Sephy decides to have a child

Sephy’s decision to continue her pregnancy is a turning point in her relationship with Callum and her family: rather than accept an abortion arranged by her parents, she claims the pregnancy as the consequence of her mutual love with Callum and insists on keeping the child. The decision makes private what had been hidden impossible to contain, exposing both the tenderness of Sephy’s attachment and the racial assumptions through which her family interprets it.

Discovery and uncertainty

After Sephy returns from captivity, her sister Minnie asks whether she is pregnant. Sephy initially denies it, but her answer falters; Minnie asks whether it could be the case and whether one of the kidnappers was responsible. The question leaves Sephy with a possibility she has not yet faced, and she runs from the conversation rather than answer it.

Sephy then uses a pregnancy test. She reads the instructions, follows them, and waits for the result, trying to reassure herself that her morning sickness is only a delayed reaction to the preceding weeks. When the indicator turns blue, the uncertainty ends: she understands that she is pregnant. The test changes the issue from a suspicion she might evade into a decision that will reshape her life.

Her parents’ plan

Minnie has told their parents, and Sephy is called to the family room, where her mother sits beside her and her father paces. Her father says they must handle the situation quickly and discreetly. He has already booked Sephy into a clinic for the following morning and expects that by evening the pregnancy will be over, allowing the family to put the matter behind them.

Her mother presents the plan as being for the best, while her father treats it as a practical solution to a problem that has become public and difficult to manage. When Sephy asks whether they want her to have an abortion, her mother assumes she would not want the child, describing the pregnancy through the possibility that her kidnapper fathered it. Her father likewise assumes that Sephy has been harmed and says she should have told them earlier. Their plan rests on an account of the pregnancy that Sephy has not given.

Refusal and confrontation

Sephy refuses to go to the clinic. She first says quietly that she will not attend the appointment, then makes her decision explicit: she is going to keep her baby. When her father dismisses this as unreasonable and argues that she is only eighteen and will be judged for how the child was conceived, Sephy repeats that she will keep it. Her resolve is not presented as a passing reaction; she holds to it as her parents try to define the pregnancy and its consequences for her.

The conflict sharpens when her father insists that Callum must have raped her because she is pregnant. Sephy directly rejects that claim and says that she and Callum made love to each other. She describes their night together as wonderful and says her regret is that they cannot repeat it. This disclosure clarifies what her decision means to her: she is not accepting her parents’ description of the child as a product of assault, but affirming the relationship and shared choice that led to the pregnancy.

Consequences and significance

Sephy’s declaration does not persuade her father. He strikes her, disowns her, insults her through a racial slur, and insists that she will still go to the clinic. His response turns a family disagreement into an explicit rupture: Sephy’s decision to keep the pregnancy challenges both his authority over her future and the racial contempt shaping his account of Callum and the child.

The pregnancy decision also connects the couple’s private relationship to the larger racial hierarchy of the novel. Sephy is the daughter of Kamal Hadley, while Callum is a Nought; her father’s hostility recasts their relationship as shameful and the unborn child as a threat to the family’s standing. Against that pressure, Sephy’s repeated refusal gives the pregnancy a meaning her parents cannot dictate. The scene establishes that she intends to continue it, even though doing so costs her her father’s acceptance.