There was a particular brewery in Sweden—she remembered the name from a footnote in one of her economic history modules at Oxford—that had, inexplicably, gone up for sale this year. It was a modest affair, ancient copper kettles and a timber-beamed taproom on the edge of a pine forest, producing a rustic, mead-like cider with a fiercely loyal local following and little else to recommend it, as far as the London press was concerned. But she also knew, with the kind of dispassionate certainty that had gotten her through her degree in three years flat, that this humble brewery would, in less than a decade, become the nucleus of a vast beverage conglomerate, its name echoing along the shelves of every grocery and corner shop in Europe. The company would be called Kopparberg, and in the future—her future—it would be worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
The fact that the brewery was for sale now, in 1994, was a kind of cosmic joke at the expense of everyone in the present. Rose considered this with mild amusement, her documented tendency toward fatalism offset by a perverse delight in the loopholes of history. If she could find enough capital—and the right set of proxies, as she would need to manage the purchase discreetly—she could acquire the brewery, install first-rate equipment, and poach the best chemists and brewers from Stockholm universities. In the short term, the investment would be a curiosity, a footnote on her tax return. But with the right marketing, and a little patience, it would transform into the axis of a future empire.
It was an intoxicating idea, and for a moment she indulged the fantasy of being more than a silent partner—a kind of benevolent puppet master, engineering viral advertising campaigns and influencer deals years before those words entered the lexicon. She would host yearly retreats at the brewery, inviting the most creative minds from fashion, film, and finance, an annual Bacchanalia where the future of taste would be quietly decided over flights of increasingly experimental cider. She saw herself at the head of the table, raising a glass to the strange, recursive logic of capitalism, and for a moment she allowed herself to feel a pang of pride.
But the more immediate allure was mathematical: if she structured the holding company properly, the acquisition would offset nearly every pound of her film income, which, after the success of her recent contract, was growing so quickly that it nearly embarrassed her. She could shelter her earnings under layers of Scandinavian tax code, all while laying the groundwork for the kind of generational wealth that her family, for all its pretensions, had never quite managed to secure.
She was sketching out the plan in her head, running through the legal permutations, when she heard the unmistakable click of Richard Lovett's shoes on the marble. He always entered as if he were trying to avoid disturbing a flock of birds.
I know the brewery would be for sale for 500,000 dollars, and the equipment to equip it should be another 300,000 dollars. Staff costs should be an additional 200,000 dollars. So it would be a total of 1,000,000 dollars. I need an assistant, as I previously remarked, and also a lawyer, an accountant, and a driver who will travel with me, as I am currently too young to drive, and I don't want to drive in the future, as I don't want someone to try and get money out of me.
The footsteps behind me got me out of my musing, and I just realised I need to get my Sag-Aftra card, and I was just calculating all my expenses. There are positions that i didn't think about earlier, like makeup artist and stylist.
A short chapter.