Page 101 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lady Phoebe
I found out after a year of having sex with Digby.
Didn’t know, thought it was normal. Until one day, it hit me, while I was in the middle of Chanel in Harrods—this thought just hit me like a train, a slap in the face. One of those thoughts that pop into your head so unexpectedly it almost winds you. You don’t wake up that morning expecting to have this sudden realisation. There’s no pre-warning, it just comes and then it sticks.
I realised that not only had I been having sex with Digby for a year but that it had been unprotected sex. I came off the pill shortly after Arthur left, didn’t see the point in taking it anymore and then when I got with Digby it was so quick and unexpected that I didn’t have room to breathe let alone think about going back on it.
We usually only had sex at nighttime and it was so rushed and overly passionate that neither of us stopped to think (in the beginning, anyway).
But when this thought hit me, I dropped everything, made an appointment.
Part of me hoped it was Digby’s problem—at least I’d have a solid reason to dislike him. I never thought much about having children but to have the choice so cruelly ripped away from me just felt unfair.
“So,” I said to the doctor. “What’s the issue?”
He took his glasses off, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, this is never easy to say but it does look like you’re infertile. Premature ovarian failure—P.O.F.”
I shook my head. Never heard of it before. “What does that mean exactly?”
“Your periods are irregular, yes?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “Always have been, since I was twelve. I thought that was normal.”
“It is,” he assured me. “But with the other symptoms it’s quite clear that it’s an ovarian failure.”
I don’t think it had fully sunken in yet.
“I’ll never have children?” I asked, slowly, carefully.
“Around five percent of women with P.O.F conceive naturally and normally. In some cases it can be temporary and can also be helped with hormone therapy.”
I racked my brain, trying to make sense of it. “So is this like early menopause?”
“No,” he shook his head and a slither of relief slid into me. “Some women still conceive through treatments such as IVF and donor eggs.”
“And natural birth?”
Every woman wants the chance of growing a human inside of them, naturally, preferably, I think.
“It isn’t impossible and may even be sudden but it would be— as some people call it—a miracle baby.”
And there it was, my entire future with Arthur flushed down the drain because what prince would marry someone without the possibility of gaining an heir?
He droned on, something about still using protection to avoid any STDs but whatever he said, I wasn’t listening to it. I didn’t care, nothing was going to be as life changing as what he just told me.
The only thing I can remember thinking as soon as I left the clinic was how utterly alone I felt. All I wanted at that moment was my mother or my sister or Arthur.
With my leaflets on infertility, I went home to my apartment with Digby and cried. I cried for hours. I cried at the loss of Arthur and the baby I was never going to have with him and the loss of my sister and the loss of everything I once thought was possible.
I didn’t think about Digby once in that moment.
All I kept telling myself was that Arthur was never going to be with me again. Sure, he’d still love me but what is him loving me if I’m not with him? Love from afar is the worst kind of love you can give a person. It’s teasing and cruel and I wanted no part in it.
It was a little after my twentieth birthday when I sat at the kitchen table and asked the universe why this was happening to me. I didn’t see how it was fair, how one bad thing after another kept happening to me. Once upon a time, I felt like I had won the jackpot, everyday I woke up filled with hopes and dreams until it all just came crashing down. I felt like there had to be some rule with losing one of your best friends, the love of your life, your sister and then the ability to have a child—I mean, that’s just not right, is it?
Maybe it was a punishment. A curse sent down from Hera to scold me for all the times I stayed with Arthur when I knew in full consciousness that I should leave.
