together in Malawi, and everyone else wants us all to be together here.
    At least I hope everyone else wants us all to be together. Mum is still tight-lipped and quiet. There have been no more big rows, but I can tell she is not happy about any of this. Maybe she is actually quite glad to be shot of Dad for a while?
    ‘What if you don’t come back, though?’ Pixie pipes up anxiously. ‘What if you get eaten by a leopard or savaged by a ferocious honey badger?’
    ‘What if you get malaria?’ I chip in. ‘Or typhoid fever?’
    ‘Not going to happen,’ Dad sighs. ‘Don’t worry, girls, I’ll be fine!”
    ‘Better take some suncream,’ Mum says crisply. ‘You know how you turn beetroot in the sun and peel like a sheet of flaky pastry.’
    Dad huffs. ‘I have done my research, thank you, Livvi,’ he says curtly. ‘It is actually the rainy season in Malawi right now. I shall be packing an umbrella, not suncream, thank you very much.’
    ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Mum snaps.
    If only we could go back to how life was before Dad packed his job in and got a mid-life crisis. I don’t like the way things are now, not one little bit.
    We go to the airport to say goodbye, of course. We line up in the check-in hall while Dad books in his suitcase and then we have milkshakes and muffins in one of the cafes, and even Dad has a strawberry smoothie and a triple choc chip muffin because muffins are probably very