1983 Sal stretched out on the beach and idly observed her gamine, pert breasts. "I suppose this makes me the neurotic, happy-go-lucky one," she sighed. Meanwhile, Annie sipped a glass of retsina and smoothed her sundress down over her rather fuller breasts. Realising this made her the sensible one who just wanted to settle down, she said: "Now I've got a job in PR, why don't you share a flat with me, Sal, while you're trying to make a name for yourself as a journalist?"

In any three-sided friendship, there's always one who gets rather neglected. And seeing as she was much plumper, plainer and more underwritten than Sal and Annie, Kendra understood that it was her.

1984 After starting the year with a quick namecheck of Spandau Ballet to establish period detail, Sal couldn't work out why she had been sent to New York to interview a famous film star who may or may not have been gay until she spotted Annie's boyfriend getting off with another woman in the restaurant. "I always told you Jackson wasn't the one," she said consolingly on her return. "I knew that in my heart," Annie sobbed. "But I so wanted him to be Mr Right. Now I'll have to find someone else."

Kendra felt no resentment at being more boring and ugly than the others. At least her parents were rich, which gave her the chance to work with Gioia at the Chapel, a centre for underprivileged kids. "Do you think you might be a lesbian?" said Gioia, wrapping her arms around Kendra's not-so-petite body. "I think I might be," Kendra purred.

1985 It would have been insensitive not to mention the Aids epidemic that haunted the decade, but heavy-handed to have it intrude too deeply on the story. So it was left to a minor character, a gay friend of Kendra's parents, to get ill and disappear (presumed dead) from the narrative.

"I'm finding it so hard to be accepted as a woman journo," Sal wept as she knocked off a bottle of vodka, snorted a gram of coke and had another one-night stand. "I can't believe how happy I am," yelled Annie. "I've just met Charlie, a posh yuppie straight from central casting, who has made millions out of property and we're going to get married." Kendra merely pondered that sometimes it was hard to be a woman.

1986 "Oh dear," said Sal as the pregnancy test turned positive. "I guess I shouldn't have got so stoned with Pete while I thought my mum had cancer. Still, I can always have an abortion." Annie had never been so happy. A wedding in the Cotswolds, a husband with seven Paul Smith suits and, best of all, she was going to have a baby. Then she noticed she was bleeding. "Oh no," she sighed. "Not the inevitable miscarriage!" Kendra was still finding it hard to be a woman, what with the property developers trying to have the Chapel pulled down.

1987 Sal had a great idea. She would write a piece about the beastly property developers who were threatening the Chapel even if it was awkward that one of them was Annie's husband, Charlie. "It's so unfair," said Kendra. "Sal got so out of it that her copy was changed to make Gioia look like a fat lezzer. Now we're going to lose the Chapel. "Don't worry," Annie replied, "Now I've left Charlie, I'm going to get Sal into rehab.

Gioia still hadn't forgiven Sal, as she, Kendra and Annie went for a picnic in the Algarve. Luckily, Gioia chose that moment to almost drown, and Sal was able to rescue her.

"I'm not finding it quite so hard to be a woman now," said Kendra.

"Nor me," said Sal. "So long as I continue to go to AA."

"And I'm going to become a career woman," Annie added. "PR isn't that airheaded when you can get products placed in Vogue."

Digested read, digested: You certainly all seem very familiar.