I'd noticed her before. How could I not? Her figure a breathtaking crescendo of curves and curls; her thick, shoulder-length brown hair tinted whichever shade took her fancy that week; her round hazel eyes and scarlet lips bursting with the colours of an autumn dawn. She was stunning, a tie-dyed Rita Hayworth. As I walked into the packed library, I first noticed that this week's colour was a reddish-purple, and then that...

"I'm worth more than this!"Those were his last words before he hit "end call". Our relationship wasn't working. We both knew that, and after three years we were as good as finished. He later persuaded me to give us another go, but really, there was no chance. I needed to be single again. He was my first love and I felt trapped, done and dusted before I had the chance to even scratch the surface of life. I was getting out,...

"Can I?" Susannah whispered, her face crumpling into a tipsy half-giggle. "You don't mind?"She had asked to "try out" on my boyfriend, James. She was always asking."Why not?" I sighed, lifting myself from the sofa and exiting towards the kitchen, muttering, "it's about time!" Susannah was in almost every way a perfectly normal, attractive young woman. Tall, slender and willowy of figure, she had a slim waist, long legs an...

"How do I look, Gareth?" I giggled, entering the living room knowing exactly how I looked. I was wearing my little black party dress, which fell short, just below my waist, and hugged every outline, contour and highlight of my body, from my pert arse to my plump breasts. I never wore anything underneath it and relished the liberal touch of the fabric against my skin; it always made me feel so sexy. Gareth, the bassist in...

I always loved evenings like this. With mum working a double shift and not due home until late, I could take advantage of a flat all to myself. I enjoyed a long, warming shower, lit my bedroom with sweet-scented candles and squeezed into my favourite pyjamas. The little cotton shorts, the tight pink top falling a couple of inches above my belly button, the white unicorn and rainbow motif across the chest: they belonged to...

Eden was a good girl. Everyone said so: her parents, teachers, friends, even parents of friends. She worked so hard, achieved the best grades, kept steady boyfriends; Eden was a good girl and she was sick of it. After three long months of hard, relentless study for her final exams, she was ready to cut loose, to be someone else, to be bad. She applied a smear of scarlet lipstick and studied herself in the dresser mirror:...

Thwack. Thud. Squeak.The sounds of the adjacent squash court filled my ears and danced with the vibrations in my temple. My fucking boss and my fucking job, my fucking ex with his perfect fucking wife, the endless fucking holes in my fucking life. Thud. Thud. Thud. I stood in lonely silence, but the noise inside my head was deafening and relentless. I pulled my sodden top over my head. Sweat cooled on my skin and fell in...

The college reunion must be the closest mankind has come to mastering time travel. Twenty-five years older and in a swanky city-centre hotel rather than some rough student digs, everything else was the same: the same crowd, making the same in-jokes, sat cross-legged on a carpet playing the same drinking games. It was sweet in a way; a piece of eternal youth at that stage in our lives when we're all staring over the crest...