Book excerpt: A new start. With old secrets . . . Who hasn’t dreamed of running away from it all? The Haunt family have gone and clone it. On an impulse, Maude, her husband Horatio and their two small children have left their tiny London terrace for the sunflower fields and the vie rustique of Southern France. Up the road, the scruffy Hotel Marronnier is about to change hands again. Daffy Fielding has fallen in love with the place and has dragged her husband to France to persuade him to buy it. Which he does—before heading straight back home to his mistress. Can timid Daffy make a life for herself alone? Watching over all the new arrivals is the glamorous, predatory, eternally bored Lady Emma Rankin. From her exquisite chateau nearby, she pulls strings to bring the new wives together. But is it Horatio, rather than Maude, who she really wants to sip Sancerre with? Or is her eye on the gorgeous local builder, the only one of them all who is party to the Haunt family's explosive secret? Praise for Daisy Waugh: ‘Sparkling fun.’—Heat ‘Full of laugh-out-loud funny bits.’—New Woman