I was twelve years old and Heathcliff around thirteen. We were gathered by the fire: Nelly with her knitting on one side, Father in his chair on the other, me sitting on the floor leaning against Father’s knees. Heathcliff lay stretched out, basking in the fire’s warmth like a cat, his head in my lap. We’d tired ourselves out that day and I suppose we were oddly quiet, for Father laid a hand on my head and said, “Why can’t you always be a good lass, Cathy?”

I laughed and replied, “Why can’t you always be a good man, Father?”

Poor thing! Father could no more understand me joking than he could when I was being serious. He winced as if I’d struck him. His look was so upset that I regretted my teasing words. I kissed Father’s hand and then began to sing one of his favourite songs in a low voice to soothe him to sleep.

Father’s hand slipped from my head as he fell into a doze. For a good half hour or more we sat as quiet as mice. We might all be sitting there still if Nelly hadn’t decided it was time for bed.

I stood up to wish Father good night. Putting my arms around his neck, I was about to kiss his cheek. But something stopped me. Sleep and death might look the same, but they are so very different. His skin was still warm, his face hadn’t changed. But my father had gone and all that was left in his chair was an empty shell.

“Oh, he’s dead, Heathcliff!” I cried. “He’s dead!”

I remember weeping that night, weeping bitterly. I thought I’d killed him. I wept and wept and wept. For Father. For myself. For Heathcliff. He and I clung to each other like shipwrecked souls in a storm. We both knew that no good would come of this. None at all.

Hindley came home for Father’s funeral and he brought a wife with him: a woman he’d never thought to mention in his letters to Father. How everyone’s tongues wagged! The Lintons and the Braithwaites were agog, their eyes on stalks. Heathcliff and I were all but forgotten in the light of Hindley and his wife.

Hindley was twenty years old by then, his wife two or three years younger. He looked different: he’d grown taller, leaner, more handsome. But his temperament was as ugly as it had ever been. Hindley was a man now, the master of Wuthering Heights, and his bride was its mistress, though she couldn’t have been more empty headed, prattling and useless. Her name was Frances and she was a dainty, delicate thing, pretty enough and with sparkling eyes. She fussed over me to begin with, calling me sister, saying we’d be such fine friends, trying to buy my affection with gifts of ribbons and the like.

Frances should have saved her breath and her gifts. I hated every fibre of her being. She’d looked down her nose at Heathcliff the moment she’d stepped into the house. That alone had made me furious. But then she’d called Heathcliff dirty and shuddered as if he was something disgusting and repellent.