She looked at Alice, who had just sat down opposite her. When Faye had first got to know her and the upper-class women in her circle, she had called them the geese, because their main purpose was to lay eggs for their men. They were supposed to focus on giving birth to heirs and then protect their pampered offspring under their Gucci-clad wings. Then, when the kids started at their carefully selected preschools, it was time to fill the days with appropriate interests. Yoga. Getting their nails done. Organizing dinner parties. Making sure the maid was doing her job properly. Keeping the flotilla of nannies and babysitters under control. Keeping an eye on their own weight. Or lack thereof. Be wet and horny. And, most crucial: learning to turn a blind eye whenever their husbands came home from a late “business dinner” with their shirts badly tucked in.

At first she had mocked them. For their lack of general knowledge, their lack of interest in the genuinely important things in life, their ambitions, which didn’t stretch further than the latest design of Valentino’s Rockstud bag and the choice between Saint Moritz or the Maldives for the half-term holiday. But Jack had wanted her to “maintain good relations” with them. Particularly with Henrik’s wife, Alice. So now she met the geese on a regular basis.

Neither Faye nor Alice felt any particular warmth toward the other. But whether they liked it or not they were bound together by their husbands’ business. By their husbands’ “remarkable friendship,” as one business magazine had once described it.

Alice Bergendahl was thirty-one, three years younger than Faye. She had very prominent cheekbones, the waist of a ten-year-old, and legs like Heidi fucking Klum on stilts. And had also given birth to two beautiful, perfectly formed children. Probably with a smile on her face throughout the births. And between the contractions she had probably kept herself busy knitting a pretty bonnet for the miracle that was splitting her perfumed muff into two perfect parts. Because Alice Bergendahl wasn’t just beautiful, girlish, thin, and perfumed. She was creative and artistic as well, she had lovely little exhibitions which all the geese were expected to attend with their husbands, or else they would find themselves on Alice’s blacklist. Which was upper-class Stockholm’s equivalent of Guantánamo.

Alice had arrived at Riche in the company of another long-legged woman called Iris, who was married to a financier, Jesper, who traded in shares. A pauper in comparison, but a possible up-and-comer, and Iris had some sort of provisional status in Alice’s entourage until Jesper’s success was assured. Her fate would probably be decided within the next couple of months.

They ordered salad—naturally only a small portion each—and three glasses of cava. They ate in dainty mouthfuls and smiled at one another as they worked their way through their children. Which was the only thing they talked about. Apart from their husbands.

“Jesper’s taking the Easter holiday off,” Iris said. “Can you imagine? We’ve been married four years and he’s never taken more than a week’s holiday per year. But he came home the other day and surprised me by saying he’d booked a trip to the Seychelles.”

Faye felt a pang of envy. She swallowed it with a sip of cava.

“That’s wonderful,” she said.

She wondered quietly to herself what Jesper had done to need to salve his conscience that way.

The restaurant was full. Tourists at the window tables, delighted to have got in. Shopping bags stuffed under the tables. They did their best to look nonchalant, but between mouthfuls they stared around them wide eyed. If they caught sight of someone noteworthy they leaned over their plates and whispered to one another, impressed by whichever television presenters, artists, and politicians were in the room. They didn’t recognize the people with real power. The ones who pulled the strings behind the scenes. But Faye knew exactly who they were.

“The Seychelles are lovely,” Alice said. “So exotic, somehow. What’s the security situation like now? There’s been a bit of . . . trouble there.”

“Are the Seychelles in the Middle East?” Iris asked uncertainly as she pushed a piece of avocado around her plate.

Faye drank some cava to stop herself from laughing.

“Somewhere near there, surely? It’s probably ISIS and all that.”

Alice’s nose wrinkled at the bubbling noise coming from Faye’s throat.

“It’s bound to be fine,” Iris said, now pushing half an egg with her fork. “Jesper would never expose me and little Orvar to any danger.”

Little Orvar? Why did people give their children names that were more suited to syphilitic pirates in the eighteenth century? Okay, Faye had to admit that Julienne was pretty pretentious. But the name had been Jack’s suggestion. It sounded nice and would work internationally. It was vital to establish your child’s global currency even when it was in the womb. They seemed to have forgotten that bit with Orvar, but it could always be remedied later. The other month a Sixten at Julienne’s preschool had suddenly turned into an Henri. The three-year-old must have been utterly baffled, but you couldn’t let yourself be distracted by something like that if you wanted the boy to hold his own in an international context.

Faye drank the last of her wine and discreetly gestured to the waiter for a refill.

“No, obviously he wouldn’t put you in any danger,” Alice said, chewing seductively on a lettuce leaf.

But because she had read in a health magazine that you should chew each mouthful at least thirty times, the seductive look soon gave way to that of a ruminating cow. Faye looked down at her own plate gloomily. She had devoured her minute portion and was still ravenous. She looked longingly at the food that was being delivered to the next table. Steak. Meatballs. Pasta. The dishes were placed before the portly, besuited gentlemen. The sort who could afford a bit of surplus weight. Poor men were fat, but rich men had substance. She tore her eyes from the meatballs. When you were in Alice’s company, you didn’t eat meatballs with mashed potatoes and cream sauce.

“Wouldn’t it do you good to be kidnapped for a few weeks, Iris?” Faye said. “The diet would be full of super-foods. If you asked them nicely, they could probably get hold of a yoga mat for you too.”

She looked at Iris’s untouched salad.

“You can’t make jokes about a thing like that. That’s awful!”

Alice shook her head and Faye sighed.

“The Seychelles are a group of islands in the Indian Ocean. We’re closer to the Middle East here than they are.”

A silence followed. Iris and Alice concentrated on their salad, Faye on the cava that was in danger of running out again.

“Do you see who that is?” Iris whispered, leaning forward with her eyes on the door.

Faye tried to work out who she meant.

“There. The one who just came in. Talking to the barman.”

Now Faye saw him. The singer, John Descentis. Jack’s favorite. He’d been on the ropes for a few years, and nowadays mostly featured in the gossip columns in connection with failed relationships, bankruptcy, and embarrassing B-list parties. He and his partner, a pretty girl in her mid-twenties with a leather jacket and dyed black hair, were shown to a table opposite theirs.

“Two beers,” he said to the waiter. “To start with.”

Alice and Iris rolled their eyes.

“How has he managed to get a table here?” Alice murmured. “This place is really starting to take risks.”

Iris shifted position uncomfortably, and her stiff, gold Cartier bracelets rattled.

Faye looked over at John Descentis. She had been planning Jack’s birthday party for a while now, and he’d be delighted if John Descentis performed at it. She stood up. With Alice and Iris looking on in horror, she made her way to the singer’s table.

“Sorry to disturb you. My name’s Faye.”

John Descentis looked her up and down.

“Hello, Faye,” he said with a crooked smile. “Don’t worry, you’re not disturbing us at all.”

“It’s my husband Jack’s birthday on the fourth of May, and I’m organizing a party at Hasselbacken. He worships you. I was wondering if you might be free then and would be interested in coming by to sing a few songs?”

“Jack Adelheim? The entrepreneur?”

The black-haired girl pursed her lips, but John had straightened up.

Faye smiled at him.

“Yes, that’s him, he runs a company called Compare.”

“I know very well who he is. Sure, no problem. I didn’t know he liked my stuff.”

“He has ever since he was a teenager. He’s got all your albums. On vinyl, no less!”

Faye laughed.

“That’s probably not the sort of thing you boast about in interviews with the business press,” John said.

The girl sighed audibly, got up from the table, and announced in a monotone that she was going to the bathroom.

Faye sat down on the vacated seat. She was tempted to drink the beer the waiter had just put down on the table, but controlled herself. From the corner of her eye she could see Alice and Iris staring at her.

She couldn’t wait to tell Jack. She should probably keep it a secret, make it a surprise, but she knew herself too well to think that was going to happen.

“Can I . . . would it be okay to take your number? Then I can call you about the details. And we can talk about a fee, and so on.”

“Sure, tell me your number and I’ll send you a text.”

He tapped out a message to her and formed his lips into a smile that still had some of his old charm. Rumor had it that he had succumbed to more than just alcohol and had been in rehab several times, but right now he didn’t seem to be on anything.

Faye’s mobile buzzed. She glanced at the text and saw a winking smile emoji as she returned to her table.