Eva Hides and Discards the Morning-After Pill

Eva’s decision to hide and discard the morning-after pill transforms a condom failure into a concealed attempt to become pregnant by Steef. The act is small in its outward form—a box moved out of sight and medication dropped into the rubbish—but it reverses the purpose of Steef’s visit and exposes the unequal stakes of a reproductive choice whose consequences Eva expects to bear in her own body.

Background: From Fertility Treatment to a Timed Conception

Eva and Peter’s struggle to conceive had already made pregnancy a constant source of hope and disappointment. After a year of trying, their general practitioner initially reassured them that difficulty conceiving was not, by itself, cause for alarm. He advised them to track Eva’s basal temperature, which she recorded every morning at half past six. A rise of two-tenths of a degree suggested that ovulation was near, and the couple tried to time intercourse accordingly.

The medical investigation eventually identified a fertility problem in Peter rather than an obvious physical obstacle for Eva. Her examination, temperature chart, and ultrasound disclosed no apparent abnormality in her reproductive system, but two semen analyses found too few sperm and poor motility among those present. The results made assisted reproduction seem like their remaining medical route to parenthood. Against this history, the chance of pregnancy through sex with Steef carries unusual weight for Eva: it is not simply an abstract possibility, but a potential opening after repeated failed attempts and an infertility diagnosis.

That possibility is not left entirely to chance. Eva and Rebecca discuss arranging a partner swap around Eva’s next ovulation and repeating it if necessary. When the condom is raised as a safeguard, Rebecca proposes that it could leak. Their plan therefore gives the condom failure a meaning beyond an accidental mishap: the risk that Steef sees as a reason to prevent pregnancy is also the opportunity Eva has been privately hoping for.

Steef Brings the Pills

Early the next morning, Steef arrives at Eva and Peter’s home in the rain. Their usual greeting is a kiss, but this time they do not kiss. He apologizes for his reaction to what he calls the condom accident and explains that a pharmacist supplied emergency contraception at a night pharmacy without requiring a prescription. He slides a white box across the kitchen counter.

Steef presents the pills as his responsibility to manage. He tells Eva that intercourse with a stranger would have made him more cautious, but that their intimacy made him less guarded; he also insists that their connection is not romantic. He says that he wants no more children: Sem was born against his wishes, he is trying to be a good father, and he considers himself too unstable and too attached to freedom to have another child. He describes a possible pregnancy as something that must not come from this situation.

The package contains two pills, one to take immediately and another twelve hours later. Steef says they make it 95 percent certain that Eva will not remain pregnant. Eva accepts the box but inwardly rejects his assumption that he can decide what she puts into her body. She thinks that if she is pregnant, the child is hers, and she resents being expected to make the sacrifice once again. Outwardly, however, she tells Steef that she will take the first pill after breakfast rather than on an empty stomach. Her answer postpones the decision in his hearing without revealing that she has already made another one.

Concealment at Breakfast

The arrival of Peter interrupts the conversation. He comes into the back garden drenched, and Steef greets him with an unusually enthusiastic embrace. Eva quickly puts the pill box in a kitchen drawer. The physical concealment matters: the package remains close at hand, but is removed from Steef’s sight while he and Peter are together.

After Steef leaves, Eva prepares breakfast in careful detail: eggs, freshly squeezed orange juice, tea, six slices of white bread, and two croissants warming in the oven. Sunlight falls across the set table. The ordinary domestic abundance does not reassure her. She wonders why this ready-made life is not enough and thinks of herself as a woman who is knowingly damaging everything, yet also as someone fighting for her happiness. The scene makes the disposal a deliberate decision rather than a forgotten dose: amid the preparations, she puts the morning-after pill in the gray bin, concealed beneath the other rubbish.

Peter and Eva eat in silence, with the Sunday newspaper between them as a buffer. The calm appearance of breakfast contrasts with Eva’s private action and with the fertility struggle that precedes it. She has not taken the contraception Steef supplied; she has also not told Peter what she has done. The act thus creates a secret inside both relationships, even as Eva understands it as a chance to pursue the motherhood she wants.

Consequences and Conflict

The decision becomes part of a larger conflict over who may make reproductive choices and who must live with their consequences. Steef’s concern is shaped by his stated wish not to have another child and his sense that he is already an inadequate or unwilling father to Sem. Eva’s position is shaped by infertility, her longing for a child, and the possibility that pregnancy may have occurred. Their different claims meet in the pill box: to Steef it is protection against a pregnancy he does not want; to Eva it represents an attempt to close a possibility she is unwilling to surrender.

Later, Steef confronts Rebecca and accuses her and Eva of stealing his semen, with Rebecca’s wife having consented to the act. His anger confirms that the sexual encounter has consequences beyond the private understanding Eva and Rebecca formed around it. The discarded medication does not resolve the conflict or establish that Eva is pregnant; instead, it preserves the possibility while concealing her choice from Steef. The scene’s decisive turn lies in that concealment: a seemingly routine act of taking emergency contraception is refused, and a claimed accident becomes entangled with a planned attempt at conception.