32 to 33 – Kobo eBook

Gina Flowers never wanted to be a medical miracle. She never thought she’d need a media

manager and certainly never thought she’d need an obstetrician again. Then she finds out

she’s 32 to 33 weeks pregnant at 62 with no immediately obvious channel of conception.

How did that happen? What to do? Who’s the father?

Gina Flowers is a day away from going to visit her son, Stan Douglas, in Australia. She has a

gastroscopy and finds out she is pregnant. 32 to 33 weeks pregnant. She’s 62, well post-

menopause and hasn’t had sex since she was widowed for the second time several years

ago. Shock, disbelief and denial run alongside making very big decisions.

Her pregnancy is the result of delayed embryonic settled implantation (DESI). Her

consultant, Gerald Howard, is a leading obstetrician but has only come across DESI in

theory; his professional interest, excitement even, is shared by colleagues if not by Gina

who struggles with her options. Planned pre-natal foetal demise ‘what, kill my live baby?’

is one. Adoption ‘what, give away this baby when I kept the other two?’

– another. Or bring him up. She has to tell her sons and her mother, herself now eighty-five. And work out

if she can cope with all things baby, child and teenage while she gets increasingly less able.

Gina needs a media manager and engages Texan Rosalie McGrath, who takes control

of PR. Patient confidentiality in healthcare is sacrosanct but Rosalie knows there is always

one weak link; the technician who did Gina’s first scan is tempted to leak the story.

Gina will have to sell her story if she is going to support a baby. That story will be

more valuable if the father – any one of the six men Gina has had a sexual relationship with –

can be identified. Dredging up the details of these relationships is in some ways cathartic

but also painful territory Gina had never wanted to revisit.

George Douglas, Stan and Evan’s father, died when the boys were small. If George

Flowers, Gina’s second husband, is the father; the baby would be mixed race. The other four

candidates have to be approached. Roland, a journalist for the forty years since he and Gina

may or may not have had sex on holiday. Eddie, retired psychiatrist, broke Gina’s heart. Alan

was a one night stand but what a one night stand, it was the defining night of both their

lives. And Jerome, a fling in Paris that brought her back to life after her first widowhood.

After Barney is safely delivered by Caesarian, the men get the results of the DNA test

and have to confront the impact on their own lives.

Jerome is Barney’s father; childless until now, he is delighted with Barney and feels Lyon where he lives is exactly the right distance

for his paternal participation.

315pp