"Give her a chance to get a bit of colour," complete strangers would say to my mother whenever I ventured onto the beaches. "Looks healthier."

But I was living in Hong Kong when I got sunburned for the last time, aged 14.

It was an overnight hiking trip in the New Territories. I think we were walking a section of the MacLehose Trail, a 100-kilometre walk that hooked over high ridges near one of the major reservoirs.

Our international school was big on these sorts of outdoor adventures, toughening up expat kids softened by life in high-rise apartments.

I must have grabbed some sunscreen on the way out the door to catch the bus. But at the start of the walk, I could only scrape together one claggy squirt of cream from the near-empty bottle.

Of course, nobody else had sunscreen. The '80s was a tanned era: Wham, Duran Duran, even David Bowie, Let's Dance era, was no longer the thin white duke. Pale was not yet interesting.

So no, nobody else had sunscreen. Not even the teacher. Back then, it was the kid's fault if she forgot to bring sunscreen or a hat. Yes, I also forgot to bring the foreign legion sunhat, the one I loathed for making me look even dorkier than I already was.

The hike was late in the school year, on a blindingly hot and clear day. We spent most of the day walking trails that cut through low scrubby vegetation above the tree line.

Within 30 minutes, I could feel that hot prickling heat, as if I'd rubbed my arms with fresh cut chillies. Did I mention it was 1983? I was wearing a pastel tank top and "dolphin shorts", shiny jogging shorts with white piping.

By mid-afternoon, it was obvious to the others that I needed some help. My shoulders and neck were already the bright raspberry colour that signalled the extreme distress of skins cells bombarded with ultraviolet B ray damage.

My DNA was programmed for a life in a peat bog somewhere in Europe, not the glare of summer on a hill top in Southeast Asia.

While the blood vessels below the top layer of my deep-fried skin were dilating in an attempt to soothe the damage, someone draped a towel over my shoulders.

By evening, my arms and face glowed scarlet and I shivered with fever. Maybe, a kindly soul told me, I would finally tan.

I fell asleep on my stomach in the little A-frame tent, too sore to lie on my back, desperately parched.

On the descent the next day, I could not get enough to drink. I filled my water bottle at every stream, twice. By now I was wearing someone else's sunglasses, and two towels, both soaked with water, over my head and across my back. Another kind camper carried the day pack I was too tender to bear.

"How was the trip?" my mother asked as I walked through the front door of our apartment.

"Best ever," I said and burst into tears.

The next day is a blur. I lay in a high fever, my arms too sore to move, my mouth swollen and blistered, unable to close.

A doctor appeared above my bed, prodding me and taking notes. He left a salve for my mother to apply, something he said was the same stuff they'd give the victim of a real fire.

To protect me from infection, my mother cut off my fringe at the roots. She also snipped off the hair growing down my neck, the remains of what had once been an attempt Nastassja Kinski's haircut from Cat People.

On the second day, I stared at the bathroom mirror at a face swollen with excess fluid, bubbles trapped beneath my skin. To my horrified teenage eyes, I looked like an outtake from The Elephant Man.

When I turned up at work a week later with my strip of stubble instead of a fringe, the rest of my hair pulled into a straggly ponytail off my damaged neck, I was too miserable to be mocked to my face. Or at least, too absorbed in my own self pity to notice.

I am still grateful to the friend who came to my aid on the first day when I stood up and begged to be excused immediately.

After a week in an air-conditioned bedroom, I wasn't coping with a humid classroom. I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck – and an entire layer of skin, thin and damp as a sodden tissue, came away in my hand.

In the girl's bathroom, my friend helped me gingerly remove my school uniform. I stood there in my underwear as she grabbed paper towels and wiped away long sheets of skin from my back and arms.

"This is really disgusting," she said, but she helped, nevertheless. Raw and pink as pork, I pulled on my dress and returned to class.

I don't think I made it back for term break at the week's end.

Holidays had begun. Others spent it by the pool or on the beach. I was the one wearing kaftans or long skirts. The teenager in a shawl and giant sunhat scowling on the edge of the shadows. No tan ever appeared.

As The Style Council was singing on the radio wherever I went those holidays, the long hot summer just passed me by.