I turned 39 yesterday and am definitely not perimenopausal. Being perimenopausal in your 30s is not the norm.
I believe my mother started getting symptoms around 45 but it took her a few years to be completely done.
As for this woman, 54 is pretty late but, well, she must be wealthier than average and have the resources to raise a child, so why not?
"We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?”
John LeCarré