Eva’s Flight Toward Motherhood

This thread follows Eva from the exhausting pursuit of pregnancy and the death of Lieve through sexual and marital estrangement, a covert pregnancy plan, and her attempt to leave with her unborn child.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Dream of a Family

The Dream of a Family Hope Becomes a Project Eva’s wish for a child begins as a shared promise: after Peter’s parents die, she hopes to give him the close family he longs for. When pregnancy does not come, that wish increasingly organizes their life together. She tracks her cycle, undergoes fertility investigations, and embraces each proposed treatment as another possible route to motherhood. The Cost of Persistence Medical procedures and repeated disappointments turn sex into scheduled work and intensify the difference between Eva’s urgency and Peter’s unease. Peter fears that treatment is consuming their relationship, while Eva fears that stopping would mean abandoning her deepest hope. Her determination helps carry them through years of treatment, but it also narrows the future she can imagine. Motherhood becomes not only a desire but the test by which she measures whether life can still become complete.

Motherhood Interrupted

Motherhood Interrupted The Emergency At thirty weeks, Eva wakes to heavy bleeding and urgently tells Peter that they are losing the baby. At the hospital, an examination confirms that the placenta has detached and that Lieve’s heart has stopped. Eva undergoes an emergency caesarean section while the couple waits for their daughter to be delivered. A Brief Encounter Eva holds Lieve against her chest and studies her tiny face, insisting that her daughter is perfect and complete. The family dresses and holds the baby, trying to memorize her features and scent before taking her home for burial. The stillbirth gives Eva the identity she had longed for and makes its loss almost impossible to absorb: she is Lieve’s mother, but her child is dead. She visits Lieve’s grave daily, keeping their bond tangible even as the people around her urge her to let go.

A Marriage Without Desire

A Marriage Without Desire Grief Without a Shared Language Eva experiences the loss of Lieve as an ongoing bond and resists the idea that moving forward should mean forgetting her daughter. Peter, in contrast, struggles to find a way into Eva’s grief and often says what he thinks will reassure or satisfy her rather than what he truly feels. Desire Reawakens Elsewhere Their attempts to have another child have left sex mechanical, while the loss of Lieve has further separated their bodies and expectations. Eva is drawn to Rebecca’s candid account of sexual freedom and to the possibility of feeling pleasure outside the exhausted patterns of her marriage. When Eva and Peter become close to Rebecca and Steef, their household offers her friendship and a model of life that appears less trapped by conventional obligations. Her renewed curiosity about sex is also bound up with her fear that she has lost the capacity for pleasure and with the loneliness she cannot resolve with Peter.

The Secret Pregnancy Plan

The Secret Pregnancy Plan A Hope Kept from Peter Eva comes to believe that adoption cannot provide the experience of pregnancy she still craves. Rebecca suggests that Eva could become pregnant by Steef, framing the plan as a loving way to give Eva a child and Sem a sibling. Eva accepts the proposal without telling Peter or Steef what she intends. A Deliberate Risk During the partner-swapping encounter, Eva is focused on conceiving. The condom used during sex with Steef leaks, creating a real possibility of pregnancy. Steef offers her a morning-after pill, but Eva hides it and discards it rather than take it. Her choice transforms a fantasy into a serious deception involving reproductive consent and a future child. Though she tells herself that the child will be created and raised in love, she has taken from Steef the choice he had made not to become a father again.

Flight After the Positive Test

Flight After the Positive Test A Confirmed Pregnancy Eva takes a Predictor test with Rebecca at school and sees two blue lines. The result brings overwhelming joy, but it also makes the hidden conception plan impossible to treat as a private possibility. Eva decides that the baby must live and that she must protect the pregnancy, even if that requires leaving Peter. Choosing Escape Eva packs personal belongings, Lieve’s photograph and keepsakes, and leaves Peter a brief note. She drives south, telling herself that separation is the only way to choose a life for her child beyond the marriage and the suffocating home in De Zonnepolder. At De Kempervennen, she finds temporary refuge but not a settled future. Rebecca arrives with Sem, and Steef soon confronts Eva about the pregnancy. Eva tries to persuade him to accept the child, then submits to his demand that she return with them, just as Peter arrives armed. Her attempt to secure motherhood through flight ends in the armed confrontation that places her and the unborn child in immediate danger.

In the years after Peter and Eva begin trying to conceive

On 22 juli, during Eva’s pregnancy with Lieve

During the first year after Lieve’s death, as Eva and Peter settle into Melkweg 1

After the first partner-swapping encounter and before Eva’s return to work

On the first day back at school after the summer, when Eva tests positive