“What did you say to him?” Alice whispered, though she had probably heard every word.

If Faye hadn’t known that she’d had Botox injected into her forehead, she could almost have sworn she saw a worried frown there.

“He’s going to perform at Jack’s birthday party.”

“Him?” Alice balked.

“Yes, him. John Descentis. Jack loves him.”

“Jack won’t like it,” Alice said. “There’ll be a lot of business contacts there. It won’t look good.”

“I know what my husband likes and doesn’t like, Alice. You take care of your family and I’ll take care of mine!”

—

Faye clutched her coat more tightly around her when she finally emerged from Riche. Blasts of ice-cold wind were blowing from Nybroviken. The sky was gray. People were hurrying past, hunched over. Schuterman’s seventy percent off sale was coming to an end, and the shop was starting to look empty.

She had an hour before she had to be home to relieve the babysitter. She had just set off toward Stureplan when a nail-varnish-red Porsche Boxster braked sharply, making the driver of the Taxi Stockholm cab behind it blow his horn angrily.

The window glided open and Chris Nydahl leaned across the passenger seat with one arm resting on the wheel.

“Can I offer you a lift, darling?” she said with an exaggeratedly sleazy voice.

Jack hated Chris and Faye looked around anxiously. But the Gucci-clad clothes-horses were still in Riche, probably reeling in shock at her behavior, and all of a sudden Faye realized how much she had missed Chris. Her raw sense of humor, her laughter and outrageous anecdotes about meaningless sex and long nights partying. They had been inseparable once upon a time.

Faye opened the door and jumped in. The leather, leopard-skin-patterned seat creaked as she made herself comfortable.

“Nice car,” she said. “Very low-key.”

Chris gathered together the shopping bags from the passenger footwell and tossed them carelessly into the cramped space behind them. Another car blew its horn.

“Dickhead,” Chris said, giving the driver the finger in the rear view mirror before driving off.

Faye shook her head and laughed. She always felt ten years younger when she was with Chris.

“What’s the point of having a fuck-load of money if you can never tell people to fuck off?” Chris muttered, glancing in the mirror.

“Where do you get it all from?”

“I heard that particular line in a television program.”

She turned to look at Faye, who would rather she kept her eyes on the road.

“How long have you got before you have to get back to your wifely duties and all the other stuff you’re going to regret when you’re old and incontinent?”

Faye clutched her seat belt in alarm when Chris appeared not to notice that the lights in front of them had turned red.

“About an hour.”

“Great.”

Without warning, Chris wrenched the wheel and did a U-turn, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a bus. Faye gripped her seat belt even tighter.

“We’re going to Djurg?rden,” Chris said. It was all Faye could do to nod.

—

They found a restaurant that was open and ordered coffee. As usual, Chris seemed completely unconcerned by the looks the other customers were shooting her. Chris had a column in Elle where she wrote about female entrepreneurs, and was a regular guest on TV talk shows. Last week she had been on Malou’s program on TV4.

After graduation (unlike Faye, she had completed her degree), Chris opened her first hair salon in what would become the Queen group, a hair-care empire built on the idea that all women deserved to feel like royalty. She had originally trained to be a hair stylist, and used that as a way to earn an income while she was studying to become an economist. The first time she met Faye she had declared that she wanted to establish an empire of her own. Five years after she graduated there were ten Queen salons, located in some of the biggest cities in Scandinavia. But she had earned most of her money from the products she had developed. They were ecologically sound, top quality, and beautifully packaged, and—thanks to Chris’s winning personality as a saleswoman—could now be found in major retailers throughout Europe. She had recently started to dip her toes in the lucrative U.S. market.

“I don’t understand how you can bear to have lunch with that desiccated mummy and her funeral cortege every week.”

“Alice? She’s not that bad . . .”

Faye knew that Chris knew she was lying. But Jack would never forgive her if she took Chris’s side against Alice.

While she was a student Chris had had a brief but intense fling with Henrik, Alice’s husband. Faye, Jack, Chris, and Henrik had been an inseparable quartet. But one day Chris opened the paper to find a notice announcing Henrik’s engagement to Alice. He had chosen breeding, money, and docility over love.

In the years that had passed since then Chris had merely used men as a disposable resource. Faye knew Chris had been deeply hurt, and suspected that she was still mourning the loss of Henrik, even if she would never admit it. But Jack had told Faye about everything that had gone on under the harmonious surface, about Henrik’s many dalliances. He had always been shy, but with the passage of time and as his fortune grew, he had become a changed man, and seemed desperate to make up for lost time. Or, as Jack usually put it, “Henrik will fuck anything with a pulse.”

“Well, if you say so,” Chris said. “But don’t you think it’s a bit odd?”

“What?”

“That in spite of all the millions Henrik has showered her with, she can’t afford to find someone to remove that broom handle from her ass.”

Faye sniggered.

“Seriously, though, Faye, I don’t understand how you can bear it. I know how big a role you played in setting up Compare, the whole damn idea for it was yours, and you helped Henrik and Jack set up the structure of the company. But that’s not what comes across in the business magazines when they’re boasting about their success. Their success, not yours. Why should you have to stay at home spending your time . . . well, God knows what you spend your time doing! It’s a waste of resources! You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and that includes all the time I spend with myself.”

She smiled, but it was a strained smile. She opened her mouth to go on but Faye interrupted her.

“Stop it. I love my life.”

Her throat felt tight with anger, like the reflux she’d suffered during the last months of pregnancy. She adored Chris, but she couldn’t stand it when she tried to talk shit about Jack, twisting things to make them look different from reality. Chris didn’t appreciate everything Jack did for her and Julienne. She didn’t see the sacrifices he made for their sake, all the difficult choices he had to make, all the time he had to devote to the business. And what did it matter if she didn’t get credit for the work she had done setting up Compare? Jack knew. So did Henrik. That was enough.

If was better for the company if the myth of Jack and Henrik and their unique partnership became even more established. But Chris didn’t have a family, she was too busy jumping from one man to the next. She didn’t understand what it was like to be responsible for a whole family. The sacrifices that demanded. Chris never compromised on anything.

“I hope you’re right,” Chris said. “But what would happen if he left you? Like I said, you’re one of the smartest people I know. How could you agree to sign that prenuptial agreement? Tell me at least that you’ve had it amended since Julienne was born? To give you a bit more security? Just in case?”

Faye smiled. It was actually very sweet of Chris to worry about her like this.

She shook her head. “That was Henrik’s idea, not Jack’s. Obviously Jack didn’t want a prenuptial agreement, but the shareholders demanded it.”

“If you get divorced you won’t get anything. Nada.”

Chris was speaking slowly and clearly. Like she was talking to a child. Who did she think she was? Just because she hadn’t managed to find anyone like Jack.

Faye took a couple of deep breaths before responding.

“We’re not going to get divorced. We’re happier than we’ve ever been. You’re going to have to accept that it’s my life and I live it the way I like.”

Chris said nothing for a while, then held her hands up disarmingly. “Sorry, you’re right, I should keep my big nose out of it!”

She smiled that smile that was impossible to resist. And Faye knew that Chris meant well. She didn’t want to fall out with her.

“Let’s talk about something fun instead. How about going off somewhere together one weekend? Just you and me?”

“That would be great,” Faye said, looking at the time. She needed to get going now. “I’d have to check with Jack first though.”

She blew Chris a kiss as she called for a taxi.

As she ran out, she was aware of Chris watching her.

STOCKHOLM, AUGUST 2001