As a child, growing up in Hampstead, North London, I was shockingly fair-skinned. Holidays involved me spending the second and third day face-down on a bed, shrieking should anyone touch my blistered skin.

In my small, coastal New England town, an hour outside New York, I know many people who have dealt with cancer. I can reel off the names of at least 15 women I know, all in their 40s.

My teens and 20s were spent lying on sheets of tinfoil in the weak English sun, covered in baby oil. In Greece and France I would burn, then turn a dark brown.

Jane Green Quotes