Lieve’s death is remembered by Peter through the image of her cold, lifeless body. The memory surfaces during his armed confrontation with Steef, where it collides with the possibility of another child and becomes part of the moment in which Peter cannot bring himself to shoot.

The remembered death

Peter recalls Lieve’s body as small, cold, and without life. In the confrontation, the recollection takes a specific form: he sees her again in the hospital’s glass container. The account gives no further circumstances of her death; its force lies in the image that has remained with him.

Return during the confrontation

As Peter points his weapon at Steef, he registers Steef’s fearful gaze and the prospect of death. The memory of Lieve enters that immediate threat. When Peter raises the weapon again, he sees her dead in the hospital and recognizes that a child is involved. He cannot fire. The recalled loss does not settle the confrontation, but it interrupts Peter’s attempt to kill Steef.

Narrative significance

The memory makes Lieve’s death an active presence in Peter’s later choices rather than a completed event left behind. In the instant before violence, the image of her body and the presence of a child become inseparable from the decision before him. The past does not erase the danger; it changes what Peter is able to do within it.