Maya's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

a denim skirt. Then she hurried back to her mum’s room.
    “Mum, did you go into Appleby today at all?”
    Her mum looked up from the computer. She was lying on her sofa reading emails on her laptop, and she looked tired, but she brightened up when she saw Maya.
    “No, that interview went on for ages, and then I’ve had lots of work stuff to catch up on. Why?”
    “There’s a new shop.” Maya perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning against her mum’s shoulder. The stylist that morning had raved about their hair, how it was exactly the same colour, and she was right,Maya noticed, seeing her own next to her mum’s. She could hardly tell the difference. “A clothes shop, a really cool one. It’s called Daisy. I spotted it when we were on the bus on the way home. There was a gorgeous dress…”
    “Oh, I’ll have to go and have a look.” Her mum smiled. “Maybe buy you a present. They had girls’ clothes, did they?”
    “Yes, but have you ever heard of Fairtrade clothes, Mum? The window display said they sold Fairtrade, and it was all organic, too.”
    Her mum frowned. “That sounds a bit strange. More your kind of thing than mine.” She shuddered a little. “It’s probably all woven out of tree bark, or something.”
    Maya’s mum wore much more designery stuff than Maya. She’d even modelled for a photoshoot years and years ago in a fur coat, which made Maya furious just thinking about it. Maya’s mum teased her about looking like a hippy.
    “It wasn’t all tie-dye and long skirts, Mum. It looked great. But I can’t work out the Fairtrade thing. If it really does mean Fairtrade clothes, it’s the best timing. We have to do a project on it. The whole class is doing theirs on Fairtrade chocolate – we want tohave something that’s just us. This would be perfect!”
    “It sounds much better than most school projects. No junk modelling?”
    Maya gave her a Look. Maya’s recycling bug had hit her in Year Two, when they’d had a teacher who was very concerned about the environment and did lots of work on green issues with the class. Maya had really got enthusiastic about it – so much that she had her only major fight with Macey, over Macey’s junk model of a space station, which had been made out of plastic bottles, loo rolls and all sorts of odd bits. And a lot of silver paint.
    Maya had gone a bit over the top with the class recycling competition, and several bits of space station had mysteriously vanished, including the astronauts’ living quarters. Macey hadn’t spoken to her for three weeks. They’d made up eventually, but Maya never stopped being into recycling – and solar power, and electric cars, and composting, and organic food. Her dad had said once that he felt like anything that was fun was bound to be “wasting the earth’s resources” somehow. That was after Maya had argued with him for a solid hour about his new car.
    “And we can do anything we like – Mr Finlay said to be imaginative. Maybe we could go and talk tothe people who run the shop about where they get the clothes from? Like a TV interview,” Maya said thoughtfully. “We could even video it! But I don’t know anything about Fairtrade fashion. I suppose I could just search for it online.”
    Her mum frowned. “Actually, I do remember reading something about it. Emma Watson, you know, the actress from
Harry Potter,
she’s designed clothes for an ethical fashion company. We should look her up.”
    “Ethical fashion? Is that something else like Fairtrade?”
    Her mum was nodding as she typed. “Mmm. No child labour.”
    “That happens with clothes too?” Maya asked anxiously. “Mr Finlay was showing us pictures of children harvesting cocoa beans today.”
    Maya’s mum made a face. “Lots of clothes companies have been in trouble about it recently. There’ve been reports of children working in awful conditions, in India especially, and then the clothes they make being sold here really cheaply. Oh, here you