Faye put down the sheet of paper. The prospect of betrayal stung. The names on the list of women who had sold their shares were very familiar to her. Their faces flickered by—women to whom she had presented the idea behind Revenge. Women she’d persuaded to believe in Revenge. To believe in her. Why had no one said anything? Had all that talk of sisterhood meant nothing to anyone but Faye?
She rubbed her eyes, which were prickling with tiredness, and swore when she got a flake of mascara in her eye. Faye blinked frenetically and hurried to the bathroom to remove her makeup. She was much too tired to do any more this evening. The escapades of the night before were still making themselves felt, and she realized that without a good night’s sleep she would be no use to anyone. Not herself, not Revenge.
Just as Faye was pulling back the covers to slip between her crisp Egyptian cotton sheets, she stopped. She looked toward the door and felt the impulse throughout her body. She padded slowly into the hallway. The door into Julienne’s room was open—she didn’t like sleeping with it completely shut. Faye carefully opened the door wider and slipped inside. A small rabbit-shaped nightlight shone gently inside the room. Enough light to chase off all the ghosts. Her daughter was sleeping on her side, her back to Faye. Her long fair hair was spread across the pillow. Ever so slowly, Faye settled down beside Julienne. She pushed her daughter’s hair off the pillow and laid her head behind her. Julienne whimpered a little in her sleep and stirred slightly but didn’t wake up—not even when Faye put an arm around her. Millimeter by millimeter, she moved closer to Julienne until she had her nose buried in her hair, which smelled of lavender and chlorine.
Faye shut her eyes. She felt the tension slowly dissipate as sleep took over. Right there, with her arm around her daughter, she knew she would have to do everything she could to save Revenge. Not for her own sake, but for Julienne’s.
FJÄLLBACKA—THEN
Even though I was only twelve years old, it felt as if I already knew everything about life. My existence in Fjällbacka was predictable. The same transitions between ten months of complete tranquility and two months of summer chaos. Everyone knew everyone—in the summer the same tourists came year after year. Nothing changed at home either. It was as if we were running on a hamster wheel, around and around, without any chance of moving on. As if nothing was ever going to change.
So I already knew when we sat down to eat dinner that it was going to be one of those nights. I’d caught the whiff of booze off Dad as soon as I got home from school.
I both loved and loathed our house. It was Mom’s childhood home. She had inherited it from my grandparents, and everything that I loved about that house had to do with her. She had done the best she could. It was cute cozy—everything that was associated with a happy, thriving home. The shabby wooden table from Grandma and Grandpa’s day. The white linen curtains that Mom had made herself—she was good at sewing. The framed cross-stitch sampler given to Grandma as a wedding present by my great-grandma. The crooked, warped staircase with a thick rope as a handrail that bore traces of the footsteps of several generations. The small rooms and their white transomed windows. I loved all this.
What I loathed were the traces of Dad. The knife marks on the kitchen counter. The dents on the wooden door to the living room, a reminder of the occasions when Dad had kicked it in an outburst of rage while drunk. The slightly bent curtain pole from the time Dad had pulled down the curtain to wrap it around Mom’s head until Sebastian had finally plucked up the courage to pull Dad away from Mom.
I loved the open fireplace in the living room. But the pictures on the mantelpiece were a downright insult. The family photos Mom put there, the dream of a life that didn’t exist. A smiling picture of her and Dad, of me and my big brother, Sebastian. I wanted to tear them down, but at the same time I didn’t want to upset Mom. It was for our sake that she tried to keep the dream alive. One time, she put a photo of her brother there. But when Dad caught sight of the picture of Uncle Egil, he went mad. While Mom was in the hospital, Dad made sure the photograph disappeared.
I had a tummy ache while waiting for it all to explode. Like always.
Dad had spent the hours after I’d come home from school in his shabby armchair in front of the TV, which wasn’t even switched on, while his bottle of cheap Explorer vodka emptied faster and faster. Mom knew it too. I could see it in her anxious, flapping movements. She took extra care with the food and cooked a dinner that included all of Dad’s favorites. Big pork chops with baked brown beans, fried onions, and potatoes. Apple pie with thick whipped cream.
None of the rest of us liked pork and beans, but we knew that we should still eat all of it. At the same time we knew that none of it would help. The critical juncture had already passed—like a seesaw that had tipped past the point where down was the only possible direction.
No one said anything. We laid the table in silence, picked the good crockery, set out napkins, which I folded into fans. Dad never cared about things like that, but we always let Mom think that it might help. That he would see how nice we had made things, how tasty the food that Mom had cooked was. That something inside him would be moved by the consideration and he would let it be. Just let it be. Let the seesaw tip back to its original position. But there was nothing within him that could be moved or touched. It was empty in there. Desolate.
“Gösta, dinner’s ready.”
Mom’s voice trembled slightly as she tried to sound cheerful. She carefully touched her hair. She had made herself nice. Put up her hair, put on a blouse and a stylish pair of trousers.
Before long we were all in our seats. Mom served up exactly the amount of pork onto Dad’s plate that she knew he would want. In precise proportion to the beans, potatoes, and fried onions. Dad looked at the plate. For a long time. For far too long. All three of us knew what that meant. Me, Mom, Sebastian.
We were frozen mid-movement, frozen in a prison that Sebastian and I had lived in since birth and Mom had been in since she had met Dad. We were frozen to the spot while Dad stared at his plate. Then, slowly—as if in slow motion—he took a full fist of food. Pork, beans, onions, and potatoes. He managed to get a little bit of everything from the plate in his huge fist. With his other fist, he firmly grabbed Mom’s hair—the do that she had spent ages struggling to put in place. Then he pushed the food into Mom’s face. Slowly, carefully, he mashed it around her face.
Mom did nothing. She knew that her only option was to do nothing. But both Sebastian and I knew that tonight it wouldn’t help. His gaze was too cold. The bottle was too empty. The grip on her hair was too firm. We didn’t dare look at her. Or each other.
Dad stood up slowly. He yanked Mom out of her chair. I saw the residue of pork and baked brown beans on her face. The scent of sugar and cinnamon in the apple pie was wafting from the oven. Dad’s favorite. I went through all the possibilities of what Dad might do now. All the body parts he could choose to target. Perhaps he would return to a well-frequented area. The arms had been broken in five places. The legs in two. He had cracked ribs on three occasions. The nose once.
Dad was apparently feeling creative on this particular night. With all the might of his muscular arm, he pushed Mom’s soiled face down toward the table fast and hard. Her teeth struck the edge of it. We heard the sound of them shattering. The shard of a tooth almost got me in the eye, but my eyebrow caught it and it tumbled down onto my plate. Right into the baked brown beans.
Sebastian jerked back but he still didn’t look up.
“Eat,” Dad hissed.
We ate. I used my fork to push Mom’s tooth aside.
“Coffee?”
“No thanks. But we’d love some more bubbly and red wine.”
“I’ll have a coffee, please.”
Kerstin accepted a paper cup filled with coffee from the flight attendant, who then went to fetch Faye’s order.
“Who do you think it c
ould be?” Faye said in a troubled voice.
“It’s impossible to tell. And it would be wasted effort to try and guess before we know more.”
“I don’t understand how I could have been so naïve. I never gave a moment’s thought to the idea that the other co-owners would be able to sell their shares without talking to me first.”
Kerstin raised her eyebrows.
“I warned you it was a risk selling such a big stake in the company.”
“Yes, I know,” Faye said in frustration, craning her neck to look for the flight attendant bringing her bottles. “It felt like the best solution at the time. In the middle of the whole thing with Jack and Julienne, the trial, the media. And Chris dying. I secured the capital and I believed I’d be able to retain control as chairman.”
“You should never believe in business,” said Kerstin.
“I know you love saying I told you so, but can you drop it for a bit? We’re talking about something else at the moment. I’m stressed out about being stuck on a plane unable to do anything or find out any more until we’re in the meetings tomorrow. It’s bad enough that I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
The flight attendant returned with a miniature bottle of sparkling wine and a miniature bottle of red wine. Faye picked up the two empty bottles on the table in front of her and passed them over in exchange. She opened the bubbly first and placed the chilled bottle of red between her thighs to warm it up.
“You could always drink something,” Kerstin said dryly, sipping her coffee while Faye drained the sparkling wine from her glass.
“Like I said, we don’t have any meetings until tomorrow. So I fully intend to drown my sorrows in booze with a clear conscience. Anyway, shouldn’t you be drinking something? Given you’re scared of flying…”
“Thanks for the reminder. I had just managed to stop thinking about it. No, if I’m going to die then I’m going to die sober.”
“Sounds completely illogical. And unnecessary. When I die I want to go completely hammered. Preferably with that pilot between my legs…”
Faye raised her eyebrows and nodded toward one of the pilots who had emerged from the cockpit to exchange a few words with the flight attendant. He looked to be in his thirties, had dark hair, a charming smile, and an ass that divulged many hours spent in the gym.
“You know what, I think it’s probably best if we let the pilot focus on flying the plane instead of potentially pursuing an encounter in the onboard lavatory.”
Kerstin looked nervous and Faye laughed.
“Calm down, Kerstin. That’s why God invented autopilot…”
“So that the pilot could sleep with the passengers? Seems doubtful.”
Faye downed the last of the bubbly, opened the bottle of red wine, and poured it into the glass.
She loved Kerstin, but she was often reminded that they came from different generations. Chris would have understood exactly what Faye meant and laughed with her—maybe even challenged her to make good on her talk about the pilot. Ever since they had made friends at the Stockholm School of Economics, Chris had been there for Faye. Guided her, protected her, been her biggest supporter—and her most honest critic. Now Faye always wore her Fuck Cancer wristband as a reminder of Chris and what she had lost.
Kerstin patted Faye’s hand. As usual, she could tell when her thoughts had wandered to Chris.
Faye cleared her throat.
“It’ll take a couple of days before the rental apartments we looked at are available,” she said. “We’ll have to stay at the Grand Hôtel for the time being.”
“I’m sure we’ll manage there,” said Kerstin dryly.
Faye smiled. They most certainly would.
“I sometimes think back to the early days after the divorce,” she said. “When I was your lodger. Sitting there after dinner drawing up the plans for Revenge.”
“You were an amazingly inspirational woman,” said Kerstin, patting her hand. “And you still are.”
Faye was forced to blink away tears and turned once again toward the cockpit. The pilot had come out for another brief chat with one of the flight attendants. Faye held her glass midair in a toast and received a faint smile in reply.
A few minutes later the pilot announced on the PA that it was time to prepare the cabin for landing. The crew roamed up and down the aisle collecting trash and checking that all the tables were stowed, all seats upright, and all seatbelts fastened.
Kerstin gripped the armrests so hard that her knuckles went white and Faye took the hand closest to her. She stroked it gently.
“Most accidents happen during takeoff and landing,” Kerstin said breathlessly.
Before long, the plane’s wheels bounced against the ground and Kerstin squeezed Faye’s hand so hard that her rings cut into her skin. But Faye kept her expression neutral and calm.
“We’re down now,” she said. “It’s over.”
Kerstin exhaled and smiled weakly at her.
When the plane came to a stop, they gathered together their hand luggage and moved forward along the aisle. The crew was standing by the exit saying farewell to all the passengers. The pilot met Faye’s eye and she discreetly passed him her business card. He smiled warmly at her and she hoped most sincerely that they were allowed to take their uniforms home from work.
Once they had checked in at the Grand Hôtel, Kerstin went up to her room to rest. Faye contemplated heading down to the spa to book a treatment, but realized she was far too restless to do that right now. Instead, she headed for the Cadier Bar.
She sat down at the long bar and looked around. The Cadier was as full as ever. The majority of the clientele were businessmen in expensive suits, with receding hairlines and business-lunch bellies. The women were also expensively dressed and Faye browsed the labels she could see from a quick glance: Hugo Boss, Max Mara, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and a few intrepid souls who were out and about in Pucci.
Emilio Pucci signaled “expensive but rebellious,” and Faye herself had a large number of garments from the collections of recent years in her wardrobe.
Today, however, she had opted for something more sober. Slacks from Furstenberg and a silk blouse from Stella McCartney. Cream. Dry-clean-only clothes. Love bracelets from Cartier. She shuddered when she discovered that next to her Fuck Cancer wristband she was still wearing a bracelet that Julienne had made for her. Colorful beads strung together with no coherent pattern whatsoever. She quickly took it off and slipped it into her pocket. For a moment, she had forgotten that everyone in Sweden thought that Julienne was dead.
“What can I get for you?”
A young blond bartender was looking attentively at her. She ordered a mojito—one of Chris’s favorite drinks. She could picture her friend moving the stirrer around in her glass with that playful look in her eyes before telling Faye about her latest adventure—whether it was in the world of business or with a hot young guy.
The bartender turned away and began to deftly mix the drink in a tall glass. Faye got out her laptop, opened the screen, and switched it on. There was nothing more to be done about the share sales until tomorrow, so she might as well carry on with the American expansion as if nothing had happened. It would help her to remain calm.
Work had always had that effect on her. With hindsight, she couldn’t understand how Jack had managed to get her to give up her studies and her career. To wander about within the four walls of their home like a lost soul, or to spend countless hours on boring lunches with meaningless conversations. Had she ever been happy with that existence before the cracks had started to show? Or had she merely persuaded herself that she was? Because she’d had no other choice? Because Jack had cornered her?
Jack had worn her down in a way that no one else had managed to do. But she had taken her revenge on him—built a successful company and crushed his.
Jack’s best friend and companion, Henrik Bergendahl, had also fallen and had started over from nothing. Well…A couple of million kronor in the bank and a big house out on Lidingö that was paid off wasn’t exactly what most people considered “starting over from nothing.”
In the beginning, Faye had felt sorry for him. He had always been pretty decent to her, and he had suffered only because he was Jack’s colleague. But she knew he had been constantly unfaithful to his wife, Alice, and in practice there was little difference between him and Jack. They had both treated the women in their lives as consumables.
Henrik had gotten back onto his feet again, so the damage had been only temporary. His investment firm was doing well and his fortune was now significantly greater than it had been during his years with Compare. She didn’t begrudge him his success, but she didn’t wish it on him either. If he hadn’t treated Alice so badly, she might have felt a pang of sympathy for the fact that she had trampled over him in passing. But as it stood, she wasn’t losing sleep over him.
The bartender set down the mojito in front of her with a smile and she paid.
“What’s your name?” said Faye, sipping gently through the straw. This taste was one she associated so strongly with Chris.
“Brasse.”
“Brasse? Short for…?”
“Nothing. I was christened Brasse.”
“Okay, I think you need to explain that. Where does the name come from?”
He shook a cocktail while answering.
“It was Dad’s idea. The Sweden–Brazil game during the 1994 World Cup.”
“Nineteen ninety-four? Let’s see, that makes you…”
Silver Tears Page 3