Sune sees him lift his head at last and look out across the juniors on the ice. Absentmindedly to start with—he’s so used to following this team now that he counts them without thinking about it. Sune remains standing in the shadows just so he can see Peter’s face when the penny finally drops.

For ten years Peter has helped shape this group of boys. He knows all their names, knows the names of all their parents. He ticks them off one by one in his mind to see if anyone’s missing, if anyone might be injured, but they all seem to be there. In fact there’s actually one too many. He counts again. Can’t make sense of it. Until he sees Amat. Shortest and slightest of them all, still in equipment that looks a bit too big, just like in his skating classes. Peter just stares. Then he starts to laugh out loud.

He’s been told so many times that the boy ought to stop playing, that he doesn’t stand a chance, and now there he is, down on the ice. No one else has fought harder for this opportunity, and David is giving it to him today of all days. It’s a small dream, nothing less, and Peter could do with a dream today.

Sune nods with both joy and sadness as he sees this. He goes back to his office and closes his door. This evening he’ll hold one of his last training sessions with the A-team, and when the season is over he’ll go home and—deep down—will wish what we all wish whenever we leave something: that it’s going to collapse. That nothing will work without us. That we’re indispensible. But nothing will happen, the rink will remain standing, the club will live on.

*

Amat adjusts his helmet and skates straight at an opponent, is checked and falls, but bounces up again. He gets hit and falls, but bounces up again. Peter leans back, smiling the way Kira says he only smiles when he’s starting to fall asleep after a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and half a glass of red wine. He allows himself fifteen minutes in the stands before he goes back to his office, with his heart feeling much lighter.

*

Fatima is standing in the washroom stretching her back, slowly and carefully, so no one hears her whimpering in pain. Sometimes she quite literally rolls off the sofa bed in the morning because her muscles refuse to let her body sit up. She hides it as well as she can, always lets her son sit by the aisle on the bus so he’s facing away from her when they stand up to get off and can’t see the expression on her face. She discreetly lets the ends of the plastic bags in the trash cans at work hang so she doesn’t have to bend down quite so far to get hold of them when she empties them. Every day she finds new ways to compensate.

She apologizes as she creeps into Peter’s office. If she hadn’t he would never even have heard her. Peter glances up from his papers, checks what time it is, and looks surprised: “But Fatima, what are you doing here now?”

Horrified, she takes two steps back.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just going to empty the trash and water the plants. I can come back when you’ve gone home!”

Peter rubs his forehead. Laughs.

“Hasn’t anyone told you?”

“Told me what?”

“About Amat.”

Peter realizes far too late that you can’t say something like that to a mother. She immediately assumes that her son has either been in a terrible accident or has been arrested. There’s nothing neutral when you say “Have you heard about your child?” to a parent.

Peter has to take her gently by the shoulders and lead her through the hallway, out into the stands. It takes her thirty seconds to realize what she’s looking at. Then she claps her hands to her face and weeps. A boy training with the junior team, a head shorter than all the others. Her boy.

Her back has never been straighter. She could run a thousand miles.

13

The juniors are taking it easy; they’ve been told to play at seventy-five percent, no one wants any injuries before the game. Amat doesn’t have that luxury. He throws himself into every situation, presses his skates down as hard as if he were trying to cut through to the concrete. He gets nothing for it. The juniors hack and trip him, force him into the boards, bring their sticks down on his wrists, and seek out every little weakness in every piece of equipment in order to hurt him. He gets cross-checked from behind, falls on all fours, sees Lyt’s skates swerve, and doesn’t have time to shut his eyes before the shower of ice hits his cheeks. He doesn’t hear a word from David. After three-quarters of an hour Amat is so sweaty and exhausted and furious that it takes an epic exertion of will not to shriek, “Why am I here? Why did you bring me here if you’re not going to let me play?” He hears them laughing behind his back. He knows that saying anything would only make them laugh even louder.

“I said as much. He’s too weak,” Lars snorts as Amat picks himself up off the ice for the thousandth time.

David looks at the time.

“Let’s do some one-on-one. Amat against Bobo,” he declares.

“Are you kidding? Amat’s done two training sessions in a row, he’s on his last legs!”

“Line them up,” David replies bluntly.

Lars shrugs and blows his whistle. David stays by the boards. He knows his views on hockey aren’t entirely uncontroversial; he knows he has to keep on winning for the club to continue to let him play his way. But it’s also the only thing he cares about. And there are no winners without losers, no stars are born without others in the collective being sacrificed.

*

David’s one-on-one training is simple: a line of cones is laid out on the ice, from one end all the way to the other, forming a sort of corridor between them and the boards. One defenseman and one forward meet. If the puck leaves the corridor the defenseman wins, so the exercise forces the forward to find a way to get past in a very confined space.

Lars is setting the line up seven or eight yards from the boards, but David tells him to make it even narrower. Lars looks surprised but does as he says, but then David gestures to him to make it even narrower. A couple of the juniors squirm uncomfortably but say nothing. In the end it’s so narrow that it’s only a couple of yards wide, so narrow that Amat doesn’t stand a chance of using his speed against Bobo; there’s nowhere for him to escape, he has to meet him, body to body. Amat, some ninety pounds lighter than Bobo, can see this too. His thighs are screaming with lactic acid when he sets off with the puck. The exercise naturally presupposes a certain sporting distance between attacker and defender, but Bobo gives him none. He comes straight at him and hits him with all his weight. Amat lands on the ice like a sack of flour. Loud laughter from the bench. David gives a slight gesture to indicate that they should do it again.

“Stand up like a man!” Lars shouts.