“Neil, I am annoyed. Amirah had no right to cane poor Mary. I made light of it the next morning with Mary, but I must speak to Amirah. I’m going to invite her around when Mary is out. It might be better if we could be alone.” “Mary and Janet will be out d...

Julia, who was in her mid-twenties, had been my partner for six months. Her previous boyfriend had been a wealthy merchant banker I knew socially, and I had noticed Julia warming to me. Everything changed when I returned from one of my foreign trips looki...

Life carried on. Schoolwork was going well for Mary, and she was getting the low fifties in her test results, which were now down to the routine half-term and end-of-term checks. She looked a little embarrassed when one evening, she said to us, “Please, c...

I got a promotion, a payment for securing an enormous deal and a higher salary, so I indulged Josie and me with a large motor-sailor catamaran. There is a secure marina where we keep the boat, which is connected to mains utilities. It’s large and comforta...

I had been the Operations Manager of a major contracting company in South East Asia’s head office for several years and was single in my late thirties. I spent time in the local head office and travelling around most remote site areas. The term ‘Operation...

I was nineteen and worked for an electronics and electronic warfare company in test and development as a senior technician. Uni was not for me. At the local technical college, I got an HNC in electronics and carried on with an Open University degree whils...

My time with Joan had steadied me and I made it through the rest of the term and my mock exams. One of my more perceptive pals at college said, “Pete, you seem much happier and relaxed. That awful look in your eyes has gone. What happened?” “It’s OK,” I s...

I was the head teacher of a private girl’s school in England from the early seventies until the mid-eighties. Corporal punishment in schools is still legal and accepted by many parents. I had joined the school, having worked in a similar school, where the...

I was eighteen, and in the summer before I went to uni, I was working on garage fuel pumps in the days before self-service. One of our regular customers was a lady in her mid-thirties whom I will call Vera. She always smiled and was very forward and provo...

I had been a sailing club member since I was thirteen, and I was now seventeen and doing my A-level studies at a local technical college. Joan was the Commodore of the sailing club following the last committee meeting. Joan had divorced and owned an old t...

I had a chequered time as a teenager, partly because I suffered physical abuse from my father and mainly because my mother could not control me. My mother split up with my father, and by the time I was seventeen, I had made several court appearances for o...

I had been wondering if my young wife, Cindy, had been cheating on me with my best friend when I was away on business. I had been very busy at work and away from home on business for two months. Sometimes she had switched off her mobile phone for a few ho...

Think back to those days in the immediate aftermath of WW2 and their attendant problems. Not the least of these was tuberculosis (TB). I was an age nineteen student nurse in training at a TB sanatorium in England. The sanatorium had been a stately home an...

Back in the flat, I glued the two pieces of cut leather together with rubberised glue, which is flexible when set. It took two days to allow the aromatic smell of the glue to disperse. At the haberdashery shop, I asked them to stitch around the edges to p...

I’m the female product of a marriage between an Indian mother and an English father. My parents divorced when I was seventeen and I stayed with my mother until I was nineteen. I remained at school and got a couple of A-level passes before joining the loca...