There's More to Life Than Cupcakes by Poppy Dolan

Author:Poppy Dolan [Dolan, Poppy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chick Lit, Romantic Comedy, British, Humour, Funny, Romantic, Cupcakes, Mummy, Baking, Mhairi Mcfarlane, Stella Newman, Great British Bake Off, Babies, Motherhood, Funny Books
Publisher: Novelicious Books
Published: 2013-10-09T23:00:00+00:00

Through the park gates, I head for the swing sets. I know Emmeline is far too tiny for them – even with all my baby ignorance I know that – but it just feels like the place you should loiter by when you have a pram. And so I loiter, in a quasi-maternal way.

And I seem to be pulling it off; the two other mums having a natter on the bench don’t turn on me and dig lynching ropes out of their baggy holdalls to drag me out of mumsville. In fact, one calls over, ‘She’s so gorgeous!’ and like the coward and weirdo I am, I accept the compliment just as if Emmeline is in fact mine. It feels creepily good. The mums sweetly nod and smile then go back to their dissection of Karen’s outfit at last week’s Tumbletots. I really hope Karen is an adult, and not a badly dressed toddler they’re slagging.

‘Shall we examine all this stuff, Baby?’ I half-talk, half-coo. I decide ‘Baby’ is the right sort of cutesy name; trying out ‘Sweety’ just then had made my stomach turn. For some reason, using her full name out loud sounded ridiculously formal, so Baby it was. Hey, it didn’t hurt Frances in Dirty Dancing.

Picking her up, I simultaneously kick down the pram brake with my foot, feeling a rush of multitasking smugness. Placing Emmeline on my hip and feeling her weight there, even through the thick wadding of her starfish-like onesie, connects with that something swishing about in my hormones that makes me feel dizzy with baby love. For a second, it feels perfectly right. More than that: it feels like the only thing that’s right – that the reason I’m breathing in and out is to have the energy to hold her; the reason I have eyes is to see every little chubby fold around her neck or every strand of downy hair; the reason I have muscles and limbs is that I could fight off any bird or squirrel or golden retriever that might go crazy and want my baby for its tea. I mean, this baby.

Whoah. The baby crazy dizzy spell is ramping up. It’s bonkers how my hormones can melt my brain into mush in a matter of seconds. It scares me and annoys me at the same time. It’s like walking past the window of a French patisserie, seeing all those gorgeous, shiny cream cakes and rushing in with my purse held aloft, only to find the cakes each have a Alice in Wonderland label with a huge price tag, a hug calorie count and a scrawled note that says, ‘Eat me and everything changes …’ And the hunger fades away. Holding Emmeline has stirred up a sort of hunger. Shame I don’t know what I’m hungry for.

She just continues to regard me in her drunken-lady vagueness. I have to remind myself that a teeny tiny bit of maternal feeling right now is appropriate; but welling up and making an

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.