Indigo's Star

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Don’t look!’ she ordered Indigo.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said meekly.

  Eve was cooking.

  ‘Chicken soup,’ she said proudly. ‘Full of goodness! You’ve been gone for hours, Indigo darling! Make him a cup of tea, Saffy, and take his shoes off. I can’t. Every time I stop stirring this soup it erupts like a volcano!’

  ‘He can take off his own shoes,’ said Saffy. ‘But I’ll get him some tea. Where’s the big atlas? Sarah needs it.’

  Sarah was hanging over a very small world map in the back of someone’s old diary.

  ‘I know flying would be quicker,’ she told Indigo cheerfully. ‘I will work on flying! But just for now I’ve found an overland route!’

  ‘Overland to where?’

  ‘America, of course. By Europe and Asia. Perfectly simple. I’m a tiny bit worried about the Bering Sea but I bet there’s a ferry. Don’t turn your nose up like that, Indy! It’s just a matter of getting my parents across to France with the car, and then getting them totally lost.’

  ‘Sarah, darling!’ said Eve.

  ‘They like going to France,’ said Sarah, patiently. ‘And once they are there it’s land all the way. More or less. The thing to do is keep on heading East.’

  ‘And avoiding war zones,’ said Saffron.

  ‘And of course avoiding war zones. All the way to the Bering Sea. Then you just pop down through Alaska and Canada, and across.’

  Rose sighed deeply into her sketch block and said, ‘Mountains.’

  ‘Mountains!’ repeated Sarah scornfully, turning pages in the big atlas that Saffron had now found for her. ‘Look! Here we are! This is where we’ll start, and over there is where we’re heading. Hardly any mountains!’

  ‘Look again!’ said Saffron. ‘Those bits they’ve coloured in purple and icy blue? With black pointy tops? Like this one. Fourteen thousand and ninety-seven feet!’

  ‘Well, the Alps perhaps,’ admitted Sarah. ‘And those in the middle. The Urals (horrible name). And I suppose the Rockies, but there’s bound to be roads.’

  By supper time, she had found ways over, or under, or around, all obstructing mountains. An hour later, a foolproof method of getting her parents to begin the journey. (‘Get them drunk on cheap French wine. Bribe a local to give them wrong directions and then, when they’ve gone so far they can’t turn back, tell them it’s educational!’)

  ‘It’s possible,’ admitted Saffron at this point. ‘Educational might just swing it!’

  Outside it became properly dark. The family abandoned the kitchen to the chaotic results of Eve’s soup-making, and moved into the sitting-room. Sarah and Saffron lay down on the carpet with the atlas between them, and began checking out Russian ferry ports. Soon Caddy and Eve had joined in the game and were crossing continents with almost equal enthusiasm.

  Rose was curled quietly in a corner of the sofa, dreaming over her sketch block. Whatever she had drawn there was still unrevealed. Her family carefully turned their eyes away from it, knowing that in time it would be produced for their inspection, to puzzle or astonish them.

  ‘Lend me your pencil, Rosy Pose?’ begged Sarah from the floor.

  Rose passed it down and Sarah took it and drew a firm black line from Russia to Alaska across the Bering Sea. She regarded it with great pleasure for a little while and then said, ‘Now we can get on.’

  ‘Alaska,’ said Caddy, peering over Sarah’s shoulder. ‘There’ll be gorgeous bears.’

  ‘Do you mind if we take a little time on the way to go gorgeous bear watching, Indy?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Indigo, glancing at his watch.

  All evening he had been very aware of the passing of time. At ten o’clock he looked at his watch again. Tom’s flight would be just about to take off.

  Indigo looked out of the uncurtained window into the dark, starry night. He thought of the planes he saw every day, heading west across the sky. Some of them really must be on their way to America.

  Rose had slipped quietly out of the room. Indigo, silently doing the same, saw her hunting about in the kitchen cupboard, pushing aside pots of jam. A minute later she stole out of the house and into the garden.

  Indigo followed, closing the door quietly behind him.

  ‘Rose?’ he called in a low voice, not wanting to startle her.

  ‘I’m here,’ said Rose, and Indigo located her, looking very small, flat on her back on the lawn. She had her glasses on.

  ‘I’m looking at the stars,’ she said, as he stretched out beside her. ‘These glasses are very good for stars. I can see them everywhere. Hundreds. How many are there, do you think?’

  ‘Thousands and thousands.’

  ‘The ones that move are aeroplanes. One of them might be Tom’s.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t use to know…’ Rose stopped and swallowed, and then bravely began again. ‘I didn’t use to know they were there. The stars. But now I can see them all. Plain as plain. Can you?’

  Indigo suddenly found that he couldn’t. To him the stars were just splashes of silver, blurring and fragmenting and dissolving in the sky.

  ‘Frances will be all right when he gets there,’ said Rose.

  ‘Yes. I’m sure she will.’

  ‘Do you think Tom’s all right too, Indy?’

  ‘Well,’ said Indigo. ‘I suppose…I expect…he’s a bit sad right now. Like us…But he’ll be all right.’

  ‘Do you remember when I first got my glasses and saw the stars? And you said, Wish on the moving ones.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said it worked for aeroplanes too.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rose did not say any more, but she and Indigo stayed out for a long, long time, wishing, and watching the stars, the steady ones and the ones that passed with red and green lights across the sky.

  Write Home!

  Tom’s grandmother stood over Tom until he began a letter home. He did it because she was the boss; it was her house, she could kick him out and he’d have to go.

  So he wrote:

  This is as far as I can get to a million miles from home. It’s rubbish but it’s not as rubbish as being there with you. Obviously.

  It rains all the time. Gran treats me like I’m eight years old. The food is terrible. I’ve only met about two intelligent people since I’ve been here. You won’t be interested, but my guitar is finished. It’s useless. I don’t know why I bother with it.

  Gran says the least I can do is ask how you all are. As if I cared.

  ‘Hurry up!’ commanded Tom’s grandmother, in and out of the kitchen, all aggravated and grumpy.

  ‘There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘Can I see what you’ve put? Would you like me to help?’

  ‘I don’t think it would help if you saw what I’d put,’ said Tom, and stuffed the letter in his pocket to make sure she didn’t. Then he went out to find the only intelligent people he’d met in the country, and when he left them again, much happier, much later, he dropped the letter by mistake.

  And the next time he visited they were waiting for him.

  ‘You are not even close to a million miles from home!’ Saffron told him. ‘And why is it so rubbish here? Haven’t we been nice to you?’

  ‘The food can’t be that terrible,’ said Caddy. ‘You ate three sausage sandwiches when you were here yesterday. I know. I cooked them and I counted.’

  ‘Everyone treats me like I’m eight,’ said Rose. ‘Everyone. Ever since I stopped being seven they have. You just have to put up with it.’

  ‘Two intelligent people?’ asked Sarah. ‘Two? Who would that be? Me and who else?’

  ‘I’ll have your guitar if you don’t want it,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Do you really not care about anyone in America?’ asked Rose. ‘Not a single one of them?’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘Not even the bears?’

  ‘The bears? Oh, the bears! Well yes, I care about the bears. B
ut the bears will be fine, they’ll be OK. I left a list of instructions before I came away.’

  Rose looked at him, waiting.

  ‘I wrote: Bears! Keep smart. Keep checking for fleas. Don’t get sticky. Sticky isn’t good. Don’t eat up the tourists who come to look at you. Pick which radio stations you listen to very carefully. On some of them the music is really bad. Wear your baseball caps the right way round it you really feel you must wear them at all. If you see another bear with theirs on backwards advise them to change it at once. If you’re playing with a band try and get tuned up before the audience gets in. Some bears think they look cool tuning up on stage but they don’t. Don’t book a trip to England. You would like the fantastic sandwiches but it rains all the time and it will feel like a million miles from home. Also they will take your guitar if they can and not counting me, there are only about five intelligent people in the country …’

  ‘OK you can shut up now,’ said Indigo.

  The World of the Casson Family

  by Rose Casson

  The first thing to say about the world of the Casson family is that I do not know who is in it.

  Our family has extended. However, it began with Mum and Dad, Caddy and Indigo and Saffy and me in a house that the Victorians built, thinking it would be comfortable (how wrong they were) half way down a long road, in a largish town in the middle of England.

  It looks like the most unmagical place in the world.

  It isn’t.

  Caddy

  Caddy’s real name is Cadmium Gold, but nobody calls her that. My friends say Caddy is pretty. I suppose she is. She moves very quickly and she has a sort of shine about her when she’s happy. She is often happy – it doesn’t take much.

  Caddy says that she likes animals better than people. I don’t really believe this is true, but she thinks it is. Animals do not have to be cute and furry for Caddy to like them. Spiders, worms … Once, right in the middle of a perfectly peaceful day she rushed downstairs and started talking about worms. Apparently they visit … (I nearly started telling you myself.) But if you want to know I’ll put it on Twitter. Say, and I’ll do it.

  The thing about Caddy is that she is kind. I used to think Caddy was kind because it was easier than fighting. Then for an experiment I tried being kind myself. I lasted about half a day. It’s not easy.

  Saffron

  is complicated …

  She’s my cousin as well as my sister because my parents adopted her before I was born, when her own mother (my mum’s sister) died. She didn’t discover this until she was eight and found her name was not on the colour chart with mine and Indigo’s and Caddy’s. She wasn’t too thrilled about that, according to Caddy. She turned intelligent (but maybe she would have done anyway) and waspish and independent and sleek and cool and gold.

  Saffron has a friend who is like her other half. She is called Sarah. I cannot imagine what Saffron would be like without Sarah, nor what Sarah would be like without Saffy.

  Sometimes, when I am painting, I put two colours together that apart you would hardly notice, but together they glow.

  Like the colours of a kingfisher, that blue and that orange.

  Indigo

  Indigo has smoke dark eyes and brown hair and a very slow smile. He is tall and too thin and stubborn and brave and I think he is the only one of us who really thinks about what will happen next and if it does, whether it will be possible to survive.

  Indigo creates meals by saying, ‘That and that and that!’ Then in everything goes, with chillies. Grilled cheese appears on the top of everything except curry but including the birthday apple cake he made for his friend David.

  What else? He plays guitar but cannot sing. ‘Ooh dear,’ he says, listening to himself. It doesn’t stop him. He likes ice and rock and stones and fossils.

  Sometimes he detaches himself from us all. You see it in his eyes first. Then the way he suddenly lifts his head. And the next thing you know, he is off.

  Gone.

  Mummy

  (that’s Eve to the world)

  It’s not true that Mummy calls everyone darling to save her bothering to remember names.

  And if she seems scatty, she’s not; she’s juggling. She keeps multiple worries spinning in the air. They are:

  Saffy and Caddy and Indigo and me.

  Daddy.

  The needy people who besiege her constantly. What do they need? Sometimes no more than a bit of noticing. To be called darling, or asked a favour. Sometimes they need rescuing. Or forgiving (naming no names but giving hard stares at my father).

  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 © 2003 Hilary McKay

  First published in Great Britain in 2003

  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.