Read The Betrayal for Free Online Page B

whisper in her ear, caress her hands, kiss her repeatedly before Jake led me away.
    ‘She looks so peaceful,’ my father kept saying, as if this would give me some consolation. ‘She never knew what hit her.’
    Jake held me upright when her life support was switched off. He supported me from her graveside and back home to our children. To the life we were slowly building together.

Chapter 6
    Jake
    A t first , Jake believed the seed Karin planted in his mind had fallen on barren soil. But it kept growing shoots. Fierce, demanding shoots that made him question why he had to rise at six in the morning to beat the rush hour traffic. Why the workload he brought home at weekends kept growing. Why so many people were breathing down his neck. His bank manager, who, in the heady days of easy borrowing, had insisted the boom times were here to stay but now looked askance when Jake mentioned a loan extension. The VAT officer who arrived without an appointment to inspect Tõnality’s VAT records and gave Jake a dead fish stare when he asked if everything was in order. Tõnality’s biggest customer who had declared himself bankrupt and ended any hope of settling his account. If it wasn’t for Shard he would go crazy. Thanks to Karin Moylan, he now had an escape route.
    He never intended losing touch with the band but after the twins were born and the lads were still talking about hangovers, garage raves and one-night stands, he could no longer pretend to have anything in common with them. Apart from Daryl Farrell who formed Shard with him when they were fourth-year students in St Fabian’s College, Jake had not seen the others for years.
    Soon after his return from New York they met in a bar on Grafton Street to discuss the possibility of a Shard reunion. The old camaraderie was still there and they spent the night reminiscing about the past. Reedy, the bass guitarist, looked older than the others, a lived-in face with premature crevices. Too much touring and weed, he confided to Jake. Hart, who used to stumble drunk on stage and play his rhythm guitar flawlessly, was now the owner of a yoga centre called Hartland to Health. Something to do with shoulder stands and a third eye. It all sounded very mysterious to Jake who, was astonished to see Hart drinking soda water with a slice of lemon instead of knocking back shots of tequila. Daryl, Shard’s one-time lead guitarist, had recently become a first-time father. He spoke about breastfeeding with the confidence of a wet nurse and swiped his finger over his iPhone to show them photographs of his baby daughter crying, smiling, kicking her legs in the air. He made Jake feel old, his role as a parent just beginning whereas any one of Jake’s four adult children were capable of turning him into a grandfather. Barry, the drummer, once known as Bad Boy Barry Balfe, had made a fortune laying bricks during the boom. Unemployed since the collapse of the construction industry, he was examining his options. The reunion gig was manna from heaven.
    They would perform the songs that made them famous and introduce Jake’s newer songs, dust them off and bring them to life. Reedy claimed they would need a boot camp to kick them into shape if they were to appear in public again and they now rehearsed three nights a week in the basement of a recording studio. Now, two months in, they had formed into a tight, cohesive unit. The rehearsals were chaotic, argumentative and fun. Jake had forgotten what it was like to have fun. Forgotten what it was like to be the singer in a band.
    Tonight, before he left for band practice, Nadine made a comment about fiddling while Rome burned. She said it tersely, pointedly. He hoped she would be in bed when he returned. Band practice had gone on longer than anticipated and he had wanted to spend an hour in his music room before calling it a night. Reedy, whose musical opinion he respected, liked ‘The Long Goodbye’ but believed the arrangement needed further