Read Strawberry Sisters Online
Authors: Candy Harper
Strawberry Sisters
Also in the Strawberry Sisters series:
Perfectly Ella
Older books by Candy Harper:
Have a Little Faith
Keep the Faith
Leap of Faith
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Candy Harper
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Candy Harper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN 978-1-4711-4708-1
eBook ISBN 978-1-4711-4709-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Bembo by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and support the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading
international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.
For my moody big sister, Naomi
(who grew up to be a real sweetheart)
You can never find a hairbrush in our house. You’d think that with four sisters and one mum, all with long hair, there would be plenty of combs and brushes and cute
hairslides lying about, but the truth is that hairbrushes disappear quicker than chocolate-chip cookies in this place. Which is why I keep a secret supply in my bedroom. Of both cookies and a
brush. But someone (and I had a pretty good idea of which someone) had stolen my secret brush.
I knew it wasn’t Mum. She doesn’t borrow my things. Chloe, who I share a bedroom with, is always taking my possessions without asking. But I ruled her out because even though she is
only a year younger than me and therefore practically a teenager – meaning she should really start paying some attention to her appearance – she never brushes her hair if she can help
it and, last time I saw Chloe, her hair was in its usual sticking-up-like-a-loo-brush state. My next sister down, Ella, is always neat and tidy, but her manners are far too good to go through my
stuff. So that left my little sister, Lucy.
‘Lucy!’ I shouted. ‘Where’s my hairbrush?’
‘It’s twenty to twenty!’ she shouted back. When Lucy doesn’t want to answer your questions, she pretends that you asked her what the time is. Except she’s only
seven and she doesn’t know how to tell the time, so it’s always twenty to twenty in Lucy Land.
‘I said,
where’s my hairbrush?
’ I shouted even louder.
No answer. I was supposed to be meeting my best friend, Lauren, to go shopping in town. Obviously, I couldn’t shop with scrumpled hair. I stomped downstairs.
Lucy was in the sitting room surrounded by stuffed animals.
‘Have you got my hairbrush?’
‘I’m playing with my pets.’
I looked down at a toy hedgehog family who seemed to be about to attack a toy rabbit family with teaspoons. Then I spotted my hairbrush at the back of the line of hedgehogs. I picked it up.
‘Don’t take him!’ Lucy shrieked.
And she actually snatched the brush back from me and whacked me on the arm with it.
‘Ow! Don’t smack me!’
‘That’s what you get for trying to tear a poor baby hedgehog away from its mother.’
I thought it was weird that Lucy would want a hairbrush; she’s not exactly keen on keeping tidy. She’d obviously borrowed my hairbrush to complete her hedgehog family.
Unbelievable.
‘It’s not a toy!’ I said, grabbing it back. ‘I need it to brush my hair.’
Lucy pushed past me and picked up the phone.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to call the RSPCA and tell on you.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Tell them what? That my hair is tangled? I haven’t been cruel to any animals.’ I waved the brush at her. ‘This isn’t actually a
hedgehog.’
She hugged her largest cuddly hedgehog to her chest. ‘But Prickles is and you’ve broken her heart.’
‘Prickles is a stuffed toy!’
‘
Shh!
You’re hurting her feelings.’
I wrestled the phone out of her hand and slammed it back in place.
‘I’ll use Chloe’s mobile,’ she said.
‘You don’t even know the number for the RSPCA.’
‘Yes I do. I learnt it off by heart from that sticker Mum used to cover up that chip in the car window.’ She scowled at me. ‘And I know the number for when it’s cruelty
to children and that’s what you’re doing. I’m going to phone them and then they’ll come and take you away.’
‘Good! Then maybe I can live somewhere nice and quiet without a load of annoying sisters!’
But Lucy didn’t hear me because she’d already run out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Honestly! This is the kind of madness I have to put up with.
I took a deep breath and started running the brush through my hair. I’m lucky that my hair isn’t wiry like Chloe’s or fluffy like Ella’s. Mine is dead straight and
shiny.
Before I’d finished my phone chirped and I slid it out of my pocket to see who was texting me. It was Lauren. At least my best friend never annoys me. She’s brilliant, unlike my
family; she completely gets me. Her texts always cheer me up.
Except this one didn’t. It said:
Can’t make it for shopping. I’m sick! Sorry. Call you later.
I blew out a big breath. I hadn’t seen Lauren all half-term because she’d been at her aunt’s and now she was ill.
I thought about going shopping by myself, but it isn’t quite the same when you haven’t got anyone to try outfits on with or make sarcastic remarks about how pouty the assistants in
Topshop are. And I’d been sort of hoping that we might see Cute Josh from school. Sometimes he and his friends hang out in front of the skate shop. But I didn’t feel like trying to spot
him without Lauren.
I thought about asking Chloe if she wanted to go into town. When we were little, Chloe and I were good friends, then, a year and a half ago, our parents got divorced and everything changed. I
thought that the break-up was completely my dad’s fault and I got really cross with him, and with Chloe, because I thought that she was taking his side.
Recently, my mum has explained things to me and now I understand that my parents got divorced because that was what they both wanted to do. And I realised it was stupid for me to be mad at Chloe
because she wasn’t taking sides and, despite the fact she’s a bit sweaty and noisy, she’s actually quite a good sister. But, even though we’ve spent most of this half-term
moving things around so that Chloe and I are sharing a bedroom again, we still don’t exactly have a lot of interests in common. When I go shopping, I like looking at clothes and the market
stall with all the gothic jewellery, whereas Chloe likes JD Sports and the bakery. Anyway, she was in the garden with her giant friend, Thunder. They were supposed to be playing badminton, except I
think that in the official rules players don’t whack each other with the rackets quite so much.
I went looking for Ella; she’s only eleven, but she’s quite sensible really and she’s the kind of person who does stuff when you ask her to.
‘Ella, do you want to go into town with me?’ I said, sticking my head into the room that she shares with Lucy.
Ella looked up. She was crouched over on the floor surrounded by squares of card and coloured pencils.
‘Um . . .’ she said. ‘I’m making revision cards for maths. We’ve got a test next week and Ashandra’s coming over to revise with me tomorrow, but I could
finish them later.’