Jack said, ‘What do you mean, you want to sell Quest?’

I gulped. Driving home from spending the evening with Mike and Beth, and Beth’s parents. At the end, they’d asked us what we were planning to do with Quest long-term. This is the one thing Jack and I don’t really talk about. At least judging from the look on his face now, it seemed so.

‘I didn’t say I wanted to sell her, sell her. Just that I think sometimes the money from her would be handy at times.’

He snorted. ‘Don’t start talking about money. That’s my area of expertise, not yours.’

Angry emoji. ‘What – are you saying that because you are in charge of the money, that means you get to have all the power of making decisions?’

‘No, I mean that in our roles as a team together, there are just some things that I’m in charge of. I don’t tell you how to school Delph because that’s your area of expertise. In this way, you don’t make the money. So you don’t have to worry about where we’re going to get it from. That’s my area.’

I stood back, dumbfounded. Number one, I thought, schooling Delph as an area of expertise isn’t exactly the same as bringing in the mula. I can’t exactly say, ‘Delph has learned her a-e blends, therefore I think we can afford a weekend in Paris.’ On the decision-making lines, it smells like I ended up with the bum deal. 

Number two, on the other hand, if he says don’t worry about the money, maybe that’s a fair point. Maybe when you have too many people worried about the money pot in a marriage, this ends up helping no one. Maybe the bum deal is actually the better deal, as long as you relinquish the idea of needing to have control. Yes, control. Since for me, money and decisions regarding money is about control. I realised this as we entered the AirBnB -which, as a side note, was a disappointing experience overall. We can pretend to live somewhere else for a weekend but with a semi-broken shower, a kettle that doesn’t turn off and thin duvets, I’d go motel next time. If only to avoid feeling the lack of hospitality. Unpopular opinion? 

Anyhow, back to worrying about our finances. I have always worried that Jack, as our main breadwinner, will be unduly overloaded. I don’t like this prospect. Then, on the other side, there’s his dream. And his dream is called Quest. 

‘What hurts,’ he said, as we turned off the kettle ourselves and peeled at the situation whilst shivering under duvets, ‘is that you don’t love the experience of having Quest as much as I do. You’d rather sell her to have the cash. Meanwhile, I’m investing a lot of money into her, getting her to being fully sail-worthy. That hurts me. My dream isn’t your dream.’

‘I didn’t say I really wanted to sell her. Just that sometimes I think the money from her would be nice to have.’ 

‘But that’s what I mean – you don’t have to worry about the money.’

I sighed. And so our argument (I mean discussion) went round in another circle. At least we weren’t getting scalded by the shower.