A World in Us Read online

  They were both wonderful. And very different.

  I held him tight in case I fell over. Surges of emotion ran up and down my body, and I tasted tobacco in his mouth; like the bitter taste of drugs, it made me feel high. His tongue briefly touched mine and then drew back, just for fun. He was holding back, playing, whilst I was clawing for more. For some semblance of sanity. I needed the reassurance of the kiss. I needed the endorphins to calm my racing heart. But there was no control, no scaffolding to support me in this brave new world.

  When we went back inside, no one said anything about what might or might not have happened outside. But they knew. And we knew they knew.

  Later, we went back to our apartment. Morten and I held hands. Gilles and Elena linked arms, but apart from that looked in no way physical. I started to be just a little bit nerv­ous. Of course, I couldn’t force Gilles into a relationship. But Morten and I would never be able to be together if they were not also together. I suddenly realised the danger of dating a couple. Sure, it was the utopia. But also completely unrealistic. And the latent pressure, no matter which way it came, would be enormous.

  As we walked in, Morten pounced on the CDs and asked if he could put music on. I busied myself doing irrelevant things. I put olives in two dishes and then decided it looked stingy and transferred them to one bowl. I cut feta and avocado. It was of paramount importance that I interweave them equidistant from the centre of the plate. And as I did so, I heard Def Leppard.

  Accompanied by a groan from Gilles.

  “Whose is this CD?” Morten said, coming into the kitchen to admire my handiwork. Which had by that time spread to arranging Pringles in neat concentric circles.

  “Louisa’s, of course,” answered Gilles, as if insulted that anyone could think he ever listened to such prosaic music.

  “Brilliant!” said Morten. “This was their fourth album and my favourite. Did you know that they took four years to record it because their drummer lost an arm in an accident and they waited for him to learn to drum with his feet?”

  Two people who loved Def Leppard were within one metre of each other. Such passion could not be faked. Morten knew his stuff…and all without the aid of Google.

  Gilles knew when he was beaten. He walked out and said, “Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year. It’s just not widely reported.”

  I started to laugh, and Morten looked confused.

  “You’ll have to watch a lot of films to be able to understand how Gilles and I communicate. Not only do we mix French and English, but also we often speak in quotes. That was a quote from Spinal Tap. Their drummer exploded on stage. It was tragic, really.”

  Morten smiled and said, “Do you want another cigarette?”

  It was freezing on the balcony. Cold enough to see my breath. And cold enough to use the temperature as an excuse to slip hands below layers of clothes to warm them on his goose-bumped flesh. The body I had longed to touch was final­ly here. And here I was, touching it. It was as if those four weeks had been all the time I had lived, and any time before that had been a life inside a cocoon. As I ran my hands up inside his shirt, I felt like I was flying. But I was still scared.

  “What are we going to do if they don’t like each other?” I asked him, sharing my concerns.

  “Well, after all their communication over the past weeks, I find it hard to believe that they won’t be friends.”

  He said it so morosely that one would think friendship was the worst state in the world.

  “But your ideal is to be with another couple. If that’s not us, then you will keep searching for another couple. And I would support that. After all, I want everyone to live their dream.”

  “That’s sweet of you, and I know you mean it. But I can’t reverse this process. I’m falling for you. Not anyone else.” He looked at the stars and blew out the smoke from his menthol cigarette. “And yet I would do so much for Elena. She was almost destroyed by the last relationship.”

  I’d heard all about it over the past weeks. Rob and Lydia, the perfect couple. The dream that had turned into a nightmare. I strained my eyes to see through the bushes into the living room. It felt wrong, like I was some kind of peeping Tom, so I turned away and said, “Maybe we won’t have to do anything. Our capacity to love may well be limitless, but time is not. Relationships, however transient, take time. And if Elena and Gilles don’t want to continue, then you won’t be coming back to Paris often.”

  Morten stubbed his cigarette out viciously on the floor. “This sucks,” he complained. “We’re not even properly together before we start talking about the end.”

  We walked in silence towards the patio door. But as he opened it, he went into a sharp reverse, bumping my nose with his back.

  “Ow!” I squealed.

  “Shhhhhhh!” he whispered, pointing in through the window. “They’re kissing.”

  I peeked in. And sure enough, there they were. Definitely using tongues. Morten and I looked at each other. We found it hard to whisper through our grins.

  “Let’s not disturb them,” I said. I felt if I left it alone then it might take its natural course. And I felt no jealousy whatsoever. I knew Gilles well enough to know that he wouldn’t be doing anything without wanting to. He was pigheaded that way. Just like his father.

  Morten and I snuck past them and into the hallway. There we were left with the option of which room to choose. The choice was two bedrooms or a bathroom. One was our bedroom. Gilles’s and mine. The place we’d made love just four hours earlier. I couldn’t go in there and have sex on our sweat and juices. It was our sacred place. It also had dirty sheets. Two almost equal strikes against it in my anally retentive mind. So we went into the guest bedroom.

  The week of the webcam, as it became known, was remarkable for several things. One of them was that you could see more than just the face. Devilishly exciting and very naughty.

  Another of them was that it had an ability to predict the future. Morten had been lying on his belly, propped up on his elbows, looking face down at the camera and typing to me one evening when he wrote, “When do you think we’ll see each other in this position in real life?”

  “4:23 on Saturday morning,” I had replied cheekily.

  It was 4:17 when we went into the bedroom. And sure enough, at 4:23 he was propped up on his elbows looking at me. I was gazing up into the face I had fallen in love with, despite the distance that had separated us. Love made everything all right. Almost. I was still bloody terrified. And despite two drinks, totally sober.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve never felt before,” I said. “Terrified. Nervous. But knowing that something great is about to happen. Like just before you do a bungee jump.”

  “Go on.”

  His fingertips were stroking my face and his body was half covering mine. He hadn’t taken any clothes off, because somehow taking them off was a step too far, and I had resisted. My shirt, however, was unbuttoned, and my bra was lopsided.

  And yet I still preserved some illusion that all was not lost. The difficulty was that half of me was screaming for more, and in my highly volatile state, words did not come easily. But he waited until they came. And waited. And waited.

  “I feel like I don’t want you to stop. I feel like if I stopped now, I would regret it forever. ”

  The fact that he wasn’t my husband and that he was a gentleman (just like my husband) gave a solid and necessary dynamic to the situation. He refused to do anything without my permission. This decision was my responsibility and required verbalisation. Active decision making. We’d discussed my power of saying no many times, because when push came to shove, my love for being loved meant that I was afraid of being rejected. And yes was a far easier proposition. He kissed me again, and breathed into my mouth.

  “I don’t want to do anything if you’re not absolutely sure,” h
e said.

  “How can I be sure of anything?” I said, throwing in some philosophy for good measure and retreating into my intellectuality. “How can anyone be sure of anything?”

  I was twisting in his arms, but he held me so that I couldn’t turn my face away.

  “That’s not what I mean. You can’t be sure of the outcome, but you can be sure you want to take the risk and be prepared to deal with the outcome, whatever that may be.”

  I fell silent for what seemed like forever. I looked down through the mist to the murky depths of the ocean below and wondered what it would feel like if I hit the bottom. How much it would hurt. And if I could possibly turn away now.

  Finally, I replied in the words of A-ha: “It’s no better to be safe than sorry.”

  Elena and Gilles were in the other bedroom. Loving each other at the same time that I was loving another. It made me feel better. As if at least if it was a mistake, we were all making it together.

  By tacit agreement, we had sex with my clothes on. Well, apart from the one sodden pair of panties that I pretended had served as a barrier. And as I wriggled out of them, I took responsibility for my life. I was doing this. I wasn’t forced. Coerced. Or anywhere I didn’t want to be.

  “Shall we?” he said.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  He interlaced his fingers into mine and held my hands above my head as he slid into me. It was like coming home. Like it was always meant to be.

  I woke early the next morning, cosseted in Morten’s arms. And I started to think. What do I do now?

  If in doubt, follow a routine. Dictated by three definitive milestones. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. By the time the others had come up for air, Morten and I had visited the supermarket for provisions. And I had laid a table that looked spectacular. It was as if I was making up for something. Guilt. Elena, I slept with your husband, but look what a nice breakfast I’ve made you.

  But when they awoke, everything was perfectly normal, because we were living in a parallel surreal universe.

  We were smiling wide and happy in each other’s company. It didn’t seem forced, unnatural or in any way other than settled. Just as I had felt the previous night, I was at home. Elena sat on Gilles’s lap and I on Morten’s. We stayed at the breakfast table until it was lunchtime. We were talking and laughing and breaking bread together. I was comfortable in this universe that was not mine. A home away from home. Two different realities. And now my task was to reconcile the reality I had once known with what was about to come.

  9

  Suddenly, I understood more why people had given their lives to fight for a cause they considered worthwhile. Nothing in my life previously had prepared me for the eventuality that I would be someone who fought for freedom of choice. Following this path, I discovered, would mean that I would have to fight for my right even to choose, before I even fought for the choice itself. Because monogamy for many people was the only choice, and any other alternative was considered abhorrent.

  From our first weekend together, I could already see how much backlash I would receive from the outside world. As our poly-family of four had drawn its first breath in the frosty beginnings of that winter, prejudice had already dug its claws in and gashed painful welts into the back of my brand-new world.

  The world had seen me in all kinds of states, and yet this latest one had done more than raise a few eyebrows.

  “She is ver’ beautiful, your wife,” commented the French waiter at our exclusive restaurant, to Gilles, admiring Elena’s cleavage.

  “This is my girlfriend,” replied Gilles. He took my hand. “My wife is here.”

  The waiter laughed. Surely we were pulling his leg.

  “When chickens have teeth!” That was French for “pigs might fly.”

  “No, it’s true!” I said, holding up my wedding band. Gilles held up his next to mine. They were the same.

  “And I’m her boyfriend,” Morten chimed in.

  “And he’s my husband,” added Elena.

  We were all smiling. Until it occurred to us that the waiter was most definitely not. He was looking downright offended. He whisked around and started talking very rapidly to the maître d’.

  The maître d’, who was a man of business, saw the bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape on the table and recognised that our table represented a good portion of his takings that evening, and possibly for future evenings. He came over and said, “I will be your personal host for this evening. Your waiter is indisposed.”

  Indisposed. The French panacean excuse for anything one didn’t want to do.

  “I can’t come to work. I am indisposed.”

  “I can’t meet you at the cinema. I am indisposed.”

  And the new, albeit unspoken one: “I can’t wait at your table, you sick, perverted people. I am indisposed.”

  A shadow fell over our table. I wanted to sink into the floor. I had offended someone so much that they couldn’t bear to be in my presence. When threatened, my habitual reaction was flight. The fondant au chocolat had not arrived yet, but the very thought of it made me feel sick.

  “Can’t we just pay and go?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not!” replied Elena. “How dare he do that? We have as much right to be here as anyone else.”

  She eyeballed the waiter nastily. He stuck his Gaulois nose in the air and pointedly ignored her.

  I endured another thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence by bouncing my leg up and down whilst picking at my cuticles. When the dessert arrived, I wasn’t hungry. So I split mine between my boyfriend and my husband. Neither of whose hands I was holding. The melted chocolate in the middle spilled out onto the plate uncontrolled. Like my life. Elena spoke to the maître d’ about our right to live as we chose, indignant about the way we were treated. He listened without hearing and obsequiously offered us calvados to calm our ruffled feathers. Whilst admirably disguising his repulsion. Half an hour after our faux pas, we graciously left. I felt shunned.

  “I never want to go through that again.”

  Gilles laughed. He had found it funny. The others looked at me. Uncomprehendingly. Three seconds ticked by. Gilles rubbed my back in a kind of patting-your-seven-year-old-daughter-on-her-head-when-she’s-tired way. I looked back and realised that none of them had felt the sting of rejection as badly as I had. I had thought that we were in this together. But this battle was my own. And I didn’t have enough armour to fight it.

  Thirty-two years of monogamous thinking versus three months of polyamorous thinking was an unfair advantage. My polyamorous self needed more research, because feeling secure in my own reasoning was the only way I could stand up for my beliefs to the world.

  Methodically, I laid out my arguments as if I were standing trial. The prosecutor, who looked an awful lot like my mother, approached the witness box. I was shivering inside.

  “Isn’t it true, Louisa, that polyamory is just a sexual free-for-all?”

  “No!” (Head up, eyes straight ahead.) “Polyamory is like any committed relationship. It is not something to be entered into lightly, but honestly and deliberately.” (I thought my comparison to the marriage ceremony might win me a few points with the jury.) “But I am not for polyamory or against monogamy per se. I am for ‘choice,’ conducted with respect for oneself and for others. Although that may well include a ‘sexual free-for-all,’ as you put it.”

  “How can you say you are not against monogamy, when you undermine everything it stands for?” the prosecution demanded.

  “If, with as much knowledge as possible and lack of prejudice, individuals choose monogamy, then I applaud their choice. However, the choice of whether or not to live in monogamy is not one that is often made. It is an unquestioned assumption that the masses follow. So much so that it is ingrained in our pop culture, in our films and in many religions.”

  “Marriage commits t
wo people to love each other. Till death do you part. Loving a person outside of your own marriage is a betrayal. And even more if this love is expressed in an intimate fashion. How can you dispute this logic?”

  “What betrayal are you referring to? The betrayal of having sex with someone else or going against the agreed contract set out between two parties? The second one is the real betrayal. But instead of changing the contract, you would try to stop people forming relationships with the argument that some adult relationships are ‘right’ and some are ‘wrong’ even though they consist of the same acts. Some relationships are justified by a piece of paper, whereas others, which might contain just as much commitment and love, are not.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached your verdict?”

  “We have, your Honour.”

  “And how do you find the defendant?”

  “Guilty on all counts!”

  The problem was that no matter how sound my arguments were, I still felt like I was on trial. As if I needed to justify my way of life. Especially when I came in contact with the outside world. Which I promptly resolved to do as little as possible. And enclosed in our loved-up bubble, Gilles and I found it very easy to avoid others.

  10

  After our first meeting, I had taken advantage of an op­por­tun­ity to travel to my company’s corporate headquarters in England. Elena was in Paris with Gilles, and this was my second meeting with Morten, but our first days spent alone.

  My business trip consisted of meetings and more meetings. It was my job to make sure that all my time was spent talking to colleagues with whom I didn’t normally mix. I became adept at texting behind my back. It had been two weeks after our first meeting, and although the email and webcam had been active, I was still terrified.