I was in the original TV series of Heartbreak High in 1994. I was dead by the end of season one but there’s nothing like knowing exactly when and how, and why you’re going to die, to make the experience of living just that more precious.
The early season’s story arc, drawn from the original film, Heartbreak Kid, was about a motherless young male student who falls in love with an older woman, his teacher. By the time the film became a series, the whole teacher-student relationship was ditched and they went instead with the son (Alex Dimitriades) losing his mother (me) as a point of dramatic departure. After I died, Peta Toppano was poised to join the series as the glamorous housekeeper who arrives soon after my death to look after my kids and my widowed husband (Nico Lathouris), whom she falls in love with. I think. I’m not sure. I couldn’t bear to watch. Clearly, I’ve not yet worked through my usurpation.
