Just a few short years ago, girl power was a bright new strand in the long and

desperately knotty weave of women's liberation. The All Saints thread was abruptly snapped and the Appleton strand now has its own intractable tangle.

Nicole Appleton and her sister, Natalie, have written a memoir,

Together, underlining not only their sorority, but the fact that they stood shoulder to shoulder against the other two members of what was Britain's coolest girl band during its acrimonious collapse two years ago. Its

most startling revelation is Nicole's abortion of a child she conceived with

Robbie Williams.

Her justification is: ''I want people to know what happened.'' But is it a salutary tale for our age or just the cri de coeur of another one-time celebrity cruelly kicked aside in the stampede to the next big name?

Abortions now number hundreds of thousands (300,000 in the UK in 1998, the year the All Saints singer had hers) and thousands of women are suffering subsequent regret, including temporary and recurring depression. Nicole Appleton says she felt impelled to tell the truth of how she was pressured into an abortion against her wishes. Publicly atoning for mistakes has been a ploy of celebrities since the fame of the hunter was recounted round the resultant meal, but that educative purpose is largely defeated if the primary motive is seen to be profit.

Taken at face value, Nicole's revelation is a brave blow for womankind against the music industry's corporate muscle and the hypocrisy of a business which demands sexy images to sell

its wares but cannot accommodate

the reproductive consequences of

sexuality. Take the cynical view, and we have a streetwise rock chick throwing a sensational, tear-jerking chapter into a book which would otherwise be heading for the remaindered box.

Oddly enough, both views are probably correct. In the real world, the one Appleton must now inhabit as the mother of Gene, her one-year-old son with Liam Gallagher, it is possible to be simultaneously angry and commercially astute. It's also possible - necessary, indeed - to grow up and assume responsibility for your own actions and, however belatedly, past mistakes. Yet broadcasting blame among record producers, company managers, the New York doctor who carried out the procedure, and even her mother does not suggest a brave lone stand for truth.

That said, there's no reason to doubt either her regret or the physical and mental suffering which followed, including the devastating effect on her relationship with Robbie Williams. During the traumatic year of 1998, the couple were engaged twice and broke up twice before the final parting in

January 1999.

Nicole says the abortion - at four months' gestation - left her feeling

suicidal. The operation, carried out at a private clinic in New York, was apparently incomplete, with no check on retained tissue and no proper counselling or even advice on travelling in advance of a tour she made with All Saints. Appleton said she lost two stones and bled continually afterwards.

In the book, she records: ''My life had been in the hands of a doctor who had taken less care of it than he would a stray dog's.'' It's a bitter condemnation, but a justified warning in the

circumstances against the sort of medicine which asks no questions except how you intend to pay. What is much more difficult to take, not least because her fellow band member, Melanie Blatt, was pregnant at the same time and had a daughter,

Lilyella, late in 1998, is her vituperation against ''an industry that leads a woman to sacrifice her child to keep

a band together''. If Melanie's pregnancy did not destroy the band, why should Nicole's?

That Nicole and Natalie now perform together and have written a

double autobiography is significant. In many ways they have been the most

stable presence in each other's lives.

Nicole, 27, and Natalie, 29 were born in Canada, the two youngest of four daughters of parents who had emigrated from England in the 1960s. When Natalie was seven and Nicole five, their parents separated, with their father returning to England with Nicole and the second sister, Lori, who was then nine, while their mother remained in Canada with 15-year-old Lee and Natalie.

Although the family was re-united two years later, the marriage remained tempestuous and the children were uprooted from schools as their parents moved between Canada, the US, and Britain is search of a better life. Nicole adapted to this nomadic existence, claiming she was ''just excited to pack a bag'', while Natalie resented feeling like an outsider at each new school.

All Saints was the product of friendship. Nicole had known Melanie Blatt since they were 11-year-old pupils at the the Sylvia Young stage school in London. Melanie formed a band with Shaznay Lewis in 1995 and two years later asked Nicole and then Natalie to join. Whether it was because of their previous knowledge of each other or their streetwise style, All Saints provided a high-energy contrast to blander bands. That disintegrated into equally intense fall-out with the fault-line separating the sisters from the friends.

Both sisters say the book is not about getting their own back on All Saints, but more about anger with themselves for letting it happen. This is the first step to claiming serious coverage for their music as the duo, Appleton. After their first single, Fantasy, they are

planning an album which will have a ''harder rock edge''.

The Appletons' relationships with men have been equally unstable. At 17, Natalie fell in love with a male stripper, who was abusive, but with whom she had a daughter, Rachel, who is now 10 and for whom her greatest fear is that one day she may want to meet her father. After publicly-charted relationships with Jamie Theakston and Jonny Lee Miller, she married Liam Howlett of the Prodigy in June.

Nicole says that she has finally found love with Liam Gallagher. Three months into the relationship, she became pregnant, a scenario which prompted predictions of instability, not least among executives at All Saints' record company, one of whom said at the time: ''If you bet on a horse you have to look at the form, and in Nicole's case, let alone Liam's, the odds aren't great.'' Against all the odds, Nicole now burbles with the happiness of new parenthood, that their son brings out the best in both. Insiders in the

notoriously catty industry have

recorded their surprise at the calming effect each has had on the other.

There is, however, the inescapable fact that Gallagher's ''natural'' fatherhood, so praised by Appleton, is the result of experience. He has another son, Lennon, from his marriage to Patsy Kensit, plus a daughter, Molly, to the Irish singer Lisa Moorish, conceived shortly after his marriage to Kensit. Describing Liam Gallagher as ''almost my husband'', Appleton said: ''We've been very happy for two years. I've no reason to feel insecure or unhappy.''

Yet she's revealed an almost adolescent vulnerability in saying that she would marry him tomorrow if he asked, but that she liked being a girlfriend because ''it makes

me look young''. Then there's the

hint of wretched experience in her acknowledgment: ''Liam's been there before. I haven't been in his shoes. Whether he wants to get married or

not, the love is the same.''

No doubt she would like many of the millions of young fans who bought All Saints albums and their number-one hits such as Pure Shores to see

Together as a role-model biog of how two girls from a broken home became part of one of the most successful pop groups in Britain. It is just as likely to be seen as a step too far beyond kiss'n'tell on the rocky road of revenge. Nicole reports that when she warned Robbie Williams she was going to reveal the abortion, he was supportive and called her ''brave''. Just how well the air was cleared, however, remains to be seen. In a pre-serialisation interview, she added revealingly: ''I know I am going to remind him of probably one of the worst moments in his life. Maybe he'll get really emotional, I don't know. It's going to get to him.''

While she is apparently happy to recall claims that ''Rob put put his hands on my belly and said, 'This baby is saving my life','' and reports that Williams has been complimentary about her inclusion of the episode in her book, friends of his have said they believe she used him to boost her career once and is now doing so again.

It's difficult to know whether the need to reveal all is the result of new-found confidence or carefully-stoked anger, but with a new, apparently

stable, relationship, a desire to rake over old coals seems unnecessary to the point of being unhealthy.

Surely even those who buy the sisters' book and the audience for their records must ponder uneasily the irony of commercial necessity dictating this exposure of the life-destroying dictates of commercial success.