Wuthering Heights
ALSO BY TANYA LANDMAN
Two Words
Passing for White
One Shot
Jane Eyre: A Retelling
First published in 2020 in Great Britain by
Barrington Stoke Ltd
18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP
This ebook edition first published in 2020
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Text © 2020 Tanya Landman
The moral right of Tanya Landman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request
ISBN: 978-1-78112-988-3
For Isaac and Jack, a Joseph-free version
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
A stranger is lying in my bed. He has helped himself to my books. His pudgy fingers are tracing the words I wrote as a child. Words meant for no one but myself. Words no one else should read.
And now the stranger is speaking aloud the names I scratched into the paint on the window ledge.
Catherine Earnshaw – the girl I was born.
Catherine Linton – the wife I became.
Catherine Heathcliff – who I should have been.
Catherine Heathcliff – who I was in my heart.
Catherine Heathcliff – who I was in my soul.
The stranger pronounces each name in turn, uttering them over and over until the air swarms with Catherines. It’s a calling. A summons. He’s given me form, brought me into being – a child lost and wandering on the moor for twenty years but now come home.
He sees me, but he will not let me in. He is cruel, this stranger. I grasp his wrist with my small cold hand and beg most pitifully, but he shows no mercy. The stranger tries to prise my fingers from his arm. When he cannot, he grinds my wrist on the window’s broken glass. My blood runs down onto the window ledge, pooling, blotting out my names.
And now Heathcliff is here. Calling me, begging me, “Cathy, do come. Oh, do – once more! Oh, my heart’s darling, hear me this time!”
“I am here,” I tell him. Because I always have been.
But Heathcliff does not hear me. He does not see. He cannot.
Not yet.
I was always too much of one thing and too little of the other. Too loud. Too rowdy. Too wilful. Not meek or mild or gentle enough. Not ladylike. Mother and Father and the maid scolded me constantly, “Why can’t you be a good girl, Cathy? Why can’t you behave?” The more they asked, the worse I got.