Kayleigh was my best mate growing up. We’d grown up on this estate, living in flats on the third floor. She’d thought the storybooks with children having gardens were so exotic. No one we knew had a garden. Everyone just had the balcony and in the summer, the baskets of flowers and pot plants made the balconies come alive.The patch of green in the middle of the estate was known as the park. There was a little children’s p...

Charlene took a drag on her cigarette as we sat swinging our legs on the playpark swings. We’d been given the rest of the day off from school for study time. It was a gorgeous spring day and we were wearing just our school shirts and grey skirts. I didn’t see the point of studying. Studying never got you anywhere. Charlene would be going home to study though. She kept talking about getting out of here. She took another dr...

Stacey stood in the cramped hallway of the flat she shared with her mother and brother and brushed her long brown hair. She was getting ready to meet her friends, hang out in the play park and watch the world go by, just like all the teenagers did every other evening after school in the estate. The front door crashed open and her older brother rushed in. He squeezed past her with a “Sorry Stace” and went into his room. St...

Jess shifted uncomfortably on the chair as she scanned the tin of beans and slid it along for the customer to place in their shopping bag. She was six months pregnant and everything was beginning to ache. She was grateful that Brian, the store manager had suggested she work on the cash tills rather than her usual job of stacking the shelves and stock rotation. She saw a group of girls from the year below her at school wal...

Caitlyn had been called many things; slut, fucktoy, cum whore, fat slag. She knew it was true. She couldn’t help it. She described herself on her Tinder profile as “a curvy, if a little chubby and wobbly, busty, big-bottomed English bunny, with a thing for older men.” She’d struggled with her weight for years before realising that men didn’t particularly care for stick-thin model types in real life. “I like to have someth...