*

Maya is sitting on the floor of the bathroom at home, rinsing the blood from her hand before finally collapsing altogether. Everything she has held back, everything she has tried to stifle, everything she has tried not to show in order to protect the people she loves, to stop them having to feel as much pain as her. She can’t bear their pain as well. She can’t handle the weight of other people’s sorrow on top of this.

“I didn’t want the bastards to see me bleed,” she whispers to her mother.

“Sometimes I’m afraid that they’re going to have to. To understand that you’re a real person,” her mother sobs, clutching her daughter so very, very tightly in her arms.

39

What is a community?

*

Amat sees it from a long way off. No one in the Hollow has such an expensive car, and no one who has such an expensive car drives to the Hollow voluntarily. The man gets out, self-assured and straight-backed.

“Hi there, Amat. Do you know who I am?”

Amat nods. “You’re Kevin’s dad.”

Kevin’s dad smiles. Looks at Amat. He sees the boy glance at his watch, and presumes that he’s trying to figure out how many months of his mom’s wages one like it would cost. The man remembers what he was like at that age, when he didn’t have a damn thing and hated anyone who did.

“Can we have a little chat, Amat? Just you and me . . . man to man?”

*

Tails is sitting in his office at one end of the supermarket. His chair creaks beneath his bulky frame as he rests his forehead on his palm. The voice on the phone is unhappy but not sympathetic.

“It’s nothing personal, Tails. But you must see that we can’t build a hockey academy in Beartown after all this. We can’t let the media make it look like we . . . you know.”

The man on the phone is a local councilor, Tails an entrepreneur, but they’re also two boys who used to play hockey together down on the lake. Sometimes their conversations are on the record, sometimes off, and today’s is floating somewhere in between the two.

“I have a responsibility to the council, Tails. And to the party. You can understand that, surely?”

Tails understands. He’s always been a man who believed in difficult questions and simple answers. What’s a business? It’s an idea. What’s a town? A collection of individuals. What’s money? Possibilities. Behind his back, on the other side of the wall, someone is banging with a hammer. Tails is expanding his supermarket, because growth means survival. An entrepreneur who isn’t moving isn’t actually standing still, he’s going backward.

“I’ve got to go, Tails, I’ve got a meeting,” the voice on the phone says apologetically.

A phone hangs up. An idea is gone. A hockey academy no longer exists. What does that mean? When Tails was young there were three schools in Beartown, now there’s one. Once the hockey academy has been built in Hed, how long will it be before the council shuts the last school here? And when the best juniors from here train in the rink in Hed all day, it will be only natural for them to play in Hed’s A-team in the evenings. When Beartown’s A-team can’t recruit the best youngsters in the area, the club will collapse. The rink won’t be renovated, there won’t be any new employment opportunities, which would have been a natural step toward other developments: a conference center, a shopping mall, a new industrial estate, better links to the freeway, maybe even an airport.

What’s a hockey club? Maybe Tails is a hopeless romantic—his wife often says he is—but to him a hockey club is what makes everyone in this town remember, once a week, all the things they have in common instead of what divides them. The club is proof that they can work together to become something greater. It teaches them to dream.

He believes in difficult questions and simple answers. What happens to a town that doesn’t grow? It dies.

*

Peter comes into the store. Everyone sees him, but no one does. Staff and customers, young and old, his childhood friends and neighbors, they all slide away as he approaches. Disappear behind shelves and into aisles, pretending to be absorbed in their shopping lists and comparing prices. Only one man looks straight at him.

*

Tails stands in the doorway to his office. Meets Peter’s gaze. What is a GM? What is a team captain? What is a childhood friend? Tails puts one foot hesitantly in front of the other, opens his mouth as if to say something, but Peter merely shakes his head slowly. He will never know that his daughter shook her head at Ana in the school dining room because she didn’t want the hatred directed at her to hit her friend, but he does the same thing here.

And when he goes back inside his office and closes the door, Tails’s shame is the same shame all friends feel when they fall short. People are good at feeling shame in this town. They start training early.

*

Kevin’s dad doesn’t wait for an answer, just rubs his hands and chuckles.

“Still cold in March; I never get used to it. Shall we sit in the car?”

Amat sits in the seat in silence, closes the door as if he’s afraid it might break. The car smells of leather and perfume. Kevin’s dad looks at the blocks of apartments.

“I grew up in a block that looked almost exactly like these. I think maybe mine was one story smaller. Your dad doesn’t live with you, does he?”

He asks the questions directly, without any complication. The same way he conducts all his business.

“He died in the war, just after I was born,” Amat replies, blinking more quickly. The man notices even though he’s not facing him.

“My mom was on her own too. Me and three brothers. The hardest job on the planet, isn’t it? Your mom’s got trouble with her back, hasn’t she?”

Amat tries to hide it, but the man sees his eyebrows twitch. So he goes on sensitively:

“I know a good physiotherapist. I can arrange for her to get seen.”

“That would be very nice of you,” the boy murmurs, without making eye contact. The man holds out his hands briefly.

“I’m actually surprised that no one else has already helped her with that. Someone who works at the club ought to have asked how she was, surely, don’t you think? She’s been working there long enough, hasn’t she?”

“Since we moved here,” Amat admits.

“We’re supposed to look after each other in this town, Amat, don’t you think? In our town and our club we take care of each other,” the man says, handing him a business card.

“Is this the physiotherapist’s number?” Amat asks.

“No. That’s the number of the personnel manager of a business in Hed. Tell your mom to call and arrange an interview. Office work, no cleaning. Light admin, filing, that sort of thing. She knows the language well enough?”

Amat nods a little too quickly, a little more eagerly than he would have liked.

“Yes! Yes . . . of course!”