Amat adjusts his helmet. Tries to breathe normally. Bobo approaches faster this time, Amat’s vision goes black for a moment, and when he opens his eyes again over by the boards he’s not quite sure how he ended up there. He can’t hear the laughter from the bench anymore, just a muffled echo in his ears. He gets to his feet and collects the puck. Bobo slams him in the chest with his stick. It’s like hitting a low-hanging branch at full speed.

“Get up!” Lars roars.

Amat crawls to his knees. There’s blood dripping from his mouth. He realizes he must have bitten his lip or tongue, or both. Bobo is leaning over him, but no longer cruelly. Almost concerned this time. A glimpse of sympathy in his eyes. Or at least humanity.

“What the hell, Amat . . . ? Just lie there. Don’t you get it, this is what David wants? This is why you’re here?”

Amat glances toward the bench. David is standing there with his arms folded, calmly waiting. Even Lars looks concerned now. And only then does Amat realize what Bobo means. The only thing that matters to David is winning, and only teams with self-confidence win big games. So what do you do the day before the biggest game ever? You let them bulldoze something weaker. Amat isn’t here as a player—he’s here as a sacrifice.

“Just stay lying down,” Bobo tells him.

Amat disobeys him.

“Again,” he whispers, his thighs trembling.

When Bobo doesn’t reply, Amat hits the ice with his stick and roars:

“AGAIN!!!”

He shouldn’t have done that. The whole bench hears him. He hasn’t given Bobo a choice. The back’s eyes darken.

“Okay. Whatever you want. Stupid idiot.”

Amat sets off, Bobo waits toward the center, forcing him out toward the boards, and as Amat skates Bobo ignores the puck altogether and goes straight for his body. Amat’s head hits the boards, he collapses onto the ice, and it takes him ten seconds before he can even get to his knees.

“Again?” Bobo growls through gritted teeth.

Amat doesn’t answer. He leaves a small trail of blood behind him as he goes over to the far blue line, collects the puck, and straightens up. He sees Bobo’s body tense as he circles threateningly across the bear in the center circle and into the corridor of cones to put an end to this, once and for all. “Like a man,” Amat thinks to himself. Like a man.

He shouldn’t have the energy to take off the way he does. He ought to refuse to skate straight at Bobo after the beating he’s taken. But at a certain point in a person’s life you either sink or swim, and nothing really matters anymore. What else could they do to him now beyond this? Fuck them. Bobo heads toward him at full speed, but at the very last instant Amat doesn’t stand up like a man, he folds himself double. When he sees Bobo’s skates change angle he slips the puck between them and nimbly spins his body out of and away from the check.

In one stride he’s past Bobo, in two he’s caught up with the puck, in three he’s inside the offensive zone. He hears Bobo crash into the boards behind him, but now he only has eyes for the goalie. He pulls the puck off to the right, left, right, and waits for the goalie to move sideways, waits, waits, waits, and when he finally sees the goalie’s skates tilt a quarter of an inch he shoots midskate into the opposite corner. Against the flow.

*

A lion among bears.

*

Bobo sets off in blind fury, all the way from the other side of the rink. He’s one of the worst skaters on the team, but when he reaches Amat with his stick raised he still has enough speed and weight-advantage to put the boy in the hospital. Bobo doesn’t hear the sound of skates approaching rapidly from off to one side behind him, so the pain in his jaw when the shoulder hits it is jarring.

Amat slumps in exhaustion some distance away, untouched. Bobo lies on his back on the ice, blinking up at the lights as Benji’s face leans over him.

“That’s enough, Bobo,” he says.

Bobo nods stiffly. Benji helps him up and then ruefully rubs his own shoulder.

*

The sound of a puck hitting the net can be the most wonderful sound in the world when you’re fifteen. When you’re thirty-two as well.

“Write him up for tomorrow,” David says as he leaves the bench.

When the juniors head off to the locker room, Amat is still lying on the ice. Lars’s voice reaches him through a milky haze:

“Gather up the pucks and cones. I usually tell the guys that there’s a fuck-embargo the night before a game, but there’s no chance of you getting a fuck so just lay off the wanking, because you’re playing tomorrow.”

It takes the boy an hour to half crawl, half stagger to the locker room. It’s empty. The heating has been switched off. His shoes have been shredded and his clothes are lying soaking wet on the floor of the shower. It’s the best day of his life.

14

It’s Saturday, and everything is going to happen today. All the very best, and all the very worst.

*

The time is quarter to six in the morning when Maya is hunting through the kitchen cupboards in search of painkillers. She goes back to bed feeling feverish and full of snot, and curls up next to Ana. She’s almost asleep when Ana kicks her and mutters sleepily:

“Play for me.”

“Be quiet.”

“Play for me!”

Maya grunts:

“All right, I’ve got a question for you: always hear me play the guitar every time you ask me to, or have me not KILL YOU WITH IT!?”

Ana sulks in silence for a long time. Then she gently touches Maya’s thigh with her permanently ice-cold toes.

“Please?”

So Maya gives up and starts playing. Because Ana loves falling asleep to the sound of the guitar, and because Maya loves her. The last thing Maya thinks before she, too, falls asleep, with her headache and cough, is that it feels like she ought to spend the day in bed.

*

The yard lies in thick darkness as Peter parks the little car outside the garage, beside the last building before the town stops and the forest takes over to the west. He slept for three anxious hours and woke up feeling overwhelmed.

Hog, his childhood friend, is standing in a poorly lit workshop bent over the engine of a Ford so old that it looks like it needs magic rather than a wrench. He’s always been known as Hog, because he played like a wild boar. He’s the same height as Peter but looks twice as wide. His stomach may have softened a little since their hockey years, but his arms and shoulders still look hard enough to have been beaten out of steel. He’s wearing a T-shirt even though the garage door is open, and shakes Peter’s hand, unconcerned about the fact that Peter doesn’t have anything with which to wipe off the sticky mixture of oil and dirt left on his skin. Hog is well aware that the sticky mess will drive his friend mad.

“Thought Kia said you were going to drop it off yesterday,” he says, grinning at the car.

“I was,” Peter admits, doing his best not to think about the mess on his fingers.

Hog lets out a dry laugh, hands him a rag, and scratches his beard, which is so thick and unkempt it’s started to look like a shaggy ski mask.

“Annoyed?”

“Let’s just say she wasn’t exactly over the moon,” Peter confesses.

“Do you want coffee?”

“Have you got any fresh?”

Hog chuckles.

“Fresh coffee. Have you gone all soft now? There’s some instant and a kettle in the corner.”