When I was six years old, Father said he was going to Liverpool. Sixty miles there, sixty miles back, and he was walking the whole way. If Father told us the reason for his journey, I can’t recall it. He’d be gone three days, he said, and when he returned to Wuthering Heights he’d bring us presents.

When Father asked what we wanted, my brother Hindley said, “A fiddle.” Father gave him a smile, for he liked to think of his son as a musician. Then Father looked at me. I saw the hope in his eyes. He wanted me to be like Beauty in Beauty and the Beast and ask him for something simple that cost nothing. A kingfisher’s feather perhaps, or the shell of a robin’s egg, or the first rose of summer plucked from a hedgerow.

I opened my mouth to speak, but before the words came out I saw something else in Father’s eyes, something deeper. It was a shadow of desperation, an expectation of disappointment. At that moment I knew I’d never measure up, no matter how hard I tried. It just wasn’t in me to be the obedient, devoted daughter my father craved. And I was sick of trying to be her. So I said I wanted a whip with an ivory handle carved in the shape of tiger’s head, inlaid with silver and gold, and with rubies for its eyes. It should be long and supple too so I could beat my pony to ribbons when it did not gallop fast enough.

I suffered two full days of Mother’s nagging and the maid’s scolding while Father was gone. My brother Hindley was allowed to do whatever he pleased and to go wherever he wanted, for boys will be boys. But I had to be sweet natured and obedient and help around the house.

On the morning of the third day I slipped away from Mother’s grasp, running onto the moor, my skirts raised high, as barefoot as a beggar. I ran until the pain in my side tore at me so hard I could run no more. By then I’d reached the high, rocky crags. The day was warm and I lay back on the springy turf and shut my eyes. I could feel the earth pulsing beneath my back. I could hear the throbbing of its life force as if I were a baby in my mother’s belly, listening to her heart beat. I felt a tug at my chest, something pulling at me, and then I was breaking free … I rose up out of myself into the spring air, flying with the lapwings into the blue sky, carried on the wind towards the billowing clouds. I looked down and could see my body far below me, scrunched up like a piece of waste paper. And being good or bad didn’t matter any more. I was tumbling, spinning, whirling, purely and fully myself, while at the same time lost in Nature.