The big breakthrough had come about thanks to Instagram. The influence wielded by Paulina Dafman, Olga Niklasson and their friends over a new, young generation of women turned out to be greater than she had ever dared hope. For hundreds of thousands of women in Sweden, they were the new ideal. The 2010s Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor. Whatever they wore, other women wanted to wear. Whatever they bought, other women wanted to buy it. As ambassadors for Revenge they had written inspirational posts about female empowerment and had been happy to advertise products that fit in perfectly with the feminist winds that were blowing through Sweden. Revenge couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.

In her more cynical moments Faye wondered where the feminist message lay in advertisements featuring well-toned women in bikinis turning their pert backsides to the camera to sell Revenge diet tea. But Chris had pointed out rather bluntly that you had to take whatever feminism was on offer, and that the path was never going to be perfectly straight. Besides, the internet was crawling with their male equivalents taking pictures of their bare torsos and advertising protein shakes. And was there any real difference, when it came to it?

The online store she had opened, with a special forum where women could share stories of how they had got their revenge on their husbands, had struggled to cope with demand. The forum was overflowing with stories. More poured in every day, they never seemed to stop. Another vital tool was Facebook. They had been able to target their advertising at the precise audience they were after: well-educated, aware women. Customers who also had money, which meant they could charge a higher price and make more of a margin on each item sold.

At first all sales were online. When it was time for Irene Ahrnell’s department stores to introduce Revenge’s products, Faye realized that something extra was needed to maintain the hype and mystique that had been built up online. She contacted a dozen female artists, authors, and actors and invited them each to design one piece of packaging, giving them full artistic freedom. Backed up by a huge campaign on social media. And all of it launched under the magical concept of the “limited edition.”

Young women lined up outside stores to get hold of Revenge products bearing their idols’ imprinted messages about the sisterhood. They suddenly found themselves reaching new target groups. Within their limited forum they had managed to foster a spirit of revolution.

Kerstin cleared her throat in the doorway.

“You’re picking Julienne up at four o’clock today.”

“Any meetings booked before that?”

“No, you asked to keep this afternoon free.”

“Of course, that’s right. Thanks.”

“See you at home this evening,” Kerstin said, and closed the door.

She seemed tense today, and Faye wondered why. Then she remembered that Kerstin had been to visit Ragnar at lunchtime. She was always unsettled after seeing him. When Faye asked why she still visited him, Kerstin had replied: “I’m still his wife, in spite of everything. I only go to stop the staff phoning and nagging me. Besides, it gives me a certain satisfaction to see him lying there helpless. But I always fantasize about one day smothering him with a pillow.”

Faye looked out of the window again. The traffic was rumbling by down below. It would soon be October, when Compare was going to be launched on the stock market, after years of speculation. And that meant that the second part of the plan could begin. After so much hard work, everything depended on whether she was successful in the coming months. She picked up her bag, containing the Dell computer she had bought earlier, and left the office. In Sturegallerian she found a café where most of the clientele were pupils playing truant from the private schools nearby.

She listened idly to their conversations, about which Gucci bag they’d like for their birthday, someone complaining about having to go on a family holiday to the Maldives because “there’s, like, nothing to do there.” She ordered coffee from an uninterested waitress, sat at one of the corner tables, opened the laptop, and connected to the Wi-Fi. Jack had had the same password since Julienne was born. During all their years together he hadn’t changed it more than a couple of times. And he was a creature of habit.

Or at least he always used to be.

The very earliest documents relating to Compare were saved as PDF files in his Gmail account. But she could only access them if he was using the old password: Julienne100730. Faye raised the white coffee cup to her lips and took a sip. Her hand was shaking. Every step she’d taken over the last three years had been leading up to this. It all hinged on the supposition that Jack was too lazy to change his password.

She tapped in the letters and number, then clicked to log in.

Wrong password.

She tried again.

Wrong password.

She stifled a cry of frustration. The bastard had finally got around to changing it. She slammed the laptop shut and left the café.

What was she going to do now? She had to get into his emails.

Ten minutes later she was back in the office. As she reached the door the first raindrops had started to fall. Kerstin looked up at her expectantly.

Faye shook her head.

“Can you ask Nima to come and see me?” she said, and hurried into her office.

Nima, a skinny guy with pale skin and hairy arms, was Revenge’s IT expert. Socially inept, but a genius when it came to computers.

Faye hung her coat up and waited for him behind her desk.

He appeared in the doorway a couple of minutes later.

“You needed help?” he said.

Faye smiled.

“Come in,” she said, gesturing toward the visitor’s chair.

He sat down, rubbing his hands anxiously.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Not at all,” she said, flashing him a disarming smile. “Quite the contrary. I need your help with something. It’s a bit embarrassing.”

“Okay?”

“It’s Julienne, my daughter. She’s been given a computer, and I’m a bit worried she might be looking at unsuitable sites. I’d like to be able to keep an eye on what she’s getting up to. I’m a real worrier, I just can’t help it.”

Nima nodded.

“I understand.”

“Is it possible to do anything?”

“What sort of information do you want?”

“Her password for Facebook, that sort of thing. You can’t help worrying these days, children will talk to anyone and they’re so na?ve.”

Nima frowned.

“That can be sorted. I suggest you install a key logger on her computer. Then you’ll be able to see everything without having to sign into her social media.”

“How would a . . .”

“Key logger . . . You just have to activate it on her computer. Then whenever you want you can download everything that’s been typed in, in the form of an ordinary text file. Every keystroke gets registered, it’s as simple as that. You can follow her every move without having to sign into her Facebook or Snapchat accounts.”

“And there’s no way she’d know I was doing it?”

“No, not if it’s hidden among all the other files. It would be buried in the background. And it would record everything without her knowing.”

“Great. How do I get hold of one of these key loggers?”

“Give me a minute,” Nima said, and stood up.

He was soon back, holding a black USB stick.

Faye pushed her chair back and he inserted the stick into one of the ports on her computer, and showed her how to install the program.

“I’ve got kids too, so I know what it’s like,” he said.

Faye looked at him in surprise. She would hardly have believed he had a girlfriend.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Astrid. Ten years old, and on the internet all the time. You can’t help worrying as a parent.”

“You must have been very young when you had her.”

“Twenty. Planned, though, weirdly enough. I’ve always been old for my age.”

“And you’re still with . . . ?”

“Johanna.” He lit up when he said her name. “Oh yes, we’re married.”

Faye raised her eyebrows. People never ceased to surprise her.

Money does something to people. Back when Faye was still Mrs. Adelheim the other children’s parents used to call pretty much every weekend to invite Julienne to parties and playdates. They strained so hard that they practically shat themselves trying to pretend that it was their kids who wanted to see Julienne. The truth was that they wanted to cozy up to her and Jack. Or Jack, to be more precise. She was merely an accessory, a way to get at a successful man.

Julienne was their ticket to being invited to dinner, so they could bask in Jack and Faye’s reflected glory in the hope that some of their success would rub off on them.

They stopped talking to her after the divorce. The phone stopped ringing. Enskede might as well have been Mogadishu or Baghdad as far as they were concerned. There wasn’t a parent on Liding? who was prepared to send their child there, not without a bodyguard and a load of vaccinations. They called Jack instead. And he in turn delegated the calls to Ylva, who had to spend a fair chunk of her time coordinating parties and playdates on the weekends they had Julienne. Not that that was ever more than one weekend per month.

Things couldn’t have been more different after Faye’s success with Revenge.