Gemma turns eighteen at Blackbird Hall, a few months into caring for Nell and before Mr. Sinclair arrives at the estate and on the page for the first time. It's worth noting that her "eighteenth birthday passed unmarked, even by [her]" because previously, Miss Bryant had fibbed about her birthday to better her chances of employment when Claypoole closed its doors (Livesey 173). Vicky already thinks she's eighteen when she hires her to be a governess.  This small detail is significant considering that The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a Neo-Victorian novel written from a 21st-century perspective. Although Jane Eyre was eighteen when she meets Mr. Rochester in the hypotext, their age difference seems less scandalous in the contemporary Victorian context.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy was written for a modern, 2010s audience, so negotiating Gemma's age throughout the text demanded careful plotting and planning on Livesey's part. Specifically, Livesey had to make Gemma young enough when she leaves Claypoole to be able to claim that she was unable to sit her exams, thus thrusting her into the life of an au pair. Simultaneously, she must make Gemma seem plausibly old enough to be employable (hence the fib). Most significantly, she must ensure that Gemma is actually eighteen by the time Mr. Sinclair arrives on the scene, because most contemporary readers would balk at a romance between a 40-something and someone who isn't even a legal adult yet.

This is especially important since The Flight of Gemma Hardy claims Jane Eyre, a novel which is (controversially) considered to be among the first feminist novels in the canon, as its hypotext. If Livesey wasn't careful in her arrangement of time and plot, this romance would have seemed deeply predatory. To fail to position this cross-generational romance in a way that is palatable to modern readers would have made this novel a failed Neo-Victorian appropriation.

Livesey, Margot. The Flight of Gemma Hardy: a Novel. HarperPerennial, 2013.