There was a way to take a picture of yourself, to flip the lens. This was a ‘thing’ on the mainland, Ben had told me – a phrase he used all the time. One of us in the staff room would mention a seemingly common happening on the island, remark on someone’s behaviour or describe a particular type of food we’d eaten, and Ben would chip in with, ‘Is that a thing, then?’

Back home, he said, the kids at school – girls mostly – took endless photos of themselves, pouting, posing, deleting, retaking, filtering, embellishing, turning themselves into alien beings. Then they posted these images online, beginning the desperate wait for approval. Ben had commented more than once on how astounding it was, how strange, to be in a school – to be in a place – where everyone wasn’t staring downwards all the time at a device in their hands. People looked up when they walked about on Lark, they considered one another.

‘Perhaps too much,’ I’d replied.

To which he’d countered, ‘Better than doing it anonymously or via an online profile that is curated and contrived.’

I assured him that it was still a ‘thing’ to be curated and contrived on Lark, just with no help whatsoever from a mobile phone.

I took off all my clothes and contemplated my naked body in the mirror of the wardrobe, the pale, soft flow of me. Did my body make sense, join up? Was it sufficient, plenty? The only pictures of me as an adult were the ones on the wall of the school corridor, in work skirt and blouse, the pupils the main focus. I didn’t know if I was beautiful: I’d never considered the question before, not properly. I’d never had to. I knew that the blackness of my hair made me special, a pure catch, and that had always been enough. Until it wasn’t.

Standing in front of that mirror at midnight, like the evil queen in the story, it was suddenly very important for me to know: was I the fairest of them all? Would Ben still want me if we had met on the mainland with its bounty of women? The idea that I was desirable made me feel exhilarated; the idea that I was not, was a precipice looming at my feet. Was this the ‘thing’ I was to grasp about photographing yourself, the intoxicating cocktail of vanity and shame?

I detached the phone from its charger, lay on the bed, flipped the lens and took the pictures.