Leo shakes his head. “I fell. William was trying to help me up. And if you say any different, I’ll say I saw you kick a pupil!”
The teacher should protest; it will be easy to condemn her in hindsight for not doing so. But you learn to keep your mouth shut in this forest, for better and for worse. She knows who Leo’s big sister is, knows all his reasons for being angry. If Jeanette reports this to the school or the police, he will never trust her again. She will never have a chance to get through to him then. So she says instead, “Let’s make a deal. I don’t report this to anyone, and you come up to Adri Ovich’s kennels. You know where that is?”
The boy nods, not cockily, and wipes blood from his nose on his sleeve. “Why?”
“I’m running a martial arts class there.”
“You want to teach me to fight?”
“I want to teach you not to fight.”
“I don’t want to be unkind, but you seem pretty bad at not fighting,” Leo points out.
Jeanette’s face cracks into an embarrassed smile. Leo starts to move away, slowly and painfully, but when she tries to help him, he brushes her hand away. Not aggressively, but definitely not as the start of any negotiations. Leo knows what the teacher is trying to do. She’s trying to rescue him.
* * *
She won’t succeed.
26
Whose Town Will It Be?
You try to be a good parent, in every way, but you never know how. It’s not a difficult job. Just impossible. Peter is standing outside his daughter’s room with a pair of drumsticks in his hand. She used to be his little girl, it was his job to protect her, but now he can’t even look her in the eye because he feels so ashamed.
When she was little, they lay together on a bed that was too narrow on one of those nights when it felt as though they were the last two people on Earth. The little child lay asleep against his neck, and he hardly dared breathe. Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and his kept pace; he was so happy that he was terrified, so complete that he could think only of the fragments if life shattered again. Children make us vulnerable. That’s the problem with dreams: you can get to the top of the mountain and discover that you’re scared of heights.
She’s sixteen now. Her dad stands outside her room, too much of a coward to knock. He always used to call her “Pumpkin” when she was little. She never liked hockey, so when she fell in love with playing the guitar, Peter learned to play the drums, just so he could play with her in the garage. That happened less and less as the years passed, of course, because he was always so busy. Work, the house, life. You start to say “Tomorrow” more often. When his daughter brought him the drumsticks he would ask, “Have you done your homework?”
But now he’s the one standing there with the drumsticks in his hand. He knocks tentatively on Maya’s door. As if he almost hopes she won’t hear.
“Mmm?” she grunts.
“I just thought I’d see if you’ve . . . got your guitar? Do you feel like . . . having a jam in the garage?”
She opens the door. Her sympathy crushes him. “I’m studying, Dad. Tomorrow, maybe?”
He nods. “Sure. Sure, Pumpkin. Tomorrow . . .”
She kisses his cheek and closes the door. He can barely look her in the eye. He’s trying to find a way to be her dad again, but he doesn’t know how. You never know how.
* * *
That evening the Andersson family are as far from each other as it’s possible to get in a small house. Maya is lying on her bed with headphones on at high volume. Kira is sitting in the kitchen dealing with emails. Peter is sitting in the bathroom with the door locked, staring at his phone.
Leo hides the bruises on his body under a thick tracksuit and blames his swollen face on the fact that he got hit by a ball in gym class. Perhaps they believe him. Unless they just want to believe him. Everyone is caught up in his or her own anxiety this evening, so no one hears when Leo opens his window and sneaks out.
* * *
Peter calls Richard Theo. He answers on the third ring.
“Yes?” the politician says.
Peter gulps, even though his mouth is dry, and the only thing he seems to swallow is his pride. “I want to ask something about our . . . agreement,” he says. He’s whispering, sitting in the bathroom because he doesn’t want his family to overhear.
“What agreement?” the politician asks, wiser than anyone who talks about that sort of thing on the phone.
Peter takes a deep breath. “It might be difficult to . . . get hold of a carpenter in Beartown. At this time of year.”
It’s his way of asking the politician not to force him to rip out the standing area in the rink. Not to force him to confront the Pack. Not right now. But the politician replies, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But . . . if we had an agreement, you and I, then I would have expected you to keep your side of it. Without exception. Because that’s what friends do!”
“You’re asking me to do something . . . dangerous. You know a local politician around here has had an ax embedded in her car, and I . . . I’ve got a family.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. But you’re a sportsman, and I didn’t think sportsmen defended violent hooligans,” Richard Theo replies scornfully.
Peter holds the phone to his ear long after the politician has hung up. He can still see the announcement of his death in front of him if he closes his eyes. He’s going to be able to save his club, but what dangers is he exposing his family to? He’ll be able to give this town a hockey team. But whose town will it be?
* * *
They say “Small leaks sink big ships.” But sometimes not fast enough for some men. Richard Theo makes a call to London. Then an email is sent from the factory’s new owner to the general manager of Beartown Ice Hockey. Its content is simple: as the new sponsor, he demands a guarantee that Peter Andersson “really does intend to keep his promise to create a more family-friendly, fully seated arena.” No one mentions anything about the Pack or any “hooligans.” The email never reaches Peter; it’s obviously just a harmless mistake—the sender spelled his surname with one s instead of two.
If anyone were to ask later, everyone will be confused: Peter will say he never received the email, the sponsor will say that it negotiated through a go-between, and the harder it is to get a clear idea of what actually happened, the more convinced people will be that everyone involved is hiding something.
No one will ever need to explain exactly how a copy of the email suddenly ended up in the hands of the local paper. The reporter will refer to a “trusted source.” Once the news is out, it won’t matter where it came from.
In the end no one will be able to prove whose idea it was to get rid of the standing area at the rink.
* * *
The members of the Pack always embrace when they meet and before they part, with their fists clenched against each other’s backs. Some people see this as a sign of violence. But to them it isn’t.
* * *