I’m sensing it’s my turn to speak.
“Gosh!” I give a little laugh. “There are quite a lot of… rugs, aren’t there?”
“Seventeen,” says Luke, still in the same strange voice. “I’ve counted.” He steps over a bamboo coffee table which I got in Thailand and looks at the label of a large wooden chest. “This box apparently contains forty mugs.” He looks up. “Forty mugs?”
“I know it sounds like a lot,” I say quickly. “But they were only about 50p each! It was a bargain! We’ll never need to buy mugs ever again!”
Luke regards me for a moment.
“Becky, I never want to buy anything ever again.”
“Look…” I try to step toward him but bump my knee on a painted wooden statue of Ganesh, the god of wisdom and success. “It’s… it’s not that bad! I know it seems like a lot. But it’s like… an optical illusion. Once it’s all unpacked, and we put it all away… it’ll look great!”
“We have five coffee tables,” says Luke, ignoring me. “Were you aware of that?”
“Er… well.” I clear my throat. “Not exactly. So we might have to… rationalize a bit.”
“Rationalize?” Luke looks around the room incredulously. “Rationalize this lot? It’s a mess!”
“Maybe it looks a bit of a mishmash at the moment,” I say hurriedly. “But I can pull it all together! I can make it work! It’ll be our signature look. If we just do some mood boards—”
“Becky,” Luke interrupts. “Would you like to know what mood I’m in right now?”
“Er…”
I watch nervously as Luke shifts two packages from Guatemala aside and sinks down on the sofa.
“What I want to know is… how did you pay for all this?” he asks, wrinkling his brow. “I had a quick check through our bills, and there’s no record of any Chinese urns. Or giraffes. Or tables from Copenhagen…” He gives me a hard look. “What’s been going on, Becky?”
I’m totally pinned. Even if I did want to run, I’d probably skewer myself on Ganesh’s pointy fingers.
“Well.” I can’t quite meet his eye. “I do have this… this credit card.”
“The one you keep hidden in your bag?” says Luke without missing a beat. “I checked that too.”
Oh God.
There’s no way out of this.
“Actually… not that one.” I swallow hard. “Another one.”
“Another one?” Luke is staring at me. “You have a second secret credit card?”
“It’s just for emergencies! Everyone has the odd emergency—”
“What, emergency silk dressing gowns? Emergency Indonesian gamelans?”
There’s silence. I can’t quite reply. My fingers are all twisted in knots behind my back.
“So… you’ve been paying it off secretly, is that it?” He looks at my agonized face and his expression changes. “You haven’t been paying it off?”
“The thing is…” My fingers twist even tighter. “They gave me quite a big limit.”
“For God’s sake, Becky—”
“It’s OK! I’ll pay it off! You don’t need to worry about anything. I’ll take care of it—”
“With what?” retorts Luke.
My face flames with humiliation. I know I’m not earning right now. But he doesn’t have to rub it in.
“When I start my job,” I say, trying to sound calm. “I am going to have an income, you know, Luke. I’m not some kind of freeloader.”
Luke looks at me for a few moments, then sighs.
“I know,” he says gently. He holds out his hand. “Come here.”
After a moment I pick my way across the crowded floor to the sofa. I find a tiny space to sit down and he puts his arm round me. For a while we both look silently at the ocean of clutter. It’s like we’re two survivors on a desert island.
“Becky, we can’t carry on like this,” Luke says at last. “Do you know how much our honeymoon cost us?”
“Er… no.”
Suddenly it strikes me that I have absolutely no idea what anything has cost. It was me who bought the round-the-world airline tickets, but apart from that, Luke’s been doing all the paying, all the way along.
Has our honeymoon ruined us?
I glance sideways at Luke — and for the first time see how stressed he looks.
Oh God. We’ve lost all our money and Luke’s been trying to hide it from me.
I suddenly feel like the wife in It’s a Wonderful Life when James Stewart comes home and snaps at the children. Even though we’re on the brink of financial disgrace, it’s my role to be brave and serene.
“Luke… are we very poor?” I ask, as calmly as I can.
Luke turns his head and looks at me.
“No, Becky,” he says patiently. “We’re not very poor. But we will be if you keep buying mountains of crap.”
Mountains of crap? I’m about to make an indignant retort when I see his expression. Instead, I close my mouth and nod humbly.
“So I think…” Luke pauses. “I think we need to institute a budget.”
Eight
A BUDGET.
This is OK. I can handle a budget. Easily. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be quite liberating, knowing exactly how much I can spend.
Plus everyone knows, the point about budgets is that you make them work for you. Exactly.
“So… how much is my budget for today?” I say, hovering by the study door. It’s about an hour later and Luke is searching for something in his desk. He looks a bit stressed.
“I’m sorry?” he says without looking up.
“I was just wondering what my budget is for today. About twenty pounds?”
“I guess so,” Luke says distractedly.
“So… can I have it?”
“What?”
“Can I have my twenty pounds?”
Luke stares at me for a moment as though I’m completely mad, then takes his wallet out of his pocket, gets out a twenty-pound note, and hands it to me. “OK?”
“Fine. Thanks.”
I look at the note. Twenty pounds. That’s my challenge. I feel like some wartime housewife being given her ration book.
It’s a very weird feeling, not having my own income. Or a job. For three months. How am I going to survive three whole months? Should I get some other job to fill the space? Maybe this is a great opportunity, it occurs to me. I could try something completely new!
I have a sudden image of myself as a landscape gardener. I could buy some really cool Wellingtons and specialize in shrubs.
Or… yes! I could start up some company offering a unique service that no one has ever provided, and make millions! Everyone would say “Becky’s a genius! Why didn’t we think of that?” And the unique service would be—
It would consist of—
OK, I’ll come back to that one.
Then, as I watch Luke putting some papers in a Brandon Communications folder, I’m seized by a brilliant
