“Desire is a talent,” Benji says.

  Big City’s heart almost breaks when he hears that.

  “What about you, then? Why did you stop playing?” he whispers.

  “I stopped being in love,” Benji replies.

  Big City says nothing for a long time before he dares to ask:

  “Do you think you could be again? In love?”

  Benji looks him right in the eye and it’s the sort of night when nothing feels impossible, so he replies:

  “Maybe.”

  They go and lie down inside the campervan, facing the other way to Ana and Maya, and it’s ridiculously cold but Big City still sleeps the whole night through without waking up once. It’s been a long time since that happened. The next morning he wakes up early and steps out into the forest and sits alone and listens to something he hasn’t heard before, at least not this completely, this overwhelmingly.

  * * *

  Silence.

  73 Scratches

  The night has taken Beartown, but it’s already been dark for so many hours that it’s barely noticeable. A gate creaks at the church and a lone figure steps carefully through the shadows, treading so softly on the snow as if it were glass and he barefoot. A few flickering candles by the graves are all he has to orient himself by, but he still seems to know where he’s going.

  Churchyards are meant to be final destinations, but for many of us all the gravestones are question marks. Why? Why you? Why so early? Where are you now? Who could you have been if everything had been different? Or if just something very small had been? If you had had different parents, a different name, if you had lived somewhere else?

  There’s almost no one who will remember her name. They’ll say: “Oh yes, her, she was in one of my classes, she was the one who just disappeared a few years ago, wasn’t she? I heard she ran away from home. Her parents are religious fanatics or something, right? That weird church, whatever it’s called? I heard she was a junkie. That she went abroad and died of an overdose. Goodness, what WAS her name? I don’t remember!”

  Ruth. Her name was Ruth. It’s on the gravestone. Just dates beneath it, nothing else, no poem or brief description of her. But at the top, in one corner of the stone, someone has carefully and tenderly carved a little pattern of scratches. You have to get really close to see that it’s a butterfly.

  The figure looks around in the darkness. One day his name will be on a gravestone and plenty of people will say: “Who? I don’t remember him…” Then someone will have to remind them of the name everyone calls him, the one he was given because he hardly ever speaks: “Mumble.”

  He goes close to Ruth’s grave, sinks to his knees, and runs his fingers over the letters. Then, shivering with despair, he repeats the same word over and over again, out into the night:

  “Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry.”

  74 Chances

  When Maya and Benji and Mumble and the others were standing outside the ice rink a while ago playing with Sune’s dog, as if everything was fine and the world was good, Matteo was standing hidden in the darkness, watching them. He saw Amat and Bobo say good-bye to everyone, Bobo drove Amat’s mother home and Amat ran. Benji, Maya, Ana, and that new player whose name Matteo doesn’t know walked off toward an old campervan. Mumble walked alone toward the bus stop as if he was going to catch the bus to Hed, but when he thought no one was looking he turned off and went to the churchyard instead. Matteo crept after him. Now he’s sitting hidden among the headstones, listening to Mumble sobbing in front of Ruth’s grave.

  Matteo doesn’t know if that makes him hate Mumble more or less. He always thought that the guys who murdered his sister didn’t care, didn’t grieve for her, didn’t even see her as a human being. But this is probably worse, he decides. It’s worse that Mumble saw her as a human being, because if she was something else, just an object you could use and dispose of, then at least that made sense. But to do what they did to a human being? A real person? Then you’re just evil. Then you deserve nothing but Hell.

  If Matteo had had a gun he would have sent Mumble straight to Hell, right there and then. But now he’s going to have to wait a few days for his chance.

  75 Jam sandwiches

  Bang!

  * * *

  Bang!

  * * *

  Bang!

  * * *

  When Sune retired there were plenty of people in the town who worried that he was going to spend all day sitting on his own with nothing to do, but now he can’t understand how he ever had time to work. He has a dog that doesn’t give a damn when he shouts at it to stop biting the furniture, and an almost seven-year-old girl standing in the yard firing hockey pucks at the wall. “They work well together, those two, demolishing the house from either side,” Sune often mutters as he stands in the kitchen making liver pâté sandwiches for the hooligan inside and jam sandwiches for the hooligan outside. The last time he saw the doctor he was asked if he felt more tired than usual, and replied: “How should I know?” They didn’t get any further than that, because Alicia had been left holding the dog out in the waiting room and they heard a commotion and then Alicia stuck her head into the treatment room to ask if potted plants were expensive. “Grandchild?” the doctor wondered with a smile, and Sune had no idea how to explain that they weren’t even related. Once, thirty-five years ago, the same thing happened in the supermarket, only then it was a little boy who was following Sune around impatiently with a hockey stick in his hand, and someone said: “What a handsome son you’ve got.” Sune didn’t know what to say then either, the boy’s name was Peter Andersson and no one had taught him how to fire decent shots and he’d never eaten a proper jam sandwich, so Sune set about remedying both of those. It became a lifelong friendship. Peter is the most beautiful cherry tree Sune has seen in Beartown, that was how he used to think of the very greatest talents: pink blossoms breaking into flower against all the odds in the middle of a frozen garden.

  He never had kids of his own, at the end of his career he was only coaching grown men and never children, he had stopped thinking about cherry trees when Alicia had her first training session as a four-and-a-half-year-old. Youngest in the group, smallest on the ice, clearly the best right from the start. She’s almost seven now, and so good that she causes uproar among the parents when the club lets her play with the boys. “Some adults are just stupid,” Sune said sadly when she asked why she wasn’t allowed to carry on training with them, but he hardly needed to tell her that. She already knew everything about adults. She no longer has as many bruises since Teemu paid a visit to her home and informed all those present about who was now protecting the girl, but she still has the sort of home environment where no one notices if she comes home for dinner, and on many days it’s probably appreciated if she doesn’t. So after school she goes straight to the ice rink if she has training, and home to Sune’s if she doesn’t. Other children might have made drawings for him to stick on his fridge, but Alicia isn’t keen on drawing, so the puck marks in the plaster of his wall have become much the same thing: small marks in time that say someone you love grew up here.

  It started with Sune teaching her how to play hockey but it went on with him teaching her everything else you need to know in life: tying shoelaces and chanting times tables and listening to Elvis Presley. She started following him and the dog out into the forest, and the old man taught her everything he knew about trees and plants, with occasional breaks for a short “take the dog and run on ahead, I’ll catch you up” when he felt breathless and his chest hurt. That was happening more and more often these days, so often in fact that that was how he taught the girl to ride a bicycle, he ran behind her out in the street holding on to the parcel rack and when he couldn’t run anymore he whispered “you cycle on ahead,” and she did.

  When she started school she came around to his place on one of the first days and said he needed a packed lunch because he had to go with them on a class trip. When Sune didn’t understand what she was talking about she sighed irritably and said he was “an extra grown-up.” When Sune still didn’t get it, Alicia took her hockey stick and said she didn’t have time for this, he’d have to call the teacher himself if he was going to be so slow. So, to the accompaniment of BANG BANG BANG from the yard, Sune did precisely that, and the teacher explained that she had told the children in class that they needed “an extra grown-up for the excursion,” and Alicia had held her hand up and said that she knew one of those.

  So now Sune and his dog go on all class excursions. When Sune heard the girl present it as “Sune’s dog” to her classmates he felt obliged to correct her: “It’s your dog too.” As she stood and fired pucks that afternoon it felt like she needed a longer stick because she’d grown at least four inches.

  Today she knocks on Sune’s door early, before going to school. It’s Wednesday morning, the middle of the week, the middle of the month, there isn’t always food at home then. So she and Sune go to the shop to buy milk and bread and jam and liver pâté. Sune walks slowly on the way home. Alicia asks how old you have to be to play on the national team, he replies that it isn’t about how old you are but how good you are.

  “How old will you be when I’m allowed to play on the national team, do you think?”

  Sune smiles.

  “How old do you think I am now?”

  “A hundred?” Alicia guesses.

  “Yes, sometimes it really does feel like it,” Sune sighs.

  “Can I carry the bag?” she asks.

  He pats her head.

  “No, no, it’s fine, take the dog and run ahead, I’ll catch up to you!”

  She does as he says. She lets the dog off the leash in the yard then stands and fires pucks at the wall for a while longer before school starts.

  * * *

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  76 Detours

  Benji calls his sisters early on Wednesday morning and Adri swears the whole way to the lake. He’s been given a campervan, the donkey, and obviously he’s driven it down to the shore and gotten stuck in the snow overnight.

  “It’s a campervan, not an all-terrain vehicle, of course you got stuck here, you donkey!” Adri informs him as she jumps out of her car, but naturally that gets her nowhere with this particular donkey.

  “It isn’t a campervan anymore, it’s a summer cottage now. Genius, if you ask me!” Benji grins.

  He and Big City and Maya and Ana squeeze into Adri’s car and she has to roll down the windows because they smell so badly of teenagers and hangovers that they could frighten foxes away. When they get back to the kennels Benji’s laughter fills the kitchen in a way that his sisters and mother haven’t heard in years. If Adri didn’t know better, she’d have said he sounded like someone who’s fallen in love. She almost can’t manage to be angry with him. But only almost.

  Ana skips school, Maya evidently doesn’t have any plans to get back to college, so they have breakfast then set off into the forest again. They don’t know exactly where they’re going, but if these are the last days they’re going to get when they can pretend to be children and that life is uncomplicated, then goodness knows, they’re going to make the most of it.

  Adri and Benji drive Big City to the ice rink. When he waves and goes inside Benji watches him and his sister watches Benji.

  “You stink,” she says affectionately.

  “I can shower, what are you going to do about your face?” he retorts just as affectionately, and she hits him in the chest so fast with her fist that all the air goes out of him.

  They drive an extra long detour around town, taking their time, listening to music, and talking without really saying much. When their dad took his shotgun and went into the forest Adri, as oldest sister, had to take on many of what she assumed were a father’s duties. She taught Benji to fight, perhaps she should have taught him a bit more about how not to fight. She wants to tell him that he can choose not to be violent, but he’ll only pretend that he thinks she means not fighting other people. She means that he shouldn’t be so violent with himself. But today he’s actually laughing in a way that makes her think he might be doing that.

  “I love you, you damn donkey,” she says, tugging his ear until he’s laughing and yelping.

  “I love you, sis. Thanks for always coming and getting me when I get stuck,” he adds with a smile.

  She’ll never forget that.

  77 Backs

  When the editor in chief arrives at the newspaper’s offices on Wednesday morning, the whole building seems to squirm uncomfortably. Half of the staff don’t even look up from their desks when she walks past. Only when she reaches her own desk and sees who’s sitting on the other side of it does she realize why.

  “Hello! We’ve never met, but I’ve heard a lot about you! My name is Richard Theo!” the politician says as he gets to his feet, with the self-confident awareness of someone who knows that introductions are completely superfluous.

  “Are you looking for a job?” she asks sharply.

  He’s secretly impressed by how quickly she adjusts to the situation, most people only dare to be so condescending toward Richard Theo behind his back. A long, long way behind it.

  “I’ve got one, thanks. But we’ll have to see what happens at the next election. Maybe I’ll be in touch!” he smiles.

  She grants him a smile in return, albeit a small one.

  “So I assume you’re here to tell us what a great job we’re doing here on the local paper?”

  “Something like that. Do you know what the meanest thing people say behind my back is?”

  “Sorry?” she blurts out, unable to conceal her confusion, which was evidently his intention.

  Theo looks almost hurt when he explains:

  “They cite the prime minister who said that ‘politics is will,’ then they say mockingly that my version of that is ‘politics is winning.’ Naturally, I humbly disagree. For me politics is about doing. About getting things done. Not just empty words. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I doubt it,” she says suspiciously, and he smiles broadly as if all he has said has been nothing but spontaneous nonsense, whereas in fact every word had been carefully considered.

  “What’s the meanest thing people say behind your back, do you think?” he asks inquisitively.

  She peers at him, wishing for a moment that her dad was here, but he’s still asleep at home after sitting up all night examining Beartown Hockey’s accounts. What would he have said about Richard Theo? That there are two types of politician, the editor in chief concludes: the provocateur and the manipulator. One prods and pokes at random to see where the sore points are, whereas the other knows exactly what he’s looking for.

  “I don’t speculate about what people say about me,” she replies sharply.

  “No? I thought that was the job of you newspaper people, reading public opinion?”

  He smiles, she tries to reciprocate, but she’s a much worse liar than him. She notes that he has today’s newspaper open on his lap. The letters page. The editor in chief is well aware of what it contains, because she made the decision to publish it. The anonymous mother of a young player has written a scathing critique of Beartown Hockey’s “macho culture.” She had evidently submitted a complaint about one of the coaches of the boys’ team and the coach of the A-team. The mother had been promised that the boys’ coach would be fired and the A-team coach suspended. Instead she has discovered that the A-team coach missed just one training session and that the boys’ coach only had his job “paused” for a month and would soon be taking charge of a new team. The mother writes that this is clear evidence of the hockey club’s “patriarchal culture.”

  “If that’s what you want to talk about, the letter was sent anonymously,” the editor in chief says.

  Richard Theo raises his eyebrows in amusement.

  “This? No, no, that’s none of my business. It strikes me as a good thing that people feel free to air their opinions about the club these days.”

  “Anonymously, yes,” the editor in chief points out.

  The politician holds his hands up.

  “The confidentiality of sources is one of the cornerstones of democracy, I’ve always said that! Isn’t the phrase ‘patriarchal culture’ odd, though? When the A-team coach is a woman?”

  The editor in chief sighs the way you do when someone who definitely doesn’t know what “confidentiality of sources” means deploys the phrase as a rhetorical accessory, then she says:

  “I think ‘patriarchal’ describes a mentality rather than gender in this instance.”

  “Really? How modern!” the politician exclaims cheerfully.

  “But that isn’t why you’re here?” the editor in chief asks, with a quiver in her voice that reveals her impatience.

  So Richard Theo takes his time making himself comfortable and making small talk about the furnishings and the view before he gets to the point:

  “I’m here in my capacity as a concerned citizen. I’ve heard a lot of rumors in recent days about a tension between Hed and Beartown which is starting to develop into… what shall we call it? ‘Frustration’? I’d like to talk to you about what you and I can do to stop the situation escalating unnecessarily.”

  The editor in chief looks at him for a long time without quite being able to determine his agenda. So she decides to play for time by acting stupid:

  “Oh? How do you mean?”