Baby Love

By Emmanuelle de Maupassant

A deliciously funny and romantic read, set in Cornwall.

Living in the pretty seaside town of St. Ives, Delphine has a cozy flat overlooking the harbour, a sexy husband and a baby on the way. It's all perfect... until it suddenly isn't!

What do you do when the man you thought adored you runs off with your cougar neighbour? 

Delphine's convinced that she'll never be happy again, but her smarty-pants sisters know better.  

Whisked off for a spa weekend of pampering, Delphine is expecting a hot stone massage and a pedicure. 

What she doesn't see coming is some not-so-innocent flirtation with a hot cowboy. 

Will Delphine get her groove back? It'll be tough, but oh so much fun to try. 
 

Treat yourself to this hilarious British comedy romance, for fans of Marian Keyes, Sophie Kinsella, Jenny Colgan, and the Bridget Jones series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emmanuelle de Maupassant
• Release date: Jun 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393616597

Book preview

Baby Love

Baby Love

Emmanuelle de Maupassant

Dedicated to Jane, the bestest of sisters

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are either used fictitiously or are the product of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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This publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted with prior permission in writing from the author, or in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

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The right of Emmanuelle de Maupassant to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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First published in 2017

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Cover illustration by Dar Albert

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www.emmanuelledemaupassant.com

Contents

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Prologue

December 29th

December 30th

December 31st

January 1st

January 2nd

January 3rd

January 4th

January 7th

January 9th

January 10th

January 11th

January 12th

January 15th

January 18th

January 20th

January 29th

February 1st

February 3rd

February 7th

February 11th

February 12th

February 13th

February 14th

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About the Author

Also by Emmanuelle de Maupassant

Also by Emmanuelle de Maupassant

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Prologue

Here is the story of how you came into being.

A caravan holiday to Dorset. A beautiful spot, just above Durdle Door, along from Lulworth Cove. Lovely.

It would have been lovely, if it hadn’t been raining. Continuous rain. Sheets of it. So much rain that you couldn’t see the beach, or the crashing, rolling waves, or famous golden limestone arch standing out from the cliffs.

What could we see? Muddy grass, and fat droplets against misted windows.

What does one do, stuck in a tiny caravan, in unseasonal weather? One drinks tea, and plays Scrabble. And one shags.

We finished a 160-pack of teabags. We played seventeen games of Scrabble. And we shagged. A lot.

Bingo. Conception.

No mean feat, as we’d been trying, off and on, for about six years. I’d given up thinking about it. We hadn’t mentioned parenthood for months. A baby, it seemed, was not on the cards.

But, at last, you decided to come along.

December 29th

It’s 5.30am and I’m awake. In fact, I’ve been awake for most of the night. There’s only one thing to do when you, ‘the bump’, refuse to let me sleep: make a good, strong cup of tea, open a packet of chocolate digestives and log into Facebook.

Although I know I shouldn’t (I really, really shouldn’t), I can’t resist opening ‘his’ page, Adam. When I do, it’s filled with pictures of him with ‘her’.

The new ‘her’.

A ‘her’ who’s not almost eight months pregnant: Maria, our next-door neighbour.

Am sitting up in bed, laptop balanced on my impossibly inflated belly, reaching past my impossibly inflated tits, torturing myself with his photographic catalogue of loved-up bliss.

There’s a heavy, squashed feeling at the bridge of my nose. The tears want to come, but I won’t let them.

Instead, I’ll eat another biscuit. Fuel my anger with some sugar. You wriggle in approval. Chocolate digestives are our favourite.

Have spent the past couple of days fielding phone calls from ‘so-called’ friends. Not true friends, but acquaintances wishing to gloat. Well-known fact that women of St. Ives miffed at Adam having married me instead of them, and have been secretly waiting for us to split up.

Now, news of sexually incontinent husband has swept town, and vultures are picking over corpse of our marriage.

Have told them that all a misunderstanding and rumours are heinous gossip. Have even defended Adam, saying has been under strain from imminent fatherhood. I refuse to cry, despite utter humiliation.

Adam clearly having mid-life crisis, or may have brain tumour, causing him to make inexplicable decisions. Actually, this seems like most plausible explanation. Will take him to doctor’s and insist on MRI. All my fault. Should have spotted signs earlier.

It was mid-summer by the time I realized you were on the way. I didn’t twig that my period hadn’t arrived until well into the second month. It was the queasiness that alerted me. That and my cup size almost doubling overnight.

Adam had a rare evening off, and we were sitting on our little balcony, drinking wine and eating posh crisps, listening to waves lapping against the harbour wall. We’d just started the inevitable game of Scrabble.

He nipped to the loo and, while he was gone, I rifled through the letters bag, to spell out a message on the board.

‘WE R HAFING A BABY’

Some of the letters refused to make themselves known. I did my best.

I’d been waiting to tell him, wondering how to break this momentous, life-changing news. It seemed too important to just blurt out. I seized the moment.

‘What the fuck!’ I believe he said.

‘That’s supposed to be a ‘V’,’ I explained.

‘I can see what it says,’ said Adam, and he wasn’t smiling.

I’d been expecting whoops of delight, followed by tears of joy, followed by a dash to buy champagne. I’d expected declarations that Adam would be the best dad in the world, ever, and that we must phone everyone with the amazing news.

Clearly, I’d misjudged the situation.

‘I thought we’d given up on all that malarkey,’ said Adam stonily.

I felt my lip quiver.

‘I had, really, given up hoping. I thought it would never happen. It was Durdle Door that