At around 3 a.m., I got up and slipped downstairs. At least it was a little cooler there. I sat and watched as the first strobes of light started to break through the night sky then I made myself a coffee and pulled out a dusty cardboard box from the cupboard under the stairs. It had been a long time since I’d looked in it, but I knew exactly what it contained. Photo albums, everything from my teenage years until my late twenties when digital cameras took over. Yearbooks from school. I knew exactly which album I was looking for – one that had two Forever Friends teddy bears on the front – and I pulled it out before sitting back on the sofa. The memories contained in those pages – they’d been such innocent times.

I flicked through the album. Bad haircuts, unkempt eyebrows, teenage skin and thickly applied make-up. The three of us pulling poses and laughing at the camera, together, individually, in pairs. At birthday parties, or on the beach, at concerts. Dressed up for Halloween. Pictures from school – faded now. The colours muted as if they’d always been that way. Slightly out of focus. Just like my memories of that time.

A group of our classmates, pulling poses and grinning outside the school canteen. Set on hills that rolled down to the River Foyle, our school site – now closed, just a collection of decaying buildings and overgrown grass. On warm days – days just like the day that was dawning – the all-girl school population would lay our coats down on the grass banks then sit and soak in the sun at lunchtime. Hundreds of milk bottle-white legs, our regulation grey socks pushed down to our ankles trying to catch a bit of colour. Girls rubbing cooking oil into their white skin in the hope of getting a tan, long before SPFs were thought of.

Innocent times. There were pictures of us making daisy chains. Heads bowed in concentration. Pictures of us messing about in the science lab – an old, dark room with high ceilings and a permanent musty smell. No doubt we should never have been messing around in there or taking pictures. But it was harmless, our harmless rebellion.

I looked at the picture closely, at Clare’s smile. The braces on her teeth still evident then. She only really bloomed into herself when they were gone. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, her skin shiny. She was so young. We all were.

It was only then I saw another face, at the bench behind. Long hair, greasy strands, hanging around her face. No silly smile. No friends posing beside her, just a head bent forwards. Doing her best to avoid eye contact with the camera and the person behind it. There was a paleness and a sadness there; or maybe the lack of sleep was causing my brain to play tricks on me.