The story told in the novel by the famous English writer Fay Weldon is unusual: during a television report about the election campaign, the heroine accidentally recognizes one of the candidates for the presidency of the United States as the father of her six-year-old son: the man with whom she once had an affair. She is well aware that an illegitimate child can ruin a father's brilliant career. And indeed, a real hunt begins, and the forces are obviously unequal: on the one hand, a well-functioning political machine, on the other, a defenseless woman with a child. Until the last page of the novel, the reader follows the development of events with unrelenting tension, and the denouement - quite unexpected - awaits him only at the very end of the book.