9 DECEMBER

It was a hot day in one of the hottest and most uncomfortable summers of recent years. I was standing in a small upstairs bedroom of a house on the outskirts of a modern estate in the borough of South

IT was two days until Christmas and the afternoon sky was blue and crisp as Lydia’s car pulled up in front of the magnificent Bristol Hotel. Why was it called the Bristol? she wondered. It was nowhere

Christmas MOUR NING

HAVE YOUR SAY

Although Carrie had often heard other women talk about ‘empty nest syndrome’ and the changes it brought to life, the stories she’d heard always implied it was an unsettling and distressing time and ul