With Amy earning as well, we were on almost a hundred thousand a year, and even though we had no rent or mortgage to pay, she still managed to spend it all.
We had a pool installed in the garden. We had a sofa made to measure in Italy and new windows and an attic conversion and solar panels. We got new cars – an MX-5 for Amy and a massive Toyota pickup for me. We had a dressing room added to the bedroom, which Amy filled with expensive clothes for her and Hugo Boss suits for me. Other than for a very occasional trip to a posh restaurant, I could never work out when to wear the damn things.
By the time Ben was six, Amy started running out of projects, and I could see that her unhappiness was starting, once again, to leak out.
‘Can’t you just sit back and enjoy it all?’ I suggested. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be the point?’
Amy sighed and shook her head. ‘How would you feel about moving?’ she asked.
We went to Whitby for the bank-holiday weekend, and while I took Ben for long windy walks along the seafront, I hoped that Dad would manage to talk some sense into Amy. He had, I suspected, the kind of philosophical vocabulary that could reach her.
But though he tried his best, it didn’t seem to make any difference. Amy was already looking at houses on her iPhone during the drive back home.
Having spent massive amounts of blood, sweat and money turning our house into her personal version of paradise, I was loath to even enter into a conversation about starting from scratch somewhere else.
Amy started buying jewellery, including actual diamonds. She bought so many shoes I had to build her a shoe cupboard. For my birthday she gave me a Philippe Patek watch that was worth so much money (yes, I googled it) that I never dared take it out of the house. I took a sneaky look at her bank account shortly afterwards, and she was starting to go seriously overdrawn.
Her forty-fifth birthday came around and suddenly everything changed once again – one book was all it took. It seemed innocent enough, as gifts go, and Dad was so sure of his choice that he winked at me as he handed her the package. It was called ‘Money as the root of well-being’.
‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me in the kitchen. ‘I’ve read it and it’s all perfectly sound. My Buddhist friend Emma swears by it.’
A week later we were on a beach in Faro, Portugal, and while I made sandcastles at the water’s edge with Ben, Amy read the book.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked her, not without apprehension.
‘Oh, it’s good,’ she said, smiling up at me. ‘It’s really clever, actually.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘What do you want to do for food tonight?’
‘I thought we could buy some veg and cook it back at the flat,’ she said. ‘I’m getting bored, I think, with restaurants.’
‘Good,’ I said, disguising my surprise. ‘That would be nice.’
‘You seem relaxed,’ I told her towards the end of the flight home. What I meant was that she hadn’t purchased anything from the TAP SkyShop. ‘Was it that book you read? Was it useful?’
‘Yeah,’ Amy said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, I realised a lot of stuff, actually.’
‘Such as?’ I prompted.
‘Oh, pretty basic stuff,’ she said. ‘Stuff that everyone else already knows, no doubt. You’d hate it.’
‘Try me,’ I said.
‘I think I’ve been trying to buy happiness,’ Amy said. ‘And it hasn’t really been working for me.’
‘You think?’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s cool,’ I told her, managing to sound low-key even though within the privacy of my head I was screaming, Hallelujah!
So began The Year of Spending Nowt.
For a while, my wife’s inner turmoil remained visible, so as she did her best to adjust to these new self-imposed rules, she’d pipe up, ‘I was wondering if maybe we could . . .’
I’d look up from whatever I was doing and prompt her to continue, but she’d say, ‘Forget it. I’ve changed my mind,’ and I’d be left wondering what she’d wanted to spend money on and whether it was something that I would have enjoyed.
Within a few weeks she’d adjusted, though, and other than food she bought virtually nothing for a year. Our break from constant consumerism felt restful. It felt good.
Halfway through the year, she started selling things as well, putting spare furniture we’d had in the garage on eBay, selling old books on Amazon, and even getting rid of some of the flashier suits I’d never worn. But then my favourite armchair vanished. It was the one I sat in every evening to read. ‘I liked that chair,’ I protested. ‘It’s my reading chair.’
‘You can sit somewhere else, can’t you?’ she asked, looking confused. ‘I’m only trying to reduce all the clutter, honey. And I have to buy stuff for Ben – he’s growing so fast. It seems healthier to finance that by getting rid of shit we don’t want any more, you know?’
‘Sure, but that wasn’t shit,’ I said. ‘It was my favourite chair.’
‘I’ll get it back, then,’ Amy promised. ‘Or if I can’t, if it’s too late, then I’ll get you another one exactly the same.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you. And maybe just ask, next time?’
Neither the old chair nor a similar chair ever appeared, but in the end Amy was right after all. I could just sit somewhere else.
After The Year of Spending Nowt came The Year of Helping Others, whereby Amy threw herself into just about any charitable opportunity that presented itself. She joined the parents’ association at Ben’s school, donated yoga lessons to a local old people’s home and did a ‘fun run’ to raise money for Red Nose Day.
For once, this seemed like a sensible strategy for feeling better, so I encouraged her and even, when work constraints allowed, joined in with it all.
