“How would it look if John Descentis played at my party? We don’t want to be associated with people like him. He’s a drunk. Just like my father.”

He sank onto the sofa and let out a loud sigh.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “I should never have allowed you to take charge of the party. For God’s sake, you let Julienne have her party at McDonald’s!”

Faye wanted to say that that was what Julienne had wanted, and that all the children had loved it, but her eyes were pricking with tears as Jack snorted.

“How could I ever have thought you were capable of organizing a party for three hundred people at Hasselbacken?”

“I can do it, Jack, you know that. Let’s not bother with John Descentis. I haven’t called him yet. Let me do this for you. I want you to have a really great evening, the sort of evening you’ve always dreamed of having.”

“It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve contacted an events company, they’re going to organize everything. You can go back to your . . . your exercising.”

He gestured toward her clothes. The knot in her stomach grew.

Jack went over to the stereo, pulled out some CDs, went out to the kitchen and threw them in the trash.

She didn’t need to guess what the CDs were.

Faye ran her hands over her face. How could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t she realized that this could damage Jack? She should have thought it through. After all, she knew him better than anyone.

She rolled the yoga mat up and turned the light out. Jack was already asleep as she washed her face and brushed her teeth. He was lying with his back to her, on the far side of the bed, facing the window. She crept as close to him as she dared without risking waking him. Breathing in his scent.

It was a long time before she managed to get to sleep.

—

The atmosphere between them was still frosty the next day. Jack sat and worked in the kitchen while Faye lay on the sofa watching a reality show.

The phone in the hall started to ring shrilly, but for once Faye chose to ignore it. She heard a sigh from the kitchen followed by irritated footsteps, and the ringing stopped.

A few minutes later Jack was standing in front of her with a sullen look on his face.

“It’s for you,” he said.

Faye held out her hand, but Jack ignored it, and put the phone on the table, then went back to the kitchen. She raised the phone to her ear, feeling like a fifteen-year-old again.

“You never got back to me about our trip,” Chris said. “Have you talked to Jack?”

“Oh, hi. Hang on.”

Faye got up from the sofa and went into the bathroom. Locked the door.

“Hello?”

She sat down on the closed toilet lid.

“Now isn’t a good time,” she said. “I’ve got my hands full with everything here at home, and I’ve got to organize Jack’s party. Maybe we could do it next summer?”

Chris sighed.

“Faye, I . . . I heard from someone I know who works in PR that they’ve been asked to arrange Jack’s party.”

Faye nudged the scales out from under the sink with her foot. Got on. No change. She was doomed to be fat forever.

“Well, I felt I didn’t have time to do it properly. You’ll have to excuse me, but I can’t talk now, I’ve got loads to be getting on with.”

“Faye . . . ?” Chris’s voice, warm at the other end of the line.

Faye remembered how loudly she had laughed that evening they were out with Jack and Henrik, and Chris suddenly got it into her head that they should dance on the table. Jack had held Faye’s hand. Squeezed it tight.

“Yes?”

“Can’t we go away anyway, to help you get a bit of perspective on everything? Never mind about Jack’s party. I know there isn’t an events organizer in the world that could do a better job than you.”

Faye pushed the scales back under the sink again and promised herself that she wouldn’t look again for a week. So that things had time to change.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” Chris went on. “I could use someone like you in my company. Someone smart, who understands business and knows what women want. Wouldn’t it be fun to get out and start working again? Now that Julienne’s at nursery?”

Faye closed her eyes. Couldn’t bear to see her own reflection in the mirror.

“Preschool, Chris.”

“What?”

“It’s called preschool, not nursery. And no, I neither want nor need a job with you. If I wanted a job, don’t you think I would have sorted it out for myself?”

“But—”

“Do you know what your problem is, Chris? You think you’re better than me. You think everyone wants to live your pointless life, but I can’t help thinking it doesn’t look that much fun to spend your evenings fucking a twenty-four-year-old personal trainer and getting so drunk that you can’t remember anything the next day. It’s vulgar and it’s embarrassing. Instead of lecturing me you should try to grow up. I love my husband, I love my daughter, I’ve got a family! I want to be with them. And I think you’re jealous of me and my life. I think that’s what this is all about. And I can see why no man would want to live with you! And—”

Chris had hung up. Faye stared at her own face in the mirror. She no longer knew who the woman looking back at her was.

STOCKHOLM, AUGUST 2001

THE CABIN WHERE THE PARTY was going to take place lay in a deserted industrial park. A provisional bar had been set up in one corner. Cheesy pop music was blaring out over the yard. It wasn’t long before people were making out or creeping off in pairs to the small rooms upstairs.

I had sobered up and raised my eyebrows toward Chris, who seemed thoroughly bored. I sent Viktor a text, asking what he was up to. I smiled as I wrote it. The other day we had talked about me moving into his new apartment in G?rdet, seeing as I never spent any time in the sublet one-room flat on Villagatan that I’d just got hold of.

“I can’t handle another wasted hangover. I’m going into the city to have some fun instead,” Chris said.

I looked around at the student version of Sodom and Gomorrah in front of me.

“Can I come?”

“Sure, I’ll call a taxi. We can stop off at my place on the way and sort ourselves out. We stink.”

Chris was subletting a single-room apartment at Sankt Eriksplan. There were clothes scattered across every one of its four hundred square feet. The bed was unmade, the walls bare apart from a shelf from which her course books gazed out at the room. If I had been wondering how she had gotten into the School of Economics, the answer was on the table. Tossed nonchalantly among the bills and ads lay the results of her high school exams. She’d got 2.0. The highest possible grade. I wasn’t surprised.

We showered quickly.

“You’ve got nice tits,” Chris said admiringly when I emerged wearing a pair of her underwear. “And a fucking good body. Nice to see someone who hasn’t fallen for that whole anorexic aesthetic.”

“Thanks,” I said lamely.

It was the first time I had ever received a compliment about my breasts or the rest of my body from another girl.

“Have you got a bra I could borrow? Mine stinks of herring . . .”

I held up my disgusting bra.

“What do you want one for? That’s like driving around in a Ferrari with the cover on. Do all the dykes and straight men a favor and set those beauties free.”

“Burn my bra?” I grinned.

“Yeah, sister!” Chris cried, picking up her own rancid bra and swinging it above her head.

I laughed and looked at myself in the little mirror leaning against the wall in the hall and shrugged my shoulders. When I looked at myself through Chris’s eyes I suddenly liked myself a lot more.

“So where are we going, then?”

“One of the cheap bars near college. That’s where the real finds are. Well, maybe not the trust-fund kids and bankers’ sons—they’re far too inbred now—but the genuinely interesting ones. Here, try this!”

Chris threw me a scrap of gray cloth.

“What is it, a tea towel?” I said skeptically, tentatively holding up the dress, which would barely cover my buttocks.

“Less is more, baby,” Chris said as she set about applying a huge quantity of mascara to her eyelashes.

I pulled the dress on. It didn’t leave much to the imagination. To say the neckline was low would be an understatement. I turned around. The back was open as well.

“Hot, hot, hot,” Chris exclaimed as I posed in front of her. “If you don’t get a fuck wearing that, you never will.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” I said.

“Details,” Chris said dismissively. “Now come over here and sit down, and I’ll fix your hair. You look like you’ve just got off the bus from Skara.”

She waved a pair of scissors and a curling iron in the air.

I was skeptical, but did as she said. You didn’t contradict Chris.

—

An hour later we pushed through the door of the N’See Bar and stepped in. As Chris had predicted, the place was full of older students. I recognized a few faces.