It was about then that she read The Power of Now. I mention that book specifically because it was a turning point in Amy’s life, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I never read it myself – after seeing how it affected Amy, I was a bit scared, I suppose. But Dad skimmed it and told me it all seemed quite reasonable, so it remains something of a mystery as to why it messed so badly with Amy’s head.
Amy had always been a woman who wanted things, and I’d come to see that this was a big part of why she was never happy. Being happy, it seems to me, requires wanting what you have, whereas being unhappy requires wanting something different. So, yes, she’d always been a dissatisfied sort of person, and these days, looking back, I can see much of our story as little more than an expression of that dissatisfaction. Amy had wanted to bed the only guy on the yoga course, then she’d wanted to see if she could make him her new boyfriend. She’d wanted to change countries; change towns; change houses . . . It was all part of an ongoing process.
But when she read The Power of Now the whole thing went into overdrive. ‘Everything is possible,’ Amy started insisting, something she’d ‘learned’ from the book. ‘Anything’ could be achieved, as long as you believed it was possible. And if anything was truly possible, how could anything ever be enough?
She started ploughing her way through the self-help section of Waterstones. She bought so many self-help books I had to put up new shelves just to hold them all. There were books on mindfulness and meditation; there were tomes on manifesting happiness and overcoming limitations.
Dad, who in an attempt at making sense of his life had read some similar ideas, albeit in somewhat heftier, more traditional volumes, convinced me for a while that this was healthy. But like everything else in Amy’s life, nothing was ever enough. In fact, I started to see her obsession with mindfulness, with living in the now, with manifesting success, as obtuse escape routes to avoid ever being present. Because whenever she was talking about her latest craze, or reading about a new one, whether she was following an online course or listening to a guru on the Internet, she was always anywhere but here.
‘I want a baby,’ she announced, one January day, looking up from the book she’d just finished reading. It was The Secret, and the fact that the book was still on her lap made me doubt the profundity of this revelation about what, after all, was not an insignificant matter.
‘OK . . .’ I said dubiously, reluctantly dragging my attention from the chilling Scandi crime novel I’d been enjoying and trying to recentre myself in the here and now of our overheated lounge.
‘Don’t be like that!’ she whined. ‘I want a baby.’
‘Right,’ I said, trying to find a way to frame the question: was this real? Or was this just the latest thing Amy ‘needed’ to be happy?
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not crazy, you know. I’ve been delving into the depths of my psyche for weeks here, and I’ve finally worked out what’s missing from my life.’
‘And that would be?’ I prompted.
‘Dependence,’ she said.
‘Dependence,’ I repeated.
‘Yes, someone I can depend on, and someone who depends on me.’
‘You can depend on me,’ I said, feeling a little affronted.
‘Yeah, but if we were married, with a child, then I’d really know that, yeah? Deep down. In my soul.’
‘If you say so,’ I said.
‘And I need someone who depends on me,’ Amy continued. ‘I need to feel that unconditional love in order to feel whole. It’s the point of all existence.’
‘Are you sure that’s healthy?’ I asked. ‘Using a child to feel whole about yourself?’
‘I’m not using anyone,’ Amy said. ‘Jesus, Joe!’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just, well, a kid . . . It’s a biggie. Maybe we can think about it for a bit?’
‘I already have,’ Amy announced. ‘I stopped taking the pill three weeks ago.’
We got married on the twenty-eighth of February. It was a simple service: half an hour in the register office, a new suit from Moss Bros for me, a plain white dress from French Connection for Amy. A few mates came from Whitby on my side, and some yoga girls from Canterbury primped and puffed Amy to perfection. My dad came too, obviously. And so did Amy’s mum.
Valerie’s appearance was by far the biggest surprise of the day. She was a tall thin woman with wild grey hair and mad blue eyes, and whenever I tried to speak to her, she replied as if she was answering someone else’s question.
So when I told her it was nice to finally meet her, her reply was, ‘Rain, probably, dear.’
When Dad commented how beautiful Amy looked, she said, ‘Almost certainly, but with rose petals.’
‘She’s barking mad, that one,’ was Dad’s verdict, and I couldn’t really find grounds to disagree.
At the reception in our local pub, afterwards, I asked Amy if her mother was OK.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sounding annoyed. ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’
‘Um, well, the conversation with her seems a bit strange,’ I explained. ‘A bit off-key, that’s all. I was just wondering if she’s always like that?’
‘Well, she’s a very original woman,’ Amy said. ‘A poet, if you must know.’ When she saw that this hadn’t entirely convinced me, she added, ‘Plus, she’s drunk and on Valium. It’s just nerves, don’t worry.’
An hour into the reception, a car arrived to sweep the poetess back to Ashford.
‘She didn’t stay long,’ I said, as we waved at the departing black Prius.
‘It’s better that way, trust me,’ Amy said. ‘Especially when there’s a free bar.’
For our honeymoon we went to Madrid,
