The Heat of Betrayal Read Free Page A

great friend. She steadied my resolve when I suggested that perhaps I should check in on Paul, see how he was bearing up.
    â€˜When he landed himself in debt last time,’ she said, ‘what did you do?’
    â€˜I dug into my retirement fund and found the ten grand to get him out of trouble.’
    â€˜What did he promise you in return?’
    â€˜You know very well. He admitted that he’s got a sad pathological compulsion when it comes to spending, spending, spending . . . and he promised to curtail it.’
    â€˜A compulsion that is eating away at your marriage. It’s all so sad. Especially as I rather like Paul.’
    â€˜And I do love him madly, despite this one very bad habit. He still makes me laugh. He is so bright and engaged and intellectually curious. He still thinks me hot – or, at least, that’s what he says all the time.’
    â€˜Still trying for a child?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    When I met Paul three years earlier, I was thirty-seven. Within six months of declaring our love for each other, and talking about the wondrous possibilities of a shared future together, I delicately raised the fact that I did not want to pass through life without becoming a mother; that I was entering the now-or-never phase. I knew that I was bringing a certain degree of ‘beat the clock’ pressure to our relationship, and said I would perfectly understand if Paul felt this was all too much too fast. His response astounded me:
    â€˜When you have met the love of your life, of course you want to have a child with her.’
    Yes, Paul was a great romantic. Such a romantic that he proposed marriage shortly thereafter, even though I told him that, having been there once before, I wasn’t pushed about a return visit. But I was so swept up in the wonder of finding love at my age, and with such a talented and original man, and in Buffalo, that I said yes. He did say that though he realised the clock was ticking we needed some time together before becoming parents. I agreed to his request, staying on the pill until last autumn. At which point we seriously began to ‘try’ (what a curious verb) for a baby. We went about the task very robustly – though sex was, from the outset, one of the aspects of our marriage that always worked. It wasn’t as if we were having to motivate ourselves into making love every night of the week.
    â€˜You know, if I don’t get pregnant naturally there are other options,’ I said six months later when nothing had happened.
    â€˜You’ll get pregnant.’
    â€˜You sound very certain about that.’
    â€˜It’s going to happen.’
    That conversation took place ten days before the debt collector arrived on our doorstep. As I headed south in my car towards Brooklyn, my cellphone off, my piercing sadness about Paul was underscored by the realisation that he was my last chance at having a baby. And that thought . . .
    Ruth splashed a little more wine into my glass and I took a long sip.
    â€˜He’s not your last chance,’ she said.
    â€˜I want a baby with Paul.’
    â€˜That’s a definitive statement.’
    Friendship is always a complex equation – especially a friendship where it had been agreed early on that we would never sugar-coat things; that we would speak what we felt to be the truth.
    â€˜I don’t want to be a single mother,’ I said. ‘If I can get him to just accept that he has certain obligations . . .’
    â€˜Paul had problems with money before you. Even though you’ve tried to organise his personal finances, he refuses to play smart. At the age of fifty-eight, he is not going to have some sort of epiphany and transform himself. He is what he is. Which therefore begs the question – can you weather his ongoing recklessness?’
    All the way home that question nagged at me. Life, they say, is a great teacher. But only if we are truly willing to shake off