The room shrinks. This is everything you wanted. Not like this. This could all blow up. Cain will never know, you can protect him. You will have a child. You can move to Tarawera and start a family. You can delete all your social media profiles, go offline. The doctors had always told us it would take a miracle and now, for the second time, we have the miracle. There is a long way home from here, I know, but if I can just escape Daniel, and keep this secret, we will be a family. Our problems will evaporate. I’ll give the baby everything I never had. Two loving parents. A quiet, happy life.

But we lost the baby the last time I fell pregnant. It will all work out, I tell myself now, it will be worth it in the end. The planning, the choosing, the deception and guilt. Cain told me he could never raise someone else’s kid. I couldn’t do it knowing the real parents were out there in the world. One of his rules, I suppose. It hurt to hear, it seemed so out of character and shut down the conversation about sperm donors. But this way he will never know our baby might not technically be his.

I close my eyes for a moment, just standing there. ‘Oh also I was thinking about getting a new number,’ I say. ‘For my phone.’

‘Why would you do that?’ he says, without looking up from the couch where he’s sitting.

‘Telemarketing calls, happens all the time at work.’

‘I’ve not noticed,’ he remarks.

‘Yeah, it’s just gotten bad the last couple of weeks. No big deal but it’s the easiest way to make them stop.’

‘You’ll have to message everyone, let them know.’

Stay the course, be vigilant. Cain and I will get through this, we will be a happy family just how we had planned all those years ago before it all went wrong.

Peephole

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