A few hardy souls were hunched over their beers smoking in the spring wind at the outdoor tables beside the church. The poor, the unemployed, the outcasts. Scum, as Jack called them.

Faye opened the door and walked in. The bartender raised his eyebrows as he looked at her obviously expensive coat. At least Jack had let her keep her clothes when he cleared their apartment.

She ordered a beer and sat down in a corner. It tasted bland. Thoughts were swirling through her head. How humiliated had she been? Had everything Jack said been a lie? Was Ylva the only one, or had there been more? Things she hadn’t wanted to think about before now. But now she needed to wallow in those thoughts, feed her anger. Of course there had been others. She knew Jack. The way he really was.

She got her mobile out of her bag and brought up Alice’s number.

“Have you got a few minutes?” Faye said when Alice eventually answered.

She heard her hesitate.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions. And I want you to answer honestly.”

“Hold on . . .”

The sound of a child crying grew louder behind her. Alice called for the au pair, then closed a door and the noise of the crying became more distant.

“Okay, I’m listening,” she said.

“You know all about Ylva. I assume it had been going on for a while. I want to know how long, and if there were others.”

“Faye, I . . .”

“Skip the bullshit, Alice. I get that you knew all along. That’s okay. I’m not looking for a fight. I just want to know the truth.”

Alice didn’t say anything for a long time. Faye waited patiently. Eventually Alice took a deep breath.

“Jack has been unfaithful to you for as long as I’ve known Henrik. With everyone, Faye. Jack would fuck anything with a pulse. Sometimes I felt like rubbing your face in it, to pull you down from your high horse where you used to sit and judge Henrik. And me. But I never did. I know how it feels, after all.”

Alice fell silent. Presumably aware that she had betrayed her ambivalence over Henrik’s affairs. The ambivalence that Faye had never believed, not deep down.

Faye let her words sink in. It didn’t hurt as much as she had imagined it would. She almost felt relieved. On some level she had always known.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said hesitantly.

“It’s okay. I had a feeling.”

“You won’t mention this conversation to Jack?”

“I promise.”

“Thanks.”

“You should leave Henrik,” Faye went on in a dry, factual voice. “We’re too good for this shit, to be trampled on and exploited like this. No doubt you’ll realize that one day. It wasn’t my choice, but I’ve got there now. And once you emerge on the other side, it’s rather a liberating place to be.”

“But I’m happy.”

“So was I. Or so I thought. But time catches up with us, Alice. Sooner or later you’ll end up where I am now, and you know that.”

Faye hung up without waiting for Alice to answer. She knew her friend didn’t actually have an answer. That nothing she had said came as news to Alice, who probably wrestled with the same thoughts a thousand times each day. That was Alice’s problem. Not hers.

She was ready for war now.

Faye knew she had the best weapon in her arsenal—her femininity. It made men underestimate and objectify her, assume she was stupid. There was no way Jack could ever win this fight. She was smarter than him. Always had been. She had just allowed him, and herself, to forget that.

But now she was going to remind him. Remind them both.

To start with, she had to let him go on believing that things were the same as they used to be—that she was the same old, cowed Faye, hopelessly na?ve and in love. That was the easy bit. She had played that role for so long that she knew it inside out.

But in the meantime she would secretly build up a business of her own, become rich and finally crush Jack. She didn’t yet know exactly how that was going to happen, and there were a number of practical difficulties to deal with before then. First and foremost, she needed somewhere to live. She couldn’t go on relying on Chris. She was too poor to live in the center of the city, but she couldn’t be too far away from Julienne’s preschool. And she also needed to be able to save up a bit of capital, get back in shape, update her knowledge of the financial world, and build up her own network. There were a thousand things to do. A thousand goals to achieve before Jack was ruined. She felt exhilarated.

“Have you got something I could write on?” she asked the bartender. “And a pen.”

He put a pen on the bar and pointed to a pile of napkins. Faye wrote a list of things she needed to sort out. When she was finished, she called Jack to negotiate peace. She didn’t have a problem with that, it was just an act. An opening move in a game of chess. She needed a ceasefire in order to be able to gather her forces and regroup.

She softened her voice and made sure it sounded rather fragile. The way he remembered it.

“I’ve been so sad,” she said. “That’s why I’ve been behaving so badly toward you. But I’m better now, I realize that you’re right about a lot of things. Can you forgive me?”

She took a sip of her beer. It was almost finished and she gestured to the bartender that she’d like another.

“Well, I understand that it’s been difficult for you,” Jack said with a mixture of surprise and pompous magnanimity.

Faye drank the last of her beer as the fresh glass was placed in front of her. She drew circles in its foamy head. Thought back to the time when Chris had drawn a heart in the condensation on the glass.

“It has been. But that’s no excuse. I’m going to pull myself together. For Julienne’s sake. And for yours. Your daughter’s mother shouldn’t behave in an unworthy fashion and keep nagging about money. I don’t know what got into me. I . . . I haven’t been myself lately.”

She fell silent, wondering if she might be overdoing it a bit. But Jack had merely heard her confirm what he had thought all along: that he was right, and she was wrong.

Jack wanted to see himself as the hero, the noble victor. She was offering him a chance to reaffirm that image of himself. The way everyone around him always did.

“That’s Okay. But try not to be so . . . difficult in future, that’s all,” Jack said.

When they had hung up Faye quickly finished her second glass and asked for a third. There was no longer anyone to raise any objections. She started to giggle, and couldn’t stop. Intoxicated by alcohol and freedom.

The red, two-story house dated back to the 1920s, and lay in an idyllic residential area in Enskede. Faye opened the green-painted gate, walked through the neatly tended garden, and rang the doorbell.

The woman who answered had high cheekbones, white hair pulled into a bun on top of her head, and was wearing a black collared top. Her posture was upright, almost militaristic. She held out a bony hand.

“Kerstin Tellermark. Come in,” she said, stepping aside.

Faye followed her through a hall lined with black-and-white photographs into a comfortably furnished living room. Old paintings of landscapes and maritime subjects adorned the brown wallpaper, there were a couple of rather saggy armchairs and a sofa by one wall, and an old piano in the corner.

“What a lovely room,” Faye said. And meant it.

“It’s a bit old-fashioned,” Kerstin replied apologetically, but Faye could see she was flattered. “Would you like some coffee?”

Faye shook her head.

“In that case . . . so it would be you and your daughter living here?”

“Yes, Julienne. She’s four.”

“Divorce?”

Faye nodded.

“The good sort?”

“No.”

Kerstin raised her eyebrows.

“Do you have a job?”

“Not yet. But I’m working on it. I . . . I studied at the School of Economics. I just need to get back on my feet first.”

Kerstin stood up and showed Faye up the stairs. The upper floor contained a smaller living room and two bedrooms. It was perfect, exactly what she was looking for.

“Five thousand kronor per month.”

“I’ll take it.”

—

Two days later Chris helped her to move in. Kerstin stood on the steps with her arms folded, looking on as they carried in the three boxes that contained everything Faye owned. She had sold most of the clothes from the apartment in one of the smarter second-hand boutiques on Karlav?gen. All to get a bit of money.

She no longer wanted Jack to give her anything. She wanted to take it instead. It was more fun that way.

When Chris had gone, Kerstin knocked on the door. Faye was unpacking her clothes as she asked her to come in, but Kerstin stopped in the doorway.

“The daughter you mentioned, where is she?”

“With her dad. She’ll be coming later this week,” Faye said, holding a blouse up in front of her.

“He left you?”

“Yes.”

“Whose fault was it?”

“Whose fault?”

“It’s always someone’s fault.”

“In that case, it was his. He was sticking his cock into anything that moved, and I was too stupid to notice.”