*

Robbie Holts is standing alone in the street, hating himself. He wouldn’t have gone outside voluntarily today unless he’d run out of drink at home again. He looks at the roof of the rink, estimates in his head where they ought to be in the game now. It’s a peculiar sort of angst, the one he lives with, knowing that you had the greatest moment in your life at the age of seventeen. While he was growing up everyone kept telling him he was going to turn professional, and he believed them so intensely that when he didn’t make it, he took it to mean that everyone else had let him down, as if somehow it wasn’t his own fault. He wakes up in the mornings with the feeling that someone has stolen a better life from him, an unbearable phantom pain between what he should have been and what he actually became. Bitterness can be corrosive; it can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.

Robbie walks down the steps to the Bearskin but stops himself in surprise. The lights are off inside. Ramona is downing one last glass of whisky and yanking on her outside clothes.

“Good that you came,” she whispers.

“Why? Are you going somewhere?” he wonders, confused, because he knows as well as everyone else that the crazy old bag hasn’t been farther than a couple of paces from the pub in over a decade.

“I’m going to a hockey match,” she says.

Robbie starts to laugh, because there’s no other option.

“And you want me to mind the bar for you?”

“I want you to come with me.”

He stops laughing then. She has to promise to wipe out his tab for the last four months to get him to take a single step outside the door.

*

Tails is standing up even though he’s paid for a seat. No one in the row behind can be bothered to complain anymore.

“That fucking William Lyt, Christ, there are people in witness protection programs who are easier to find on the ice than that bastard!” he snarls to the other sponsors.

“I beg your pardon?” Maggan Lyt exclaims from two rows below.

“I said WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM, Maggan!” Tails repeats.

And everyone sitting between them wishes they could apply to join it.

*

Bobo is still sitting in complete silence on the bench when the third period begins, and he can count the number of minutes he’s played on one hand. He doesn’t know how you can be part of a team when you’re not part of the game. He’s trying to control himself, but he loves this team, he loves his jersey and his number. So when he sees something he can’t believe everyone else can’t see as well, he grabs hold of William Lyt on the bench and shouts: “Their backs want you to try to cut inside them, can’t you see that? They want it to be so crowded in the center that Kevin doesn’t have any space. Pretend you’re heading in and then dart outside just once, and I promise you . . .”

William clamps his glove over Bobo’s mouth.

“Shut up, Bobo! Who do you think you are? You’re in the third defensive pair, you don’t tell the first line what to do. Go and get me my water bottle!”

The look in his eyes is so cold and patronizing that Bobo can hardly hear the mocking laughter from the other players. The most painful fall for anyone is tumbling down through a hierarchy. Bobo has known Lyt all his life, and the way his friend is looking at him now leaves marks, and gives rise to the sort of corrosive bitterness that never leaves some men, that can wake you in the middle of the night and make you think someone has stolen the life you should have had. Bobo goes and gets the water bottle; Lyt takes it without a word. Bobo is the largest player on the team, but when he sits down he is the smallest player on the bench.

*

Ramona stops outside the rink. Stands in the snow shaking, and whispers: “I’m . . . sorry, Robert, I can’t . . . I can’t . . . No farther than this.”

Robbie is holding her hand. She’s not supposed to be living this way. Holger ought to have been sitting in there, this should have been their moment. He puts his arm around her as only someone else who has been the victim of theft can.

“Let’s go back home, Ramona. It doesn’t matter.”

She shakes her head, fixes her eyes on him.

“The deal is that I wipe your tab if you go to the game, Robert. I want to know what happened immediately afterward. I’ll be standing here waiting.”

Robbie is many things. But brave enough to argue with Ramona isn’t one of them.

*

There’s a distinct moment in a player’s life when they find out exactly how good they are. William Lyt’s comes halfway through the third period. He’s never been quick enough for this level, but now it also becomes clear that he doesn’t have the stamina either. He can’t keep up, he hasn’t got the energy, their opponents can direct him without going anywhere near him. Kevin has two men marking him, four arms across his chest the whole time. Benji is a tornado, flying across the whole of the rink, but Beartown needs more space. Lyt gives all he has. It isn’t enough.

David has built his whole philosophy, this team’s entire unbelievable season, on not trusting to fate. They never just hope for the best. They don’t just dump the puck forward and go for it, they have a plan, a strategy, a purpose with each pattern, each movement. But as Sune, the old bastard, keeps saying, “The puck doesn’t just glide, it bounces as well.” It’s unpredictable.

Lyt is heading for the bench when he gets tripped. He falls to the ice and sees the puck bounce over the blade of one of their opponents and nudges it forward out of reflex. It jumps over another three sticks, Kevin reaches for it but is brought down by a big hit. There’s no way for anyone to get around the falling bodies, but as luck would have it, Benjamin Ovich isn’t a go-around person. He’s a go-through person. When the puck flies into the goal, Benji isn’t far behind it, and the crossbar hits him across the neck. You couldn’t have gotten him to admit that it hurt even if it had been a medieval broadsword.

*

2–2. Maggan Lyt is already down banging on the door to the scorekeeper’s cubicle, to make sure that William is credited with the assist.

*

David nods silently to himself and taps Amat’s helmet. Lars’s pupils widen in pure disbelief when he realizes what’s going on.

“For God’s sake, David, you can’t be serious.”

David is as serious as a stray bullet.

“Lyt is one change away from needing oxygen, and two from needing a priest. We need pace.”

“Lyt just made an assist!”

“He was lucky. We don’t play on luck. AMAT!”

Amat just stares at the coach. David grabs hold of his helmet:

“At the next face-off in our zone I want you to take off. I don’t give a shit if you’ve got the puck or not, I just want them to know how fast you are.”