“He’s a nice guy, I promise,” my best friend Kerry, then 23, said. She’d just started going out with Damian Taylor – the ‘bad boy’ of our town. “He makes me happy, that’s what counts,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Damian had just come out of jail for assault and had been living in a half-way house nearby which was known to be super rough. But I tried to keep an open mind – Kerry was besotted, she was my best friend and I trusted her judgement. ...

When heavily pregnant Emma French, 20, felt contractions just hours before her driving test she faced sitting her driving exam, whilst in labour… Emma French hadn’t been planning a family with her boyfriend of three years, Neil, 21, when she discovered she was pregnant in February last year. But the surprise pregnancy was nothing compared to the shock she faced when her waters broke in the early hours of 30th August – the day her driving test was booked for. “I couldn’t wait to learn to drive,” the mum-of-one from ...