About the book:

Louise, Toni and Gemma are all pregnant, but their circumstances are very different. While 18-year-old Gemma planned her pregnancy, married career woman Louise is taken by surprise, while Toni is facing the challenge of declining fertility before she quite feels ready to start a family.

Three women, all expecting babies in the same month. Will this simple fact form the basis of a lasting bond?

Read the rest of our book review here.

Thanks to Quercus Books and Book Promotions, you can read an exclusive excerpt of Rosie Fiore’s Babies in Waiting below.  While you’re at it, check out our interview with Rosie.

Excerpt:

Sitting on the loo, blue penguin pyjama bottoms around her ankles, Louise stared again at the pregnancy test in her hand. The blue cross was very much still there. It wasn’t going anywhere. Pregnant. Who would believe it?

Here it was, the baby she’d always dreamed of, but at the wrong time, in the wrong circumstances, and totally and utterly with the wrong man. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

One stupid night with Brian. Just one, stupid, drunken shag, and now this.

If she were a different woman, she’d have burst into tears and rung her mum or her best friend.

But Louise’s mum was dead, and she wasn’t the sort to have a girly best friend. Anyway, it was a work day, and a busy one. She couldn’t sit on the loo all day. She had to get to work, get on with the day and think about all of this later.

She certainly couldn’t think about it at work, not today, not with the branch managers’ meeting and Brian pretending to ignore her across the table. Although she thought they’d been discreet that night in Manchester, she was pretty sure everyone knew. Barrett and Humphries was too small a company. Until now, Louise hadn’t given the gossip machine much thought.

She hadn’t really cared. All her energy had been focused on treating Brian with icy professionalism.

She turned on the shower and switched on to autopilot. She went through into her bedroom, laid out her clothes for the day on her bed and stripped off her pyjamas.

She showered quickly and efficiently, blow-dried her short, dark-red hair, and dressed in a maroon suit, with severe lines which flattered her slim, tall figure. She ate a quick breakfast of fruit, yoghurt and muesli and then rapidly applied her minimal make-up, just mascara and lipstick.

Her briefcase was already packed, her keys and sunglasses in their usual place by the front door. She rinsed out her bowl, looked around her tidy kitchen and was out of the door fifteen minutes after she’d done the pregnancy test.

It wasn’t until she’d eased her little car out of her quiet road and taken her place in the traffic queue heading towards the town centre that she let herself switch on her brain again. Suddenly, she began to shake.

What was she going to do? Clearly, she couldn’t have it. She could just imagine the looks at work as she started to show. Barrett and Humphries was as progressive as an old-fashioned Yorkshire printing firm could be, and she knew they appreciated her skills and professionalism.

But if it came to a choice, there was no doubt Brian would win. He was older, more senior, a partner. She’d be out on her ear quicker than you could say ‘discrimination lawsuit’. Yes, she could probably fight it, but did she really want the humiliation of having her mistake made public?

No, there was no doubt, she’d have to have an abortion, and she most certainly couldn’t have it anywhere around here...

This excerpt was published with permission from Quercus Books and Book Promotions.

Buy your copy of Babies in Waiting now.

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