скачать книгу бесплатно
Don’t You Forget About Me
Mhairi McFarlane
You always remember your first love. Don’t you…?’I loved it! So funny and warm. A delicious read’ Marian KeyesIt began with four words.‘I love your laugh. x’But that was twelve years ago. It really began the day Georgina was fired from The Worst Restaurant in Sheffield (© Tripadvisor) and found The Worst Boyfriend in the World (© Georgina’s best friends) in bed with someone else.So when her new boss, Lucas McCarthy, turns out to be the boy who wrote those words to her all that time ago, it feels like the start of something.The only problem? He doesn’t seem to remember Georgina – at all…
Copyright (#ua195024c-7219-5fbf-bc1b-3168b09301d1)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Mhairi McFarlane 2019
Cover design: Holly MacDonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Abbey Lossing
Mhairi McFarlane asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008169336
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008169329
Version: 2018-10-30
Dedication (#ua195024c-7219-5fbf-bc1b-3168b09301d1)
For my niece, Sylvie
A small superhero
Epigraph (#ua195024c-7219-5fbf-bc1b-3168b09301d1)
Love’s strange so real in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on
Simple Minds
Contents
Cover (#u169d35d6-0865-58e0-9fb4-10ff4d57dd19)
Title Page (#u7e2ee361-a721-5f5f-bebf-19024044b571)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Then (#ue0e0fb00-5c8b-5693-a217-ea71460b5ecf)
Chapter 1: Now (#ue3516816-9811-53da-8cf4-2946cd0417b4)
Chapter 2 (#u098b663f-9089-52a4-ad96-ed4b1cc006f3)
Chapter 3 (#uc1dfcb10-dc6f-5e57-9fb5-15fccf1f19ef)
Chapter 4 (#u27af5a83-935d-5085-90a9-3934939a568b)
Chapter 5 (#u8e59e9df-76bb-539c-a0ce-e09cec62e0f4)
Chapter 6 (#uea9bb006-94c7-5738-91f2-dc43c6a4a53e)
Chapter 7 (#u3b120f7b-495b-57d3-bfa5-69b4dc2f86c2)
Chapter 8 (#ucae21af2-4a96-534e-925d-ab80168fabcf)
Chapter 9 (#uef55b872-d0bd-5b25-8800-c3dff5fb7deb)
Chapter 10 (#u2f765317-bbdc-541d-bc2c-7eb4d29bd85f)
Chapter 11 (#ubb8b2fce-39f6-5b7a-a8ad-7c1a0965c25a)
Chapter 12 (#u1401879d-99fe-5038-aa67-05de125bcf34)
Chapter 13 (#u8508f729-3608-5399-a8c0-74d809eb8478)
Chapter 14 (#u4e6d3224-dafd-5075-8480-925ac3254247)
Chapter 15 (#u345373aa-5f32-5665-9515-542ad9c685f4)
Chapter 16 (#uab0f4412-2020-5d83-83fc-e4a5bbc0020f)
Chapter 17 (#u1521976c-83a2-531d-a366-43157584e523)
Chapter 18 (#ud54b60bf-338a-50a0-ad32-6c941b304e00)
Chapter 19 (#u6b859df0-0d45-5b76-ba1c-18ce587ec7fb)
Chapter 20 (#u12642fcb-8239-52fc-b4a8-6bec1d56ae76)
Chapter 21 (#u21d7d23a-99ba-5bd0-ad71-63d78e1c256b)
Chapter 22 (#u868818a5-24d0-59bc-8b63-ce8890d6ba00)
Chapter 23 (#u74127ee6-cf88-52a0-84b3-4bbd92a0301c)
Chapter 24 (#uffad33dc-f792-5656-978a-386e1b5abefc)
Chapter 25 (#u37be0303-9293-5bf4-ae31-ace9fb2f0bbe)
Chapter 26 (#uede27368-b129-5bf6-ba53-aed98ae05d24)
Chapter 27 (#ub7ad16e8-6ca6-5f1b-858a-6b3bfceb61f5)
Chapter 28 (#u07647322-1d9f-5c42-bc0a-be3d1f85ab67)
Chapter 29 (#u9fe39fc6-ddb5-58d7-8809-b8f6add4d57c)
Chapter 30 (#u18165c86-9e25-5c77-95ee-ef96b68a7c6b)
Chapter 31 (#ubdcce480-b1c5-55ef-826b-e8a0d3b7ab42)
Chapter 32 (#u198a4065-2d02-555a-9a00-5c0dacb10168)
Chapter 33 (#uce2043ef-e526-5aef-b368-5cd83c817d99)
Chapter 34 (#ua8c78b43-38a8-5c79-8f5a-271f70239999)
Chapter 35 (#u4f50ec8a-4f65-5acd-9e3b-c676569026ec)
Chapter 36 (#u8cbdf56d-fb9d-5ef1-9b9c-b0713b4f3c2a)
Chapter 37 (#u1be5cb41-695b-5d58-bd47-76b908198928)
Chapter 38 (#uf8fed33a-b705-55b4-bc6b-14f394f0d64e)
Chapter 39 (#udeeead66-c5f3-5f4b-905d-23a192289400)
Chapter 40 (#ucf202ee1-f3f7-56e9-b2f0-35ef170b897c)
Chapter 41 (#uc187756e-0266-5c04-96d7-9c51e26b2fd0)
Chapter 42 (#ubbf4eed0-420b-5f44-8cc3-6ec7209ae1c7)
Chapter 43 (#udc7b8a63-e448-54a0-955a-fc388affef7d)
Chapter 44 (#u460c6686-1bb1-5cd0-b3fe-57e733d9d948)
Chapter 45 (#u3ef2411d-0fb6-5dcf-a8ba-edd3cfe556cc)
Acknowledgements (#u98dab538-6503-50d2-ac88-fde5f13cd25e)
Keep Reading … (#u5edeffbc-2350-5611-8237-aa9bc466f380)
About the Author (#ue7ec2d82-f9ac-59b2-a4bc-254767b7d4cc)
Also by Mhairi McFarlane (#u8784678b-2ac9-5248-aa82-40dffbc7040b)
About the Publisher (#ue9157f18-e1a7-5ce8-94a0-63bc5cc1ede7)
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.’
