It was blisteringly hot under the Majorcan sun, I remember that. What I don’t remember is how I came to be at the bottom of the hotel swimming pool, blue, cold and lifeless.

As a family living through the 80’s, we were not well off, but somehow the family managed to club together and buy a package holiday deal on the sandy shores of Majorca. There were loads of us, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and my own little clan including my mum, dad and two year old brother.

I’m reliably informed (because my memories now fail me), that the start of our holiday went swimmingly, (excuse the pun). So, sprints were high as we awoke on the first morning, enveloped in hotel bedding and eager to shake off the sleep. The grown-ups planned a day at the pools to work on their tans, while the kids enjoyed the weightless freedom of the waters.

There were two pools, and because all of the children on the trip were infants, (I was the oldest by two years), we placed our towels and baggage down by the small pool and began to settle in. It was some time before someone noticed I was missing.

Unfortunately for her, it was my gran who heard a commotion, while they each searched the hotel grounds, and when she did, she diverted from her path and came upon a group of holiday makers trying to fish something out of the deep end of the adult pool. At first her eyes saw a bundle of clothes; it wasn’t until this bundle had been retrieved and laid on the poolside, that she froze.

Not long after I had turned 15, I had so much trouble sleeping at night that I went to my family for help. The restlessness and nagging, deep in my gut, was agony: I knew something was wrong, but had no idea what. As a consequence of my journey to the bottom of that pool, my memory had been almost wiped clean. I could remember how to do things and who people were, but I couldn’t remember memories from the first seven years of my life.

On returning to the UK, and for years afterwards, I enjoyed somewhat of a spoiling, particularly by my mum and gran. The trouble with that was that I quickly realised I was being treated differently to everybody else. When I inevitably broke a rule, (as children do), the consequences were less severe than for those around me, and this didn’t just occur within the family. At school, I received preferential treatment, at friend's houses, I was peered at, and I was the only one whose mum came along to every swimming lesson!

One night, I approached my parents, who tried to reassure me that all was well and I was treated no differently to anybody else. I didn’t believe them; perhaps it was the tear in the corner of my mum’s eye? So, I went to visit my gran, who was just the right sort of reliably truthful and loving matriarch for the job, and I told her that didn’t feel like a real person.

My gran sat me down and looked into me with deep, chocolate brown eyes; she recognised my agony and she told me all the answers. She told me how I'd disappeared in Majorca, how the heat stroke they told me I’d suffered, was a lie that the doctors felt I should be told, to avoid the return of traumatic memories - she told me I had drowned.

When she saw my body, it had taken her a few moments to understand what she was seeing. Gone was the flush of youth that normally kissed my skin. Instead, my body wore a sickening blue/grey pallor and lay lifeless and limp on the ground. She raced towards me as holiday makers lifted me by my ankles and shook me to empty my lungs of water. She reached me as they lay me on the ground and began CPR. She cried as someone called an ambulance. And something broke inside her as the paramedics arrived and failed to resuscitate me.

My family found the commotion just in time to witness the defibrillator being employed to do its job. At the hospital, I was placed into a medically induced coma where I spent the rest of our family holiday. I awoke after a week and then it was all over.

Suddenly, my life made sense. The doctors in Majorca had warned my parents that the memories of what had happened might return at any moment and that it might cause a breakdown. They were told that they needed to make people aware, wherever I went, in case I cracked and that included school teachers, friend’s parents, and basically every adult that inhabited my world. They did their best to safeguard me and then my gran kickstarted the healing.