Aunt Ada was an epileptic. She had worked at a stocking factory since she was fourteen but at seventeen she began to have 'fits’. Her work mates petitioned the boss to sack her. He was reluctant to do this for she was the best stocking mender he had, however he had to yield in the end.

Jan sensed someone had been in the house even as she opened the door. She stood tense for a moment, "Is anyone there?" There was no reply and she squared her shoulders.

'We're going to the seaside,' Aunt Meg said.

It was a winter afternoon in 1939 when I heard that my Aunt Marie Hepplewaite was dead. Naturally I hurried out to Hepplewaite House where her companion Jane, in floods of tears, told me she had found a body in the garage. Her diatribe was interrupted as Aunt Marie leaning heavily on two sticks appeared at the open door:

Miss Trimble was watching from her bedroom window again. God he hated the old bat with her corrugated iron perm and thick glasses always peering behind her net curtains. He loathed her nasal query.

"Mrs Scot still away?"

Majorie had no intention of celebrating her Golden Wedding. They were too old for such nonsense. She couldn't remember the last time George kissed her. By mutual consent they weren't buying each other presents but sharing the cost of a bigger pump for the garden pool.

A funny thing happened to me the other day -funny peculiar that is not funny ha, ha.

I know you won't believe me. I can hardly believe it myself.

Well to cut a long story short, yes I know that's a cliché but you will have to forgive me I have to tell things in my own way or not at all.

Rachael wasn't the only one to seek refuge in 'The Pantry' there was only one unoccupied table. Next week the small coffee shop would close. Like many other businesses it had suffered from the awful summer.

"May I join you?"

'Who is it?' I shouts.  Coronation Street was about to start when the doorbell rang.  People's got no consideration these days.

Why had I left Sidney to come to this cold wet inhospital country? What did I hope to find? The solicitor who represented my parents was dead and the firm after charging an exorbitant amount for a search of their records, could only tell me what I already knew, that my parents had taken me over from a Ms Hariette Powell, also known as Raddish. The last available census revealed no family of that name with or without a daughter.

Sarah Golding threw her briefcase into the back of her red Mercedes and slid elegantly into the driving seat. She had no qualms about the coming interview. Why should she? Her whole life had been a series of hard decisions. This was just one more decision.

An old man with corrugated brow stood gazing sadly at the little red brick Victorian terrace. Six back to back houses in a row, each with its own coal house and lav. at the bottom of the yard. Here he had brought his bride; here his children had been born.

For Meg there was only one consolation to nine months of feeling only half alive. At least she could stay on her own side of the bed even if she couldn't sleep.

She shuddered. This was the room where it happened…

She had felt the heat. The walls closing in on her. She was suffocating. Why had she returned and how?

I was eighteen and a baker's round man when I first met my wife. She was twenty-two and a teacher. "You're not like any teacher I had", I told her.

"You're late. Hold out your hand." Basher Brown flexed the cane between his boney hands.

Billy obeyed, better take it on the hands than have basher Brown lay about your legs. Any road he'd rubbed raw potato on, so it wouldn't hurt that much. It were a good wheeze that. About the only useful bit of advice his dad ever gave him.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. I had been sick this morning and fainted twice in the past week so I thought it best to relax with my book and try to stop worrying. I had not got beyond the first page when the phone rang .

Mrs Tribble stood quite still on the almost empty pavement, addressing the indifferent world about her, while the cars swished past throwing up cascades from the gutters and late shoppers hurried by.

November fog crawled round the window pane waiting to choke any who ventured out into the damp acrid streets. Inside Rambert terrace the walls wept as nappies hung like defeated flags on the fireguard.

Maggie, sat with her first born son on her knee. The door opened and voice called,

"It's only me."

In the beginning Miss Pringle had the best of motives for Miss Pringle was undoubtedly a good woman. From the top of her felt hat to her black laced shoes she exuded respectability.