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Dear Sara,

Okay, so you were right: Ingrid has been yammering my ear off. I'm beating my chest in penance. Actually, I'm at one of those cyber dens where you pay for computer time by the hour. It's on Rue des Halles (east of the Louvre). I'd also like to say (just in passing) that I wouldn't have to e-mail if you were here. And I'm sending it to your work address to be safe.

Ingrid's gone to find the shop near Notre Dame that sells these fabulous tubes of paint (20 shades of green and whatnot; oh rapture). She almost had us driving to the factory in Brittany (the same company sold paints to Monet, Degas and that bunch) until I found three of their outlets in Paris and talked her out of it. She can't stop chattering about the colours but at least it's a breather from her skewering of that double-dealing Justin. Something like $2000 for the complete set but the girl's gotta have 'em. I told her she was born without the financial gene.

Painting sounds like her dream vacation. Mine's not coming back. Who was that Irish actor (lots of films, won an Oscar) that disappeared from the limelight for a while and then we read he was working (non-celebrity wife in tow) as an apprentice for a custom shoemaker in Florence? It has its appeal.

But let's praise the paint because it's been two weeks of her break-up with the 'scumbag'. Yakkity-yak from breakfast to the last drink at night (more to follow on that). She just won't let go of that bone. All this driving (it looked much shorter on the map) and me trapped beside a whimpering, homicidal heartache.

You nailed it: better alone than in the wrong company. But it's even worse than you predicted. I try pointing out the beauties, changing the subject, turning up the radio. Nothing doing. We stop for gas, Justin. We're exploring a village or admiring a cathedral, Justin. We're buying food and wine (make that wines), Justin. She's close to tears but then it's lucky he's not around when she's slicing the bread. You think she's bruised? You should see this vacation.

Never holiday with a woman who's been dumped for a dog trainer. My thinking was: four months after the boot, the dog trainer's father dies, Ingrid goes to the funeral home to comfort her ingratitude-in-spades ex, she extends condolences to the Lead Bitch (Ingrid's endearment), she's over it and it's harmless to travel with her. She'd done all this wandering through the years. I thought an old hand would be useful. She might treat it as therapy, laugh it off and make it fun.

Was I off course. She'd convinced herself that her consoling visit would bring on a change of heart. Instead, I'm grappling with this furious woman scorned. Why take it out on me? She should know by now the only time a woman can change a man is when he's in diapers.

It's not that I don't feel for her (even if she was wilfully blind). Boy, have we had some well-lubricated skull sessions. Seems she'd been having serious stomach muscle spasms but didn't want them checked out because she was afraid Justin was the type who couldn't handle taking care of someone. A tip-off, no? Then the 'having children' squabbles and the hundred other 'little' things. Help him pack, I say.

"You ever made sad love?" she asked me in Bayeux (the tapestry has that effect). "Not intentionally," I told her. My last fellow, I strapped him to me like a fridge belted to a dolly so it won't slip off.

Needy people are not clear-thinking people. Now she's cynical about the planet (paints excluded). But a cynic's just a romantic gone bad; somebody who's run into reality. She claims she's been to a shrink, undergone hypnosis and finally she's better. Except that any time she hears the word 'cure', as in cured ham, she squawks like a chicken.

She's Mennonite (not that it matters). She carries a worn university graduation photo of herself and in it she's bright-eyed in dark-rimmed glasses with full lips, absolutely lovely, not the unnoticed soul she's become. You're tempted to say her loveliness started on the outside but then seeped in and left her plain. She was an athlete, ran a 200-meter final barefoot and came in fifth, then jogged over to the sand pit and won the long jump. She began studying Latin from scratch, flunked the mid-year exam but ended up with the highest grade. Did you know any of this?

She bounces from hysterically cheerful to tearjerky and she's nonsensical in both moods. One minute she's chirping that we should live to the hilt; next she's weepy and advising me to not get too attached to the good times because we'll become afraid of jeopardizing them and stop going all-out. I let her talk till the alcohol runs out or she runs down.

Her father's a retired biochemist involved with an international academic group (heavily female) that meets occasionally in Europe. They're working on a universal declaration of responsibilities (to go with the rights) that they eventually want to present to the United Nations. He's revered by the eccentric old ladies and that troubles Ingrid's mother. She doesn't protest much because when he's home it's worse. The big money stick is his game. He's always controlled the family resources (salaries, his pension, a suspected stash) and she makes do with the pension from her secretarial days. He just believes he's worth more than she is and he's entitled. So, she always feels in the wrong and needs to make amends to get back into his favour. By all accounts, your standard charmer.

Then, Ingrid's sister is filthy rich (by marriage, not effort) and only calls to lecture while her brother, who was loaned $25,000 by their father, pretends he's not advantaged and has never repaid it. Meanwhile, the mother despairs over her kids holding together.

After all that, what Ingrid hates most is herself, for caving in to Justin and having the abortion. God bless her sense of humour (last month, two contractors came out to her house to quote her an estimate on replacing the roof but she didn't have confidence in either because they both limped). She's so candid she grows on you but it's pretty obvious we don't quite see eye-to-eye. I notice things like the Mea Culpa Sex Shop on Rue St. Denis; she spots a teenaged girl sitting at Pont Neuf crying on her cell phone.

In spite of her spite, we've had only one nasty spat. We were in Chartres waiting for the light to change. Sunshine lying everywhere. Breathtaking morning. We're idling behind a white BMW convertible and the driver, a young woman, raises both arms, stretches, holds them there, like she's the Duchess of Summer. It wasn't a stretch of boredom or crampness. I can only see her eyes in her rearview mirror, her light-brown, short-sleeved sweater barely darker than her tan and her long ponytail tossed over the rump of the headrest. All the same, it tells me she's thoroughbred through and through.

When she lowers her arms and sees me watching, she tilts her head enough for the mirror to catch her smile. A nice mouth landscaped with fancy teeth. She's not embarrassed. Not at her bounty or declaring it with such a public gesture. She's taking our attention as a compliment. As thanks. Because she's just thrown us a bouquet. A small gift.

"That's a Daddy or sugar daddy car," Ingrid says. "Let's rent one and show off too." She's on edge, as usual, and we started disagreeing on the stretch. I thought the woman was feeling so good she couldn't keep it in. For Ingrid, it was gloating. "You work decades at a professional job, you save, you invest, you inherit a bit and maybe you begin to live at 60 the way the wealthy do at birth." Before long we're at it. That stretch had become so important to something else we were defending.

After five minutes, when the BMW turned at an intersection, Ingrid said, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Still bitter, you understand, and you want to turn her off but she's funny.

Of course, I'm in this boat because someone I won't name reneged on all our planning and dropped out. So, no shared memories, just me and my grouchy account. I'm not sure I can totally forgive you because there were other means to work around your new sweetie's hang-ups. Insecure from the start, is he? Bad sign. But I couldn't cancel. Truth is, I didn't want to. I'm getting to a stage (and you're not far behind) where if I put something off, I'm really putting it away for good. I talked so long about returning to Paris that 15 years passed. Stop moving and you stick in the mud. Your loss, says I, though Ingrid in this mood takes some of the shine off it. I look at her, at us (the duchesses of autumn?). Could we only have been what we've become? Do we get the life we deserve? Mine feels like it's gotten away from me. It hits me at the oddest times. As I'm spring cleaning or staring at my empty plate after finishing supper. Or yesterday when I got mixed up in Montmartre and a nice American expatriate helped me out (because she'd actually made the move to Paris). I've let it get too big a lead and it's gone out of reach, out of sight. You with your bully beau have forgotten this.

Ingrid's like that. What's with her dependency on men? She can't stand on her own for six months? Getting up to be hit again, sure that the next guy will be the best, will be final. I guess the deeper you swear to it, the finer the illusion. And here's the only way the illusion works: you shoot the arrow first, then you draw a circle around it. Can't miss claiming a bull's-eye.

But…back to the pair of us getting along like lemons and ice cream or laxatives and romance (I told you that story).

You and I used to crow about holding our liquor but we were dabblers. Babies sucking on warm milk bottles. Does Ingrid have a drinking problem? Only when the booze runs out. I tried to keep up the night we landed but days later I still had two heads with the larger one inside the smaller.

In Louvain (where is Louvain, or Leuven, you ask, and why did we end up there? - patience, all will be revealed) I woke up around one. The room was dark but I could see (moonlight) Ingrid sitting on her bed. Sizing me up like a vampire. What was she doing? "Drowning my sorrows." "Alone?" (I was dopey with sleep) and she said, "A lot." I left her to it.

In Courtrai, (or Kortrijk, depending on which language fanatics in Belgium you don't want to offend) we'd had cocktails outside a bar and she said, "We should go on." Naļve me: "To Bruges?" I mean, she'd had three. "No, drinking." More than happy to delay her project.

Now, the project. Remember Justin pumping out articles after each of their trips and getting them into some publication or other? Full of himself, you'll recall. Well, Ingrid's out to prove any idiot can do it; a 'so there, Justin' to wave in his face. I warned her she might face more rejection; she said if it wasn't for rejection, she'd get no attention at all. Ingrid does have her moments.

Right from the beginning, I'm reminded. The night before our flight we stayed at one of the airport hotels (I left the name on your machine and was counting on you phoning or coming to see us off. I'm assuming you got it but were busy; otherwise, your beloved lord and master has been erasing again and his denials are lies).

Two junior soccer teams were also there and the 17-year olds screamed and banged doors up and down our corridor. What a zoo. Around one-thirty, a boy and a girl began shouting at each other across the courtyard. When we caught up to the conversation, she was asking if he had any beer and he was ordering her ("Be there if you know what's good for you!") to meet him in the stairwell and he'd trade some for rye. Loud, and stupid too. The two had gotten chatty and were in no hurry to shut up. She wanted his room number and he yelled it back. Ingrid in her underwear called the registration desk and passed on the room number. Registration sent security and that finished off the lust affair (the foreplay part, anyway).

I mentioned to the taxi driver in the morning that the hotel had gone downhill since my last stay. He said he'd stomped a cockroach in the lobby. "They're usually in bed before daylight. My cockroach theory is if you've got one problem, you've got others." After he related losing thousands on the dogs and jai alai in Florida, Ingrid rolled her eyes at his expertise.

The point of this is that Ingrid picking up the phone to complain is as proactive as she's been for most of the ride. With her black hair (not every strand of natural colour, I might add), predominantly dark outfits (mourning, presumably), pint-sized round body, slight sway but directness in her walk, she's either a cannonball packed with explosives or a bowling ball rolling slowly down the alley. Low on energy when she's not bashing Justin. And apart from the beguines (but not as in the song 'when they begin the beguine'), she doesn't show much interest in where we're going. Walking, she moves like she's afraid she'll hurt the cobblestones. Drugged from the wine or pooped from slapping Justin around but it takes us forever (especially when she's carrying her mug of coffee, as through Da Vinci's residence in Amboise). Since organizing is my real job, booking the rooms, keeping a lookout for supermarkets and attractions, laying out the best route all falls to me.

Anyway, she found her subject in Belgium and Holland (you didn't know they were on the itinerary, did you? Neither did I) and she's been researching up a storm.

The guy's just come by to ask if I want another hour on the computer. Arab likely. My French is slipping because he switched to very polite English. Paris has changed in 15 years. There's every race imaginable, just like home. Don't think Hemingway would recognize it. Different foods, smells, feel. Different kind of feast. Can't discuss it with Ingrid because when she's not boning up on beguines (hold on, it's coming), she's reading Stendahl. The back cover says he composed his own epigraph: "I lived, wrote, loved." Mine's going to be: "I lived, chaired meetings, made my own lunches, loved - but not enough."

I'll slip in the beguines before time runs out (told Ingrid we'd rendezvous at this pātisserie that has croissants aux amandes to kill for) because here the trip goes from bad to worth. Listening to Ingrid, I could almost write the piece myself (we've collaborated on the first four paragraphs and we each have a copy).

In the thriving towns of the medieval world, they flowered as retreats for women; in the city hubbub of contemporary northwest Europe, they remain recesses of calm. Such are the begijnhofs - or beguinages - a phenomenon that sprouted in the late 12th century. As an institution, they've been silted over by history and the last beguine died in the 1970s. But though the beguines did not prevail, they endure.

The begijnhofs were communities of women from all classes who withdrew from the male-dominated societies of their eras to establish their own rules. Fired by religious enthusiasm, the beguines insisted on fending for themselves. Some worked in the growing textile trade while others cared for the sick, the poor and the dying. A few beguines brought their own wealth to their commitment while outsiders who admired their ideals donated to their support.

Despite their good works, the beguines were viewed with suspicion and hostility by the civil and Church authorities who snarled at them for being a visible rebuke to their own shortcomings and worldliness. The beguines repeatedly found themselves accused of heresy and were either persecuted or exploited.

As the weaving industry blossomed in 13th century Flanders and Brabant (? - wish I'd stayed alert in history class), cloth merchants profited at the expense of the beguines who were proving competitive with the guilds. The beguines wove and embroidered for the Glory of God and this benefited the merchants rather than the women because it reduced the already low wages of the industry.

How's that for an opening? Think Ingrid has a chance to zap Justin?

These begijnhofs were self-contained, small-scale towns. The one in Amsterdam (no wider than the clergy's tolerance) is a few minutes from the Damrak (a main street). Wouldn't you know there were two sweethearts cuddling (Ingrid pretended to be studying the gabled facades). Another pair of lovebirds was whispering away in Courtrai (these places are perfect for escaping crowds) and in Louvain, the high-walled begijnhof has been converted into a university campus with its own lazy canal and bridge. It was a Sunday and deserted but I peeked into a window and this female student, hair in curlers and her bicycle propped behind her ironing board, was mending her blouse. In Bruges, the begijnhof is a Benedictine priory (you'd like the collection of lace pillows from 1600) with daffodils and white, undersized houses glued together.

The timelessness and quiet was so wonderful it's depressed me. The overall motive for my present feeling is that I'm very aware middle age is officially here and I'm tired of being a butterfly. I have nothing which is concrete and comforting, like my own home, my own very special friends and my own very special man. The reality of being a 38-year-old, restless, unattached, rootless individual is frightening (do I sound like Ingrid's rubbed off on me?).

Hour's up. A bug in your ear: we're landing Tuesday about six. Ingrid will be disguised as a mule hauling paints. I'll be carrying a present of Belgian origin (no expense spared) for my kid sister who I hope will be waiting with hugs for me at the airport (or should I hope he'll let you be there?) Love, Kate