A Necessary Deception?

Louise Ahrendts, heroine of my book, The Girl from Simon's Bay, faces a crisis at the end of World War 2. She's guarding a secret that not even her Royal Navy lover, David Horrocks, knows: she is expecting his child. But David has always promised to divorce his wife and return to Simon's Town to marry her and she believes that he will, and that they will make a life together abroad with their child. If he doesn't, the future will be stark: Louise may lose her job as a nurse, she will be ostracised for having a child out of wedlock - especially if the father is known to be a white naval officer who is already married.

Fate steps in.
A fire breaks out on the mountain above the hospital. Louise helps to evacuate the patients and finally rushes home where she finds a letter from David saying that they will never be able to marry. His wife has insisted that if he divorces her, he can play no further part in the life of their daughter, Ella. David realises he can't abandon his child, however much he loves Louise.
She leaves the cottage and wanders across the fire-ravaged mountain, convinced that it would be best if she - and her child - perished. She is discovered by Piet Philander, a former boyfriend whom she rejected for David. He takes her back home and, in her confused state, she allows him to make love to her.

Shortly afterwards, Piet and Louise are married in St Francis church, with her parents and friends in attendance. Sam, her son, is born seven months later.
Piet realised my secret soon after we married and my pregnancy began show too quickly for him to have been the father.
"I'll be a good wife if you take the child as your own, Piet.
You could say we anticipated our wedding by a few months."
No-one guesses that Sam is not Piet's son. Louise gets away with her deception.
Or does she?
And does she have the right to deny David knowledge of his son?
Many years later, facing eviction and an uncertain future in apartheid South Africa, Louise considers contacting David. Not for herself, but for Sam.
Dear David, she imagines writing
You can't have me, but here is our son...