Don’t You Forget About Me

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Mhairi McFarlane (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Then (#ulink_a2b82136-a45c-56ac-9bcc-6fda60c6603d)

Tapton School, Sheffield, 2007

‘You loved me – then what right had you to leave me? Because … nothing God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.’

My most truculent fellow pupil, David Marsden, looked up and wiped his chin on his sleeve. He had given Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel the emotion of reading from the menu at Pizza Hut. As a teenage male, it was important you kept it monotonous to avoid allegations from other teenage males of being a massive bender.

The room was muggy with that syrupy heat you get as you near high summer, the sort where your clothes feel grubby by midday. In our squat box of a Sixties building, the windows heaved halfway up as poor man’s air con, we could hear the liveliness of the school field in the distance.

‘Thank you, David,’ said Mrs Pemberton, as he closed his paperback. ‘What do we think Heathcliff means in this passage?’

‘He’s nowty again because he’s not getting any,’ said Richard Hardy, and we guffawed, not just as it delayed proper academic discussion, but because the person making the joke was Richard Hardy.

There was some muttering but no proper answers. It was six weeks to the final exams and the mood was a febrile stew of excitement at imminent freedom and a bottleneck of panic about the reckoning that awaited. The tortured inhabitants of these pages were starting to get on our nerves. Try getting some real problems, like ours.

‘“Then what right had you to leave me” is a bit creepy, isn’t it,’ I said, if no one else was going to break the lengthening silence. Mrs Pemberton could get testy if they ran on, and make the homework bigger. ‘I mean, the idea Cathy had to stay with him or she deserves to be unhappy is a bit … ugh.’

‘Interesting. So you don’t think Heathcliff is justified in saying that by denying her feelings, she ruined both their lives?’

‘Well,’ I took a breath, ‘it’s the thing about how her love for Heathcliff is like the rocks underneath, constant, but gives her no pleasure,’ I say this in a rush due to the inevitable mirth at the word ‘pleasure’. ‘It doesn’t sound like it was going to be much fun? It’s all about her obligation to him.’

‘Perhaps then the love they share isn’t conventionally romantic but deep and elemental?’

‘It’s mental, alright,’ said a male voice. I glanced over and Richard Hardy winked at me. My heart rate bumped.

My teacher had an annoying way of taking me seriously and making me do actual thinking. She once kept me back and told me: ‘You play down your intelligence to enhance your standing with your peers. There’s a big wide world outside these walls, Georgina Horspool, and exam grades will get you further than their laughter. Pretty faces grow old too, you know.’

I was furious afterwards, the kind of fury you reserve for people who accuse you of something that’s absolutely true. (I was quite pleased at the ‘pretty face’ bit though. I didn’t think I was pretty, and I wouldn’t be old for ages.)

A murmur of chatter spread around the class, and the air was thick with no one caring about Wuthering Heights.

Mrs Pemberton, sensing this fatal straying of attention from the text, dropped her bombshell.

‘I’ve decided you’re going to change places. I don’t think sitting with friends is doing concentration in this room many favours.’