Where is the hottest place you've ever been?

1979.

I watched Mum pack. She held up each pastel strappy t-shirt and floral sundress in turn, all carefully ironed and deftly folded before being packed in the large family size suitcase. I loved my new clothes. I asked "Why don't we live somewhere hot all the time?"
Mum sighed, "Because we live here."

The timeshare was in the hills above the Costa del Sol, a rectangular block of concrete apartments with green balconies. The grown-ups had long conversations about whether timeshares were a good idea. I saw the big blue swimming pool and just knew they were a good idea. All day my brother and I played in the bright blue pool, only reluctantly succumbing to calls to "Put on more suntan lotion!" "Sit in the shade for five minutes!", "Wait until your lunch has gone down!"
In the intervals when I wasn't submerged I would scuff out of the complex and along a dusty street, holding my flip flops on with toes curled. There was no sign to distinguish the whitewashed house from any other in the street, except for a faded brown door that was always propped open and a boxes of melons stacked in the shade against the wall. Condensation rolled down the paper on the ice lollies I held up for the shop assistant to see. With the other hand I held out the silver pesetas that in my mind I often confused with the word potatoes. Pleased with my ability to perform essential transactions in Spanish I whispered "Gracia's" and dashed out into sunshine. My lips turned cherry red sucking the syrup out of crystallised ice, my brother's lollipop rapidly melting in my left hand.
In the evenings, with hair wet from the shower and dressed in one of my new sundresses and hand-knitted cardigan, we would drive down to Fuengirola for dinner, a choice of french fries and ice-cream every night. After dinner there was the promenade. The pleasure of swinging between my parent's hands as Dad searched for another bar. All around were groups of loud gregarious, vibrant, bronzed, dark-eyed, dark-haired Spaniards their smiling teeth lit up by the neon of the crowded shops, bars and restaurants. Behind them in the moonlight the white surf lapped on a dark beach. I prayed that we could stay on holiday forever. I liked being brown.

A few years later we returned to the timeshare, with another family, friends from our street. It was a holiday of minor disasters. The second day by the pool I noticed a trail of red footprints following me. It was only after they pulled the shard of glass out of my foot that I burst into tears, suddenly very sorry for myself because Mum was tutting about the barmen not sweeping up properly. I felt the need to limp for at least 5 metres before running to catch up with the game of volleyball in the pool.
That evening Tanya didn't appear for dinner. Tanya was older than me, a teenager, with long legs, pale skin and pale blond hair carefully dried back from her face in 'Farrah Fawcett' waves. By the end of two days of continual sunbathing to achieve the perfect tan, she had turned the colour of a lobster, with a swollen face and a slow scarecrow walk. She spent the rest of the week in her bedroom with heavy curtains pulled shut, we tiptoed past the door. "Sorry you're not feeling well" we chorused from the doorway before happily rushing out into the sunshine.

Then the bug struck. My brother and I fell first, one moment fine, the next vomiting into the sink. We were made to endure the injection. The humiliation of it. At home, injections were always in the arm, later when telling my school friends about my holiday, the most important thing to relay was that "In Spain they give you an injection in the bum."
My abiding image of that holiday remains the sight of Mum leaning sideways in bed and Avril running to her, holding out a large beach towel in which to catch the vomit. I asked "Will she be better soon?" Outside on the balcony the 'Dads" immunised themselves with cigarettes and alcohol. Murmured conversations of "The kids all ate the ice-cream." and "Did Trish eat the scampi?", a concerned investigation that ended with a question mark over ice and a rule about only buying bottled drinks from the bar.

The last time we visited the timeshare, it was just Dad and I, the divorce had already gone through. Our rental car was the only vehicle in the outside car park. Our footsteps echoed on the concrete walkways, all the timeshare people had deserted for the Balearic's and the Canaries. We were visiting a couple who had bought their apartment. I used to envy them, "They can stay all year round!" Now sat in one of their armchairs I noticed for the first time that their apartment was decorated in a quintessentially English style. To protect the furniture and framed photographs from fading, heavy drapes were drawn against the intense white sunshine. Dad talked loudly, deliberately cheerful, cracking jokes about 'the old days'. Their voices in reply sounded muted, resigned, tinged with defensiveness.
Wondering how long we would have to stay I stepped past the brown fabric onto the balcony. In the gardens below the bar was shuttered and the barmen with their starched shirts and white smiling teeth had gone. The pool, in which I had swum like a fish, was bright green with algae, brown leaves piled up on surrounding tiles. Clear blue sky, bright sunshine, picturesque whitewashed houses encircling the grey concrete walls within which the apartment complex was sighing. I stepped back inside where the grown-ups were pouring out generous glasses of gin and tonic despite the breakfast bowls on the table. They acquiesced to my request to drink the same. I was old enough now.