It’s only sports.

* * *

The dogs at the kennels start to bark in the distance as the siblings approach, but Adri comes out blearily and quiet them down. Leo and Maya stop, alarmed.

“Is Jeanette here? Our teacher at school . . . she’s supposed to have a martial arts club . . . is it here?” Leo asks.

“?‘Club’ might be a bit optimistic. But she’s in the barn.” Adri chuckles and yawns as she scratches her wire-wool hair.

Leo nods but doesn’t move, hands in pockets but staring with interest at the dogs. “What breed are they?”

Adri frowns, looks from Leo to Maya, tries to figure out what they’re doing here. Perhaps she realizes, because she, too, has sisters. So she asks, “Do you like dogs?”

Leo nods. “Yes. But Mom and Dad won’t let me have one.”

“Do you want to help me feed them?” Adri asks.

“Yes!” Leo exclaims, looking happier than a puppy with two tails.

Adri looks warmly at Maya. “Jeanette’s in the barn, you’ll find her there.”

* * *

So Maya walks into the barn alone. Jeanette is practicing with a sandbag and stops midmovement, trying to not to look surprised. Maya looks as though she’s already regretting her decision to come. Jeanette wipes the sweat from her brow and asks, “So you want to try martial arts?”

Maya rubs her palms together. “I don’t really know what’s involved. My brother kind of dragged me here.”

“Why?” Jeanette wonders.

“Because he’s worried I might hurt someone.”

“Who?”

Maya cracks as she admits, “Me.”

* * *

So where do you start? Jeanette looks at the girl and eventually chooses the easiest option: she sits down on the mat. After an eternity Maya sits down opposite her, a foot away. Jeanette moves closer, the girl flinches, so she stops. She explains gently, “You’ll hear people say that martial arts is violent. But to me it’s about love. Trust. Because if you and I are going to practice together, we have to trust each other. Because we borrow each other’s bodies.”

When Jeanette reaches out her hand and touches her, it’s the first time since Kevin that Maya has been touched by anyone except Ana without flinching. When Jeanette shows her how to wrestle, how to take a grip and how to get out of it, Maya has to learn to be held without panicking. On one occasion she does panic, throws her head back, and hits Jeanette in the face.

“It’s okay,” Jeanette says, not bothered by the blood on her lip and chin.

Maya looks at the clock on the wall. They’ve been wrestling for an hour, free from thought, and she’s sweating so much that if her eyes are streaming she doesn’t even know it herself.

“I’m just . . . I’m so fucking terrified sometimes that it’s never going to be okay,” she pants.

Jeanette doesn’t know how to reply, either as a teacher or as a human being, so she says the only thing she can think to say as a coach: “Are you tired?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go again!”

Maya doesn’t heal inside that barn. She doesn’t build a time machine, she doesn’t change the past, she isn’t blessed with memory loss. But she will come back here every day and learn martial arts, and one day soon she will be standing in the line at the supermarket when a stranger accidentally brushes past her. And she won’t flinch. It’s the greatest of all small events, and no one understands. But she will walk home from the store that day as if she were on her way somewhere. That evening she will come back to train some more. And the next day.

* * *

It’s only sports.

* * *

Ana is sitting high up in a tree, not far from the kennels. She sees Maya and Leo walk home through the forest. She’s been following them, she doesn’t know why, just wants to be close to Maya somehow. Everything feels far too cold without her.

They’re only a few feet apart when Maya passes beneath her on the ground. Ana could have called something, climbed down and begged and pleaded with her best friend to forgive her. But this isn’t that sort of story. So Ana sits where she is, high above, and watches her friend walk off.

* * *

The next day Vidar takes the bus to school. Plenty of people know who he is, so no one dares to sit next to him. Not until a girl a few years younger gets on at a stop on the outskirts of the Heights. She has scruffy hair and sad eyes, and her name is Ana.

The first thing Vidar notices is how beautiful her ankles are, as if they weren’t meant for floors but for running through forests and over rocks. The first thing Ana notices is Vidar’s black hair, so thin that it hangs over the skin of his face like raindrops on a windowpane.

* * *

In many years’ time we might say this was a story about violence. But that won’t be true, at least not entirely.

* * *

It’s also a love story.

35

But Only if You’re the Best

There’s going to be a press conference in Beartown. It’s the worst possible timing for some people, when the whole town feels like it’s on its way toward imploding from a hundred different conflicts, but of course it’s the best possible timing for other people. Richard Theo, for instance.

* * *

The representatives of the factory’s new owners fly in from London; the local paper photographs them cheerfully shaking hands with the Spanish-home-owning politician in front of the factory. Peter Andersson stands dutifully alongside; his voice is unsteady and his eyes are fixed on the tarmac, but he promises to “get to grips with hooliganism.”

The Spanish-home-owning politician is so proud that his shirt is practically bursting. He starts the press conference by mentioning his esteemed and modest colleague, Richard Theo: “He deserves our thanks for his great service to the district. Without Richard’s contacts and hard work over the course of several months, this deal couldn’t have been concluded!” The Spanish-home-owning politician goes on to describe, rather less modestly, his own involvement in the deal. Taxpayers will benefit enormously, he explains, and the most important thing: “Jobs in Beartown have been saved!”

When the female politician at his side suddenly opens her mouth, the Spanish-home-owning politician is so taken aback that he doesn’t have time to react at first. She says, “And not just in Beartown, of course. In collaboration with the factory’s new owners we have reached an agreement in which the workforce in Hed will also be prioritized! That’s one of the conditions: if the council is to support the factory financially, the entire council district needs to benefit!”

The journalists take notes and photographs, film the press conference. The Spanish-home-owning politician stares at the woman, and she meets his gaze. He’s powerless, because what can he say? That he’s not thinking of giving Hed any jobs? He’ll be facing elections soon. He’s shaking with rage, and his smile for the cameras is strained, but when he’s asked about the jobs, he is forced to say, “Any responsible policy obviously has to involve . . . the whole district.” He is standing slightly hunched as he says this, whereas the female politician feels herself grow several inches taller.

* * *

Early one morning in a few months’ time, an envelope will be lying on the step outside her front door, and the documents inside will show how the Spanish-home-owning politician has been involved in undeclared property speculation in Spain. It will, admittedly, turn out that the Spanish-home-owning politician is entirely innocent, but Richard Theo doesn’t need evidence, just doubt. The headlines about “dodgy deals” will be big; the notification of his innocence will be confined to a few modest lines on the back pages of the local paper. The Spanish-home-owning politician’s political career will already be over by then, after his party colleagues agree unanimously that “the party can’t afford any scandals.” He will be replaced by a female colleague who appears to have plenty of enemies in Beartown but even more friends in Hed.

* * *

Benji doesn’t turn up for practices with the team. He doesn’t call, he doesn’t answer when anyone calls him. But late one evening when most of the lights in the rink are out and the locker rooms are empty, he is standing alone on the ice wearing jeans and skates, with a stick in his hand. He’s come here to shoot some pucks, the way he’s done a million times before, and to see if it still feels the same. If it can be the way it used to be. But his gaze has been caught by the image of the bear in the center circle. Someone glides out onto the ice and stops beside him. Elisabeth Zackell.

“Are you going to play in the game against Hed?” she asks with a complete lack of sentiment.

Benji swallows hesitantly, still staring at the bear. “I don’t want to be a . . . problem. For the team. I don’t want them to feel that—”

“That’s not what I asked. Are you playing or not?” Zackell asks.