Silver Tears(13)

Faye waved the waiter over and ordered what Kerstin had asked for. The man with the mustache smiled at Kerstin, who did her best to try to ignore him.



“You’ll have to set aside some time to prepare for your appearance on Skavlan, so we won’t be able to get started until you’re back from the TV studios. In the meantime I’ll get busy drawing up a list of shareholders who haven’t sold their shares yet. Soon as you’re free, we’ll divvy them up and speak to as many as possible.”

Faye took a prawn from the large silver platter. “Whatever we do, we can’t let on that trouble is brewing. We don’t want everyone to know that the company is under attack.”

“I get that, but our top priority must be to prevent any more women from selling.”

“From the gentleman over there.”

The waiter set down a bucket containing a bottle of champagne beside their table and placed a long, elegant champagne flute in front of each of them before opening the bottle with a pop.

Faye raised her eyebrows meaningfully. Kerstin snorted.

“I knew it,” said Faye. “Musk oil.”

She guessed it was the happiness Kerstin had felt since she had met Bengt that made her so irresistible to men.

Faye nodded toward the colonial grandpa, who raised his glass in a toast, a wide smile stretching from ear to ear. She kicked Kerstin under the table again.

“Behave yourself. Raise your glass and thank him. You never know what it might lead to.”

“Faye!”

Kerstin blushed again. But she raised her glass in an obedient toast.





The studio lights were blinding. Faye had lost track of time. She had no idea how long the interview had been going on for or how long was left. The audience was seated in rows on banked seating—a hungry, amorphous mass, on the alert for every word, every shift in her facial expression.

Usually, she thrived in these situations. There was a little diva inside her who liked sitting in front of an audience, feeling the nerves of recording for TV. But today she felt strained and anxious.

Thinking about the shares being bought had kept her awake most of the night, tossing and turning. She had gone over the conversations in advance—conversations with women she would need to persuade to keep their shares without revealing in any way that something was happening. No easy task—it would take both tact and finesse.

A slightly too long silence wrenched her away from her thoughts. She had been asked a question and was expected to answer.

“The plan is to expand in the USA,” she heard herself say. “I’m here in Stockholm for a month or so to meet potential investors and put together the final details. And I want to personally oversee the new issue of stock.”

It was horribly warm. A trickle of sweat ran down the small of her back.



Fredrik Skavlan, the Norwegian talk show host, sat up straight.

“But this hunger…What is it that drives you? You’re already a billionaire. A feminist icon.”

Faye strung out the silence. The other guests were an American Hollywood actor, a female professor of linguistics who had just published a nonfiction best seller, and a woman who had climbed Mount Everest with prosthetic legs. The Hollywood star had been flirting ceaselessly with Faye ever since she had arrived at the studio.

“Before my best friend Chris died, I promised her I would live life for both of us. I want to see how far I can get, what I can build. My biggest fear is dying without achieving my full potential.”

“And Julienne, your daughter, who was murdered by your ex-husband. What does her memory mean to you?”

Fredrik Skavlan leaned forward and the tension in the studio increased.

She didn’t answer right away, letting the temperature rise even further. Reach boiling point. The answer was learned by heart, but it was important it sounded natural.

“She’s with me in everything I do. When the longing and pain get too much, I bury myself in my work. I’m running Revenge, trying to make it grow, so that I don’t lie down and die myself. So that I don’t end up as just another woman silenced in the shadows of a man’s actions. So that he—the man I once loved but who killed our daughter—doesn’t succeed in killing me too.”

Faye pursed her lips as a tear slowly ran down her cheek and fell toward the glossy black studio floor. It wasn’t hard. Her pain was always so close to the surface that it was easy to visit it.

“Thank you, Faye Adelheim, for coming here today to tell us your story. I know you’re needed elsewhere and have to leave us.”

The audience rose to their feet and the applause rattled the rafters. It was seemingly never-ending. It continued as she stumbled across the studio floor, past the seating, and into the backstage area.

On the way to her dressing room, she summoned a young woman with an earpiece and asked her to call a taxi. A little way down the corridor she heard the Hollywood star calling out her name. She ignored him and shut the door behind her. There was a fan whirring in the dressing room. A shabby, mustard-yellow couch stood neglected in one corner. Faye stopped. She leaned against the wall and tried to smile at her own reflection. Mission accomplished. Everything had gone well. The jigsaw pieces of lies, truths, and half-truths had come together into the picture of herself she had wanted to share. Yet she was still missing the adrenaline rush she usually got after a good TV appearance. She couldn’t shake off the anxiety that was enveloping her like a wet blanket. She had made the mistake of taking the future for granted. She had been afflicted by the same pride that had made Icarus fly too close to the sun with his waxen wings. Now she was paying the price as the wax melted and her wings fell apart.