When I look back at the photos now, I find myself curious. Who am I really looking at, I wonder – who is that girl? There I am: 17, hair bright blonde, eyes smudged with Barry M Dazzle Dust, a Marlboro Light living permanently in my right hand. I left these aspects of my personal aesthetic behind in 2008, and 15 years have passed; I do not look like this any more. But it’s bigger than that. As I study and scrutinise her, I cannot decipher what I was thinking or feeling. Am I happy? Having fun? Or was I just pretending?
The pictures were taken on my first unsupervised holiday abroad; a gaggle of seven of us girls stuffed our bags with Primark bikinis and wedges we couldn’t walk in, and giddily escaped from our parents. The world – or, at least, Playa de las Americas – was our oyster. We had done our AS-levels and we were going to Tenerife, but these rite-of-passage trips, meant for engaging in the sort of behaviour that might make your mum and dad faint, happen every summer in a roll call of interchangeable locations: Zante, Magaluf, Ibiza, Ayia Napa, Faliraki.
