I could say that’s all she wrote, my dear,” the doctor said, with the practiced softness of a man who’s spent his life delivering this news as often as delivering babies. “But there is some tissue we should remove. We can perform a dilation and curettage in the palace surgical theater, unless of course you’d prefer the medicinal option, which involves taking a pill and then waiting…”
As he talked, I simply stared, watching his mouth move, hearing him, believing his words, but hardly comprehending them. My pregnancy had happened in the first place because a hundred infinitesimal things happened to go exactly right. How cruel that all that magic could be undone in one split second.
I realized the doctor had stopped speaking and was now looking expectantly at me. His eyes went to Nick, as if to ask whether the decision was being abdicated to my husband. Nick put a comforting hand over mine. “Are you up for this? Do you want to decide, or do you need a minute?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and put my hands over my abdomen. I had just slipped into a rhythm of seeing this as a stroke of biological luck rather than a shock. That little spark of life had made its way into my heart, and now it was gone—and yet not, because part of it still clung to me, and I wanted to reciprocate. Even for an extra second. I’m sorry, I thought as deeply into my body as I could, as if it were listening. I’m sorry it took so long to want you. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you we were happy.
“Your Royal Highness?” the doctor asked, possibly of either one of us. “Shall we prepare the surgical room?”
I curled in a ball in the bed, one hand in Nick’s, the other still on my belly. I imagined that I was protecting it one last time, this little piece of us that we’d never have again. It had known when to join us. Maybe it had known when to go, too.
“Prep the room,” I heard myself say. “We have to say goodbye.”
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
* * *
Our second married Christmas wasn’t much merrier than the first, although at least Nick and I spent it together. After the miscarriage, I’d been released to the care of my husband back at Kensington Palace and granted permission from Eleanor to skip Sandringham. But as soon as I was back on my feet, the steady stream of well-meaning visitors had begun. Mom flew over to dote on me, reminding me that Lacey and I had only arrived after a few miscarriages of her own. Lacey had come over once, and the pain of seeing her healthy pregnant belly was so intense that I made up a bout of nausea and then confessed to my mom that I couldn’t deal. (Mom ended up telling her a white lie about Greevey having the flu.) Gaz brought me treats and let me in on the secret that he’d made the finals of casting once again for Ready, Set, Bake. Cilla entertained me with stories of the emails her relatives were sending behind each others’ backs about the planning for their upcoming family reunion—disagreements ranging from which cheese wheel was the most festive, to whether Cousin Victor had set fire to Aunt Cheryl’s shed—and our staff hovered over me whenever no one else could. My primary function had become reassuring the loving, worried faces around me that I was going to be all right, and it was making both me and Nick edgy.
So when Annabelle Farthing sent a few “You Still Haven’t RSVP’d” nudges about her New Year’s bash—a Paperless Post that Nick had been ignoring after it was so fraught the year before—I suggested we give it a try. Last year, I couldn’t stand the idea of being around unbridled revelers, but this year, I was counting on a room full of strangers to provide emotional relief from the suffocating, well-meaning, head-tilted sympathy I was getting from the people who actually loved me. I wasn’t exactly party-ready. But I needed a jolt, and besides, it was just one night.
I gasped when her property appeared over the tree line. I’d imagined a pleasant rambler of a house, but Merysfield Park was a proper stately home—an ostentatious three-story Elizabethan crafted from honey-colored stone and crowned with a thrilling jumble of Dutch gables, Gothic pinnacles, and a preponderance of orderly rectangular windows peering solemnly at us, set on