PROLOGUE

I was at work, logged on to Gmail, reading yet another round robin email chain between:

Me

My husband

His girlfriend

My boyfriend

And his wife

Like a riddle, five people were able to be four because my boyfriend’s wife and my husband’s girlfriend were one and the same person. In the world of open marriage and polyamory they call it a quad: a four-person relationship.

Our quad was multi-faceted and multilingual. We had Spanish, French, English and Swedish nationalities. We were introvert and extrovert, spiritual and mercenary. It made for a passionate schism and a ferocious fusion; sometimes thrilling and sometimes sickening. Conflict and misunderstanding led to tears and arguments. Several times I had stared into the abyss thinking that all our dreams of a higher “multiple” love were over, only to receive a last-minute reprieve.

But the joy that was our reward for all our heartache was exponential.

We were friends, squared.

I was in love with two amazing men. My sisterwife was in love with the same two amazing men. And they were in love with us both. We laughed together, we cried together. If I was happy, both my husband and boyfriend were happy, my sisterwife was happy, and in being happy we all radiated happiness back to one another like shimmering glass, basking in the glow of how unique and incredible our relationship was and had the potential to be. We were the pinnacle of bliss, the very epitome of togetherness.

But the reverse was also true. Ugly and self-destructive cruelty backfired in a vicious circle through frustration, misplaced loyalty and jealousy. And that day I had reached crisis point. It was the end of the line.

“Louisa, have you got the figures for the eight-month budget reforecast? We need to recalculate our spend for the Asia Pacific fund and upload it in Oracle tonight.”

“Sanders is trying to cut Opex. Heads are going to roll — inflate the forecast by twenty percent and maybe we’ll escape the brunt of it.”

I was dealing with love and conflict that raged so hard I wondered how no one else could hear the howling. But because they didn’t, instead I had to discuss whether to artificially inflate my budget forecast, which would necessitate three hours’ “last-minute” work to meet the deadline for an upload into our company systems. So whilst my colleagues in my very ordinary workplace discussed the very ordinary impact of a delay uploading some figures in our very ordinary resource management system, my mind was struggling to stay on the bearable side of sanity in my very unordinary world.

I no longer trusted myself to make any judgements, because everything that I once judged true had been turned upside down. I had sought to support what I thought was a higher ideal, the ability to love without limits, in defiance of my family and my society. But in doing so, I was in danger of losing myself. My psyche was breaking down.

My father had always told me “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And that day I asked myself, “How do you know at what point it will kill you?”

And is it possible to stop in time?