“After-party!”

“Do you know the people who live here?” I said in surprise as I followed him through the door.

“I will soon. So will you. Come on.” Jack took my hand and led me up the wide stone staircase. “We’ll have a few drinks and then leave.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I giggled as I let him pull me along. “You’re just going to walk up and ring the bell?”

“Yep.”

Jack half-ran up the stairs, pulling me behind him.

“You’re crazy.”

I laughed.

Jack turned round and kissed me quickly, and the light touch was electric.

I had to stop for a moment before following him up to the flat where the music was coming from.

The sign on the door said LINDQVIST. We rang the bell and the door was opened by a woman in her thirties, her cheeks flushed with alcohol. Behind her: music, talking, the clink of glasses, laughter. Jack smiled his best smile as I shrank behind him in embarrassment.

“Hi there!” he said breezily. “We couldn’t help hearing that you’re having a party and it all sounded so nice! Would it be okay if my girlfriend and I came in to warm up?”

I started when he called me his girlfriend, but managed to keep a straight face. Something shifted in my stomach when he said the word. The woman burst out laughing. She nodded and stepped aside.

“Come in. I’m Charlotte.”

We introduced ourselves. All the other guests appeared to have kept their shoes on, so we did the same. Charlotte walked ahead of us into a large room where around forty people in smart clothes were spread out beneath the glow of an immense chandelier. Charlotte stopped right under it and raised her glass.

“Listen up! This is Jack and Faye. They thought we seemed to be having fun and decided to come up and check us out!”

Scattered laughter. Someone called out “Welcome!,” someone else “Get them a drink!” Before I knew it, I was standing talking to a Japanese lawyer with a lisp, Julia, around ten years older than me.

They were all happy, open, pleasant, urbane. I soon forgot my shyness—Matilda would have felt completely lost there. Faye loved the people around her, the conversation, the atmosphere, the waves of sound rising and falling beneath the huge chandelier. Faye fit in.

I was also conscious that Jack was nearby. I was safe with him. While I spoke to Julia I was constantly aware of where he was. The room seemed to tilt in his direction. He dazzled them all, went round, laughing, joking, filling empty glasses like it was his party. There was a confidence to everything he did that was bewitching. I had never been near anyone as radiant as Jack Adelheim.

Our eyes met. He winked, smiled, and raised his glass in my direction. The bubbles in the champagne sparkled in the light from the chandelier.

Someone put their hand on his shoulder and Jack turned away. And suddenly I felt I missed him. His glance, our brief moment of understanding, his smile. I turned to listen to what Julia was saying about her impossible working conditions in one of the biggest law firms in Stockholm. The room felt cold behind me now that Jack wasn’t looking at me. Someone put a glass of champagne in my hand.

—

An hour later the guests began to drift away. It was starting to get lighter outside the windows. We were among the last to leave. Jack pulled out a half-full bottle of wine and put it to his lips.

“One for the road.” He grinned.

“Stolen property,” I retorted.

“Pah!”

He took a couple more swigs, then passed the bottle to me. I thought of his lips around the neck of the bottle, and imagined I could taste him, mixed with the tepid white wine.

We didn’t stop talking as we strolled through the silent city. I was laughing so much I hardly had time to breathe. Jack related conversations, imitating the party guests with precise mannerisms. I told him about Chris and the guy on the bus.

All too soon we were standing outside my door. Silent at last. All of a sudden it felt unreal and unnatural that I should tap in the code, open the door, and go inside without him.

“Well, then,” Jack said, now seeming almost bashful. “See you around.”

“Okay.”

“So long, Faye,” he said, like a line from a cheap Hollywood film, and turned on his heel.

“Wait!”

He stopped midstride, turned, ran his hand through his hair, and looked at me curiously.

“Yes?”

“Oh . . . it was nothing . . .”

He turned around again. Started to walk. Raised the bottle.

I didn’t move. Waiting for him to turn. To take one last look at me. Wave. Come rushing back. Kiss me again, properly this time. I could still remember how his lips had felt.

But he just lit a cigarette as he ambled nonchalantly toward Karlav?gen. There he turned left. And disappeared.

Faye was holding Julienne with one hand and pushing an empty shopping trolley with the other as they walked through the aisles of the ICA supermarket at Karlaplan. The housekeeper had been ill for two days and she was thinking of surprising Jack with a home-cooked meal. Her famous spaghetti bolognese. The secret ingredient was celery. And three different types of onion. And it had to simmer for a very long time.

When they were young and poor she used to make a big pot of it every Monday that would see them through to Thursday. She put red and yellow onions in the trolley, along with some shallots and celery.

“I want to push the trolley,” Julienne said.

“Are you sure you can manage it?”

“Yeees,” Julienne said, rolling her eyes.

“All right then, darling.”

Faye let her take hold of the trolley and stroked her hair, pausing to study her face in the middle of the busy shop. She loved her so much that she sometimes thought her heart would burst.

“Tell me if it gets too heavy,” she said, and set off toward the meat counter to get some chopped meat.

Julienne pushed the trolley after her.

They passed an elderly man who was helping a woman the same age to get a can down from the shelf. Faye couldn’t take her eyes off them. He passed the can to the woman, who was leaning heavily on a rollator. She patted him on the hand, and her wedding ring glinted in the glare of the fluorescent lighting.

Faye wondered how long they’d been married. Was this what she and Jack would be like together? She had always had such a clear image in her mind. Growing older, insepar-able, getting wrinkled and fragile together. Even if they were going through a bit of a rough patch now, that’s how things would end up. If she were to ask the couple she was sure they’d be able to tell her about the difficulties along the way. Difficulties that they had overcome.

Julienne looked up.

“Why are you crying, Mommy?”

“Because it’s so sweet.”

Julienne looked confused.

“What is?”

“That he’s . . . oh, it’s nothing.”

The elderly couple turned into another aisle and disappeared.

Faye found the last things she needed and headed to the registers with Julienne following behind her. The evening papers were trumpeting that they’d cracked the secret to simple and speedy weight loss. She picked up a copy of Expressen and checked one last time that she had everything she needed. She had long since abandoned the diet juices, and in three days had regained all the weight she had lost. Plus a bit extra.

She picked the line where a young, rather pretty girl was working quickly and efficiently. A woman put a pack of tampons on the conveyor belt. Just as the cashier was scanning them Faye realized that she was late. Badly late. She should have got her period two weeks ago. She pushed any thought of John Descentis from her mind. It was probably because of the diet, but she still felt she ought to make sure.

Then it was their turn.

“Do you have . . . ?” She glanced at Julienne, who was staring at a small poodle by the door. “Pregnancy tests?”

“In the machine over there,” the cashier said, pointing.

The people in the line behind them sighed and stared as Faye walked past them. She clicked to get to the pharmacy section, then tapped the screen for pregnancy tests. Julienne was busy looking at the dog. Faye took two kits and returned to the register.

“That’s four hundred and eighty-nine kronor,” the cashier said once she had scanned them.

Faye took out her personal American Express and paid.

“Sorry,” she said, “but you don’t happen to know if . . . if Max is off today?”

The cashier raised her eyebrows. Was she smiling?

“Max has been fired. Something about him harassing customers.”

“I see,” Faye said. “Well, thanks.”

She hurried out of the shop, holding Julienne’s hand hard.

Jack had got Max fired. She was certain of it. And that had to mean that he still cared about her, surely? In spite of everything?