“Let me guess, he has nowhere to live so he needs to stay here?” she smiles, and Peter’s eyes open wide.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because that’s what always used to happen when you were general manager. I’ll go and make up the bed in the guest room.”

  She heads upstairs to find sheets, but has to stop several times just to catch her breath.

  “It’ll only be for a few nights!” Peter calls after her.

  But then Big City walks in through the front door and stops in the hallway, just as Maya comes out of her room, wondering what all the fuss is about. Big City’s and Maya’s eyes meet and neither of them says anything, but all the color suddenly drains from Peter’s face. He looks from one to the other and realizes that he’s made a terrible, terrible mistake. Suddenly Kira hears him call up from the ground floor:

  “ONE night, Kira! One night maximum!”

  Ana spends the night there too. The last thing she whispers before they fall asleep is:

  “That turned out okay! First your mom asked you to keep a secret and then your dad turned into a psycho when he saw you wanted to sleep with that guy. That’s, like, the most normal I’ve seen your parents in ages.”

  “I don’t want to sleep with that guy!” Maya retorts a little too quickly, and Ana rolls her eyes so hard that her head almost spins around like an owl’s.

  “No, no, of course you don’t. Sure. You were just eating him up with your eyes…”

  “I DID NO SUCH THING!”

  Ana snuggles closer, turns her back to Maya, and whispers:

  “I’m glad you want to sleep with guys again.”

  “Screw you…,” Maya whispers, and takes Ana’s hand and falls asleep with it clutched tightly in hers.

  66 Disappointments

  Monday is one of the longest days of Hannah’s and Johnny’s lives. Tess is playing the part of wounded daughter to perfection, she’s gone just long enough for them to start to panic but not long enough for them to be able to play the martyr. She spends the night sleeping in Bobo’s bed, he sleeps next to her on the floor, his younger siblings sleep in a heap at the end of her bed like puppies. Hog doesn’t understand what the hell is going on, there’s never been a girlfriend in the house before, so he tentatively asks Tess what she’d like for breakfast, then he makes her promise that if Bobo ever behaves badly toward her, she’s to tell Hog so he can kill him. Tess smiles and promises. She sleeps with her hand hanging over the edge of the bed so she can feel Bobo’s breath against her skin. The next morning she wakes to the smell of tea, toast, and scrambled eggs.

  She takes the bus back to Hed and goes to school as if nothing has happened, because she knows her parents will phone the school to see if she’s turned up, which is a much harder punishment for them than if she disappears. Now they’ll have to sit and wait impotently until the end of the school day to see if she comes home or not, and there’s nothing more cruel that she could do to them.

  When it’s time for dinner she puts her key in the lock and her parents leap out of their kitchen chairs and stumble into the hall, poised somewhere between giving her a hug and a telling-off, but she doesn’t give them time to choose. Bobo is standing next to her with a basket in his hand and he looks at least as uncomfortable as Hannah and Johnny, but perhaps Tess is just testing him. If he does this for her, then he’ll do anything.

  “Bobo’s brought food, he’s going to cook dinner! In twenty minutes we’re going to sit down and eat it together like a normal family,” she says, leaving no room for negotiation.

  Said and done. Her brothers are let down from upstairs and the family eats the pasta like it was a hostage situation. Johnny doesn’t say a word, but Hannah isn’t given that opportunity because Bobo keeps asking her questions. About her job, her upbringing, her house. When they’ve finished eating, Tobias and Ted rush desperately to their rooms, away from the suffocating awkwardness of the conversation. Johnny in turn pretends he has to go to the bathroom, then comes up with something very important he needs to do in the garage. He’s furious, Tess can see that, her dad just doesn’t know how to express it, and his daughter doesn’t know how to apologize without apologizing. How to explain that she’s sorry if she’s upsetting him, but not because she’s disappointed him. Because the disappointment is his own fault.

  Bobo clears the table and washes up without being asked. Ture goes into the kitchen of his own volition and helps. Hannah sits silently at the table, glancing at her daughter and searching for words. In the end she takes the easy way out and talks to Bobo instead:

  “Are you the oldest child in your family, Bobo?”

  “Yes,” he nods as he shows Ture how to load the dishwasher more efficiently.

  “You can tell. You’re very good with children. Who taught you to make food this well?” Hannah asks.

  “Mom,” he replies.

  “Tell her she’s done a very good job. Not just with cooking but with… all of you.”

  Hannah glances at her daughter to get confirmation that her apology has now been delivered, so that she can be forgiven, but instead Tess looks up from the table straight at Bobo with tears in her eyes. The young man in the kitchen smiles sadly and replies:

  “My mom’s dead. But she was brilliant. Everything I know comes from her.”

  The house has probably never been more silent, and Hannah has probably never felt more stupid. Her larynx feels like rope and her whole body contracts as if she’s already waiting to be told off by her daughter. But nothing happens. Tess just looks equally sad.

  “Sorry, Bobo, I should have told Mom…,” she whispers.

  Her mother’s cheeks flush.

  “No, no, it’s my fault, Bobo! I didn’t even think…”

  But Bobo just shakes his head disarmingly at Hannah, almost unconcerned.

  “No, no, don’t feel bad. She would have liked you! She’d have been furious with me if I’d made you sad!”

  Hannah feels like she needs nine glasses of wine to handle that, but instead she makes her excuses and lies about needing to go to the bathroom. There she rinses her face and swears at herself for ten minutes before she goes out to the garage and swears at her husband instead.

  “You’re such a damn COWARD, hiding out here when your daughter’s sitting in the kitchen with her…”

  “Don’t even say the word!” Johnny grunts in warning, but he’s already looking around to see if there’s anything he doesn’t want her to throw at him.

  “BOYFRIEND! He’s her BOYFRIEND! And he’s a good one! You’re just going to have to accept him!” she says, doing her best to sound firm but not succeeding.

  Johnny could have picked a thousand different replies, and by some miracle he manages to pick the very worst one:

  “An ignorant fatso from Beartown, is that the best Tess can get? And now she wants to bully us into accepting him? I’ve…”

  Hannah’s back is ramrod straight. That’s never a good sign.

  “Tess has chosen him. Once upon a time you chose me and not everyone in your family was so damn happy about that either, as you might remember?”

  He protests, but more cautiously now:

  “They hardly know each other, Hannah…”

  She snorts:

  “How well did we know each other the first time we…”

  He snaps:

  “There’s a hell of a difference, I… you were… that was different!”

  “How?”

  Johnny makes his very biggest mistake then, he judges a young man’s intentions by the very worst of his own youth:

  “Have you any idea what sort of guy he is? Don’t you think I know what people like him are like? He just wants to sleep with a girl from Hed so he can boast to his friends about having been with a Hed bitch…”

  Hannah’s lips grow thin, her fingers creak as they curl in toward her palms.

  “Because that was how you and your friends used to talk about girls from Beartown when you were their age? Has it ever occurred to you that not all boys are the sort of pigs you were?”

  Johnny’s shoulders slump so far that his collarbones can barely cope with the strain.

  “That’s not what I meant…”

  She doesn’t let him apologize, just interrupts with quiet fury:

  “Do you know what Tess has got? She’s got something wonderful. Something I envy her for. Something no one else in this family has got. She’s got DECENT JUDGMENT!”

  She slams the garage door so hard it echoes through the whole house. In sheer frustration Johnny knocks a jar of keys to the floor, the sort no one knows what they’re for and which all dads seem to have hundreds of. Somewhere in the world are all the locks they fit, and perhaps on the other side of those locks are all the answers to how you always end up on minus points with your family no matter what you do.

  When Bobo finally leaves the house Tess stays behind. Peace hasn’t yet broken out between her and her mother, this is only a truce, but Hannah takes what she can get. Tess goes up to her room but she doesn’t slam the door. When Bobo is walking to his car, a rusty little green Peugeot, Johnny steps out onto the drive from the garage. Bobo is one of the very few men in the area who is actually physically larger than Johnny, but he still stops as if he’s expecting to get beaten up.

  “Is that your car?” Johnny asks at the end of an entire childhood’s worth of breaths.

  It isn’t easy to become a grown-up, but that’s nothing compared to how hard it is to let someone else do it.

  “Yes… yes, Dad gave it to me! Well, he actually gave me a campervan, but I gave that to a friend. We had a customer who wanted to scrap it, but I fixed it. It isn’t much to look at, but the inside is okay!” Bobo nods, trying not to sound too enthusiastic, too boastful or too ingratiating.

  Johnny scratches his beard and nods toward his van.

  “I’m having trouble with the engine in that,” he admits, which is pretty much the same to him as waving a white flag.

  Bobo nods enthusiastically.

  “We had one of those in the workshop! I can probably fix it for you!”

  “Do you think I’m going to let you be with my daughter just because you fix my car?” Johnny wonders suspiciously.

  Bobo shocks him with his honesty.

  “I don’t think it’s up to you whether she’s with me or not. I think that’s her decision.”

  “Good answer,” the fireman reluctantly concedes.

  “Sorry,” Bobo says, because he says that word so often that it sometimes slips out from sheer habit.

  Johnny scratches his beard for a long time.

  “Do you seriously think you could fix the van?”

  Bobo nods.

  “Yes. Cars are the only thing I’m good at.”

  “Was it your dad who taught you? You’re Hog’s son, right?”

  “Yes! Do you know him?”

  “I played hockey against him. He broke his nose crashing into me when we were juniors.”

  Only when Johnny smiles does Bobo allow himself to join in, then he says:

  “He probably skated into you by mistake. Dad can only skate in one direction.”

  Johnny laughs loudly for the first time at that, he hears how rough it sounds, an old man’s laugh now. Then he says, weighed down by all the time that passes far too fast:

  “Tess is smart, Bobo. Really, really smart. She has the best grades of anyone in her school…”

  “I know,” Bobo mumbles, already beginning to suspect where this is going.

  “If she’s going to go on with her studies she’ll have to move away from here, there aren’t any opportunities for her here.”

  “I get that.”

  “It’s nothing personal, Bobo. I’m sure you’re a good guy. But I don’t want you to hold her back. If I’m honest, I think her mom is hoping deep down that she’s going to stay and have an ordinary life, because Hannah can’t live without Tess, but… damn it, Bobo. She can be anything she wants. She could be something big, our daughter. Do you understand? She isn’t like…”

  Bobo nods with his back bent. He blinks too hard too many times for it not to show how badly he’s falling apart.

  “Don’t you think I know Tess is too good for me? That she’s special and I’m just ordinary? I’m not so smart, but I’m not THAT un-smart! I don’t know anything except cars and a bit about hockey, I know I can’t GIVE her anything, but I will never… never… try to hold her back, I… I’ll never act badly toward her. And maybe I can’t study at university like her, but I’m pretty good at fixing things and I’m fairly strong and my friends like me and Tess likes me. I try to be a good man and I think I could be a pretty good dad one day. And I WON’T hold her back. If she wants to move away from here, then I’ll go with her. I can live anywhere if I can live with her. There are bad cars to fix everywhere. And if you want to try to get her to stop liking me, go ahead, but I’m not going to give up… I can’t…”

  Johnny stands and stares intently at the snow for so long that Bobo eventually stops babbling and can’t figure out if the man has been listening or not.

  “No. Like you say, I don’t make decisions for Tess,” Johnny says after an eternity.

  He can’t help asking himself what he’s really angry about, and the answer really isn’t flattering. He isn’t even angry, just empty. His daughter left home yesterday without talking to him first. Got herself a boyfriend in secret. She has a whole life now that she hasn’t told him about, and what sort of dad does that make him?

  Bobo’s voice is barely audible when he replies:

  “She cries when we talk about you, and I don’t want her to cry. So either she’ll have to stop liking me, or you’re going to have to start liking me.”

  Johnny looks up, exhausted.

  “You know something? Cars aren’t the only thing you’re good at, Bobo.”

  “No?” Bobo whispers.

  Johnny shakes his head. Smiles forlornly.

  “No. The food was okay too.”

  67 Love stories

  It snows all night, and on Tuesday morning it’s so cold that when Big City goes out with wet hair from the shower to get some things from the car he has to break his hair like Legos when he comes back in. Peter has to lend him a winter jacket seeing as what Big City thought was a winter jacket turned out to be just a jacket.

  “It’s, like, autumn, how cold does it get in December?” he asks anxiously.

  They set off to the ice rink together. Of course Peter ought to go to work, but he pretends he has to show the boy the way instead, anything to get a chance to see the twenty-year-old’s first training session. Ana and Leo have to go to school, so Maya decides to go to the ice rink as well, mostly to tease her dad, which really does work splendidly. He walks demonstratively between her and Big City the whole way, so Maya takes extra care to give Big City compliments on how nice his hair is and how good he looks in his new jacket, until her dad dad-grunts uncomfortably the way only dads can. When they reach the rink Big City is collected by the caretaker to go through the list of equipment he needs, and they disappear, but Peter walks around holding the sleeve of Maya’s jacket all day as if she was four years old and he was scared she was going to fall in a swimming pool. She lets him. Only when they are sitting alone in the stands does she say:

  “I’m glad you’re worrying about normal things again, Dad.”

  He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and nothing is more normal for a dad than that. Then they go to the cafeteria and buy chocolate balls.

  * * *

  Kira goes to the office, shuts herself away with her colleague, and spends all day going through old cases and new accounts and prepares herself for the worst. “Always hope for peace but always prepare for war” one of Kira’s tutors at university told her when she was a student. Those words carry extra weight now. They make her whole body ache.

  “Thanks for doing this,” she says, exhausted.

  “I’d have been insulted if you didn’t think it obvious that I would,” her colleague replies.

  Kira forces herself to smile.

  “I know you’d do anything for me, but you’re doing this for Peter…”

  “I’m doing it for you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Her colleague glances up from behind her fringe and sighs.

  “Screw it. You want me to tell the truth? I’m doing this for both of you. I’ve never thought that Peter deserved you, but you know what? You don’t always deserve him either. There have been so many times when I’ve thought that surely now they’re going to get divorced, those two, but you really can’t. It’s impossible for you two to live without each other. So you’re not allowed to. I won’t allow it. You’ve been through too much, and if you don’t manage to keep your love story going, then the rest of us might as well give up all hope!”

  Kira wipes her cheeks on her sleeve.

  “You make it sound like a never-ending battle.”

  “Isn’t that what love is? Loving someone is one thing, but who the hell can bear being LOVED for twenty years?”

  “I really do love him…”

  Her colleague smiles.

  “I know. Everyone knows. Bloody hell, EVERYONE knows, Kira. You and he are fighters. You always find something, somewhere, and then you fight for it to the death. That’s probably why I’m still working for you. You make me feel like I’m on the side of the good guys.”

  Kira sniffs.

  “You don’t work for me, you work with me…”

  Her colleague pats her on the head.

  “No. I worship you, I really do, but everyone works for you. Even your husband.”

  Kira screws her eyes shut so tightly that her temples hurt.