Saffy's Angel

  Her other worries are:

  Paint that takes forever to dry (she is a garden shed artist, the sort that paints anything that pays: dead pets, local views, visions, hospital walls). (‘Not exactly art,’ says Daddy.)

  Food. How hard it is to remember to buy. How quickly it vanishes.

  Her car. Petrol. Oil. Water. Air in the tyres. Strange grating noises. Terrible smells. ‘It’s like keeping some exotic pet!’ cries Mummy.

  Her secrets.

  To make up for all these problems she has …

  A shed!

  Which contains …

  The pink sofa!

  Mummy’s pink sofa is her greatest treat. It is escape and summer holidays, peace and luxury. It has worn out arms and feather cushions, paint splodges, a burnt hole in the back, a knitted patchwork blanket, an awful mangy sheepskin and an endless treasure trove of pencils, small coins, paint brushes, hair clips and teaspoons lost down the back.

  ‘Once it had little tassels,’ says Mummy. ‘Here and here,’ she touches the arms. ‘Never mind.’

  Daddy

  If you didn’t know him, if, for example, you read about him in a book, you’d think he was awful. ‘Samantha?’ you would ask. ‘And Saffy? Did … ? Was … ? Are you? THAT’S TERRIBLE!’

  If you’d never seen him smile. If you’d never had him rush home to save you from yourself. If you’d never wiped your teary, runny face on his jacket, watched him hang up his shirts (wooden hangers, 4 cm apart, colour coded, not touching), seen him search through the fridge …

  We drive him mad. He drives us mad. He has two lives, one much more glamorous than the other. We are the unglamorous life. The amazing thing is that he keeps coming back. He needn’t, but he does.

  Rose

  by everyone else

  Rose has inherited a great deal of artistic talent, which she uses with reckless destruction on all that she encounters.

  Bill Casson, father

  I called her Permanent Rose. I knew she would stay. I can’t imagine the world without her. She is perfect (like all the children). That time she went to New York without telling me, and the shop lifting (if you could call it that), the differences she has with darling Bill and those reports from school, those things do not count.

  Eve Casson, mother

  Rose is so much the smallest and the youngest in our family that I always feel we should take care of her more than we do. Sometimes I try. I go up to her bedroom and sort through her things with her. Nearly everything she owns once belonged to someone else. She doesn’t mind this. She holds up some tatty tee shirt or discarded bear for me to admire, and says ‘I like it because it was Indigo’s.’ Or mine or Saffy’s or Sarah’s, wherever it happens to come from.

  Caddy

  Rose. Don’t get me started.

  Saffron

  I don’t know. Rose. I don’t know where you’d begin. Anyway, it’s private, what I think of Rose. She does OK.

  Indigo

  By the same author

  CASSON FAMILY

  (suggested reading order)

  Saffy’s Angel

  (Winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award )

  Indigo’s Star

  Permanent Rose

  Caddy Ever After

  Forever Rose

  Caddy’s World

  The Exiles

  (Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize)

  The Exiles at Home

  (Winner of the Nestlé Smarties Prize)

  The Exiles in Love

  Wishing for Tomorrow

  Dog Friday

  The Amber Cat

  Dolphin Luck

  For younger readers

  Happy and Glorious

  Practically Perfect

  PARADISE HOUSE

  The Treasure in the Garden

  The Echo in the Chimney

  The Zoo in the Attic

  The Magic in the Mirror

  The Surprise Party

  Keeping Cotton Tail

  PUDDING BAG SCHOOL

  The Birthday Wish

  Cold Enough for Snow

  A Strong Smell of Magic

  Copyright © 2001 Hilary McKay

  First published in Great Britain in 2001

  This ebook edition published in 2011

  by Hodder Children’s Books

  The right of Hilary McKay to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 90344 7

  Typeset in Bembo by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

  Hodder Children’s Books

  A division of Hachette Children’s Books

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