Every Four Years
A novel about love, politics, the Union, domestic abuse, family, celebrity, loss - and second chances.
EVERY FOUR YEARS (100,000) by Jayne Douglas is an upmarket, dual POV novel unfolding in four-year increments that combines the decades-spanning love story of Almost Life, the clash of the personal and political of Consider Yourself Kissed, and the complexities of modern adulthood in Evenings and Weekends.
In 1993, teenage tearaway Callum meets Nia, his brother’s girlfriend, when she visits the family home in Northern Ireland. Four years later, they meet again by chance in London, and embark on a passionate relationship that ends as explosively as it began.
And then they move on.
For Nia, she enters an abusive relationship in which she must find all her strength to save herself and her daughter. This experience eventually leads her back to her Welsh hometown finally living the life she had always imagined, a loving partner, a close-knit family, and a fulfilling career in politics campaigning for abused women. But as she navigates the boys club of Westminster, in private, she must confront the consequences of choosing ambition over family and a developing relationship with a colleague which threatens the life she has carefully built.
For Callum, his boyish good looks lead to a role in Hollyoaks, Heat magazine covers and a reprising spot in the 3am Girls column. But 2000s tabloid fame is fickle and he soon slides into reality TV obscurity, losing himself under the weight of always being watched but never truly known. As his career fades so does his ability to be a stable father, culminating in a public custody battle that forces his return to Northern Ireland and a version of himself he thought he’d escaped.
In middle age, 28 years after they first met, Nia and Callum are brought together by tragedy. After decades of mistakes, compromises and reinvention, have they finally become the people they need to be to love each other?
A novel about relationships and parenthood, ageing and disappointment, celebrity culture and political ambition, EVERY FOUR YEARS explores the gap between the lives we live and the lives we imagine. It is not a love story about two people finding each other but about who they become while living apart.
EVERY FOUR YEARS is inspired by – and dedicated to – the MPs who have stood up in the House of Commons and shared their stories of abuse.
Nia is a fictional addition to their ranks, explaining her experience of coercive control before the term was widely recognised.
Politics quietly infuses the entire story, which unfolds on a loose electoral cycle of four years.
It is also a love letter to the UK, featuring characters from every country, including protagonists from Northern Ireland and Wales.
Most of all it is the story of two people always tied together unknowingly by invisible string that will lead them back to each other.
Locations in the book
