*
Fatima is sitting in her kitchen. She hears the doorbell ring, but Amat insists on answering it himself. As if he already knows who it’s going to be. There are two huge boys outside. Fatima can’t hear what they’re saying, but she sees one of them put his index finger on Amat’s chest. When her son closes the door again he refuses to tell his mother what it was about. Just says, “It was to do with the team,” and goes into his room.
*
Bobo is walking a little way behind William Lyt. He doesn’t feel comfortable with what they’re doing, but doesn’t know how to object.
“Amat’s one of us, isn’t he, so why are you so angry?” he asked on the way here.
“He needs to prove that now,” Lyt snapped.
When Amat opens the door, Lyt jabs him in the chest with his finger and commands: “There’s a members’ meeting at the rink. The whole team’s going to stand outside to show our support for Kevin. You too.”
“I’ll try,” Amat mutters.
“You won’t try. You’ll do it! We stick together!” Lyt declares.
Bobo tries to make eye contact with Amat before they leave but doesn’t succeed.
*
The meeting goes the way meetings like that always go. It starts hesitantly, then quickly gets out of hand. The club’s president clears his throat and asks for everyone’s attention, in a feeble attempt to calm the anxiety.
“First, I would like to clarify that only the board can dismiss the general manager. The members can’t start unilaterally getting rid of members of staff, that’s not how the statutes of the club work.”
One man flies up from his chair, forefinger raised:
“But the members can depose the board, and you need to be very clear that we’re going to do that if you go against the wishes of the town!”
“This is a democratic organization; we don’t threaten each other,” the president replies sternly.
“Threaten? Who’s threatening who? Whose children are getting dragged off the team bus by the police?” the man snarls.
A woman stands up with her hands clasped in front of her hips, and looks at the board with sympathy: “We’re not after a witch-hunt, we’re just trying to protect our children. My daughter was at Kevin’s party, and now the police have called her in to get a ‘witness statement.’ For the love of God, these children have known each other all their lives, and suddenly they’re expected to be witnesses against each other? What on earth is going on?”
A man gets to his feet after her.
“We’re not trying to accuse anyone. But we all know that . . . what can happen . . . This young woman wanted to join the gang. Maybe she wanted attention. All I mean is: Why would Kevin do something like this? We know him. He’s not that sort of guy. Not at all.”
Another man remains seated, but speaks up anyway:
“Anyone can see she’s just some sort of attention seeker. There’s a groupie mentality around these guys—that’s perfectly natural. I’m not saying she did it on purpose; it must be something psychological. She’s a teenager, for God’s sake, and we all know what happens to their hormones. But if she gets drunk and goes into a boy’s room, then she’s putting him in one hell of a position, isn’t she? One hell of a position. It’s hardly that bloody easy for the lad to interpret signals like that!”
Maggan Lyt gets to her feet, and blinks sadly at everyone around her:
“I’m a woman myself. So I take the word ‘rape’ very seriously. Very, very seriously! And that’s why I think we need to raise our children to understand that that’s not the sort of thing you lie about. And we all know that she’s lying, this young woman. The evidence is overwhelmingly in the boy’s favor, and there’s not a shred of a reason for him to have done what he’s accused of. We don’t wish to harm the young woman, we don’t wish her family ill, but what sort of signal does it send if we don’t put our foot down here? That all girls can cry ‘rape!’ the minute their affections aren’t reciprocated? I’m a woman myself, and that’s why I take this very seriously. Because everyone in here knows that this young woman’s father is trying to play politics with it. He clearly couldn’t bear the fact that there might be bigger stars on this team that he hims . . .”
*
Peter is standing in the doorway. It takes a few moments for the first person to notice him, then in a flash everyone else turns around. A sea of eyes he has known his whole life. Childhood friends, schoolmates, teenage crushes, colleagues, neighbors, parents of children his children play with. At the back, along one wall, their very presence exuding menace, stand two dozen young men in black jackets. They’re not saying anything, but not one of them takes his eyes off Peter. Peter feels their hatred, but he stands there, defiantly straight-backed, as he looks at Maggan Lyt.
“Please, don’t let me interrupt,” he says.
The room is silent enough for everyone to hear when his heart breaks.
*
The journalist and photographer will talk to the editor-in-chief when they get back to the newsroom; the journalist will expect the editor-in-chief to send them straight back to the meeting. But instead he will mumble something along the lines of “I don’t know if we can really call it ‘threatening’ . . . People are just nervous . . . we have to understand that . . . Maybe we shouldn’t . . . you know . . .” The photographer will clear his throat and suggest: “Look for problems where there aren’t any?” The editor-in-chief will nod and say, “Exactly!”
The journalist won’t say anything then; she’s too young, too concerned about her job, but she will remember the fear in their eyes. And for a long time afterward, she will find it hard not to think of what Kevin Erdahl said to her when she interviewed him after the semifinal. What all sportsmen learn to say when a teammate has done something wrong. The feigned surprise, the stiff body language, the abrupt response. “What? No. I didn’t see that incident.”
*
Fatima doesn’t knock on her son’s door on this occasion, as she always does. When she walks in, Amat is sitting on his bed with a business card in his hands. She perches next to him and declares firmly: “A boy is allowed to have secrets from his mother. But not if he’s this bad at hiding them.”
“It’s nothing. You don’t need . . . Don’t worry, Mom,” he replies.
“Your father would have . . . ,” she begins, but he interrupts her. He never does that.
“Don’t tell me what Dad would have done. He isn’t here!”
She keeps her hands in her lap. He’s breathing hard. He tries to hand her the business card. She doesn’t take it.
“It’s a job,” he manages to say, somewhere between a boy’s hopefulness and a young man’s anger.
“I’ve got a job.”
“A better job,” he says.
His mother raises her eyebrows in surprise.
“Oh? Is it a job where they have an indoor rink so I can see my son practice every day?”