Sunburn

by Jo Agrell

HGHLY COMMENDED in September 2025 Competition.

She was careless that summer. It was 1976, famously hot and dry. She wasn’t bothered about wilting roses, bone-coloured grass, failing crops or parched riverbeds; she worshipped the intensity, the white glare of the sun. It was too hot to revise. Think of your future her parents said but that was as blurred as the heat haze that shimmered over the roads. In the lunch break she and her friends rucked up their skirts, lay on the tennis court tanning. At 4pm they walked to the lido, slipped into bikinis, held their noses and leapt into the pool. After that they sat around slapping on baby oil, puffing on Rothmans, aware of boys eyeing them hungrily like sharks. She turned nicotine brown. Her hair bleached blonde, acquired a chlorine sheen. Exams came and went. School ended. 

The heat was frying her brain. She grew reckless. Free-loaded concerts. Hitched lifts. Went on dates with strange men. Leaned out of buses as they hurtled down hills. Stood by, accessory to the crime, as a friend stole from an off-licence. She swilled Bacardi and Coke like water. She laughed with anyone, about anything. 

One night she found herself at a house party, everyone off their heads except her. Someone leaped through a French window. Blood like a murder scene. A body unmoving, punctured with glass. No-one noticed. Her hands shook as she found the house phone, dialled 999. 

Finally the weather broke. She flaked like an India rubber to a thin, pale thing. When she looked down the road she was grateful to see a future was still there for her. 

It’s 2025. She takes her grandchildren to the beach. She insists on sun hats, slathers everyone in suncream, seeks out shade. They are standing in line for ice-creams when she catches a whiff of Miss Dior. Briefly, she sees her, the girl she was that summer, flirting with life, flying too close to the sun. 

Judge’s comments:  LOVELY USE OF THE SENSES AND A BUILDING SENSE OF DANGER. I’D HAVE LIKED THE MISS DIOR TO COME INTO THE STORY EARLIER. MAYBE THE I OF THE STORY SHOPLIFTED IT?