“Are you a journalist?” Ramona asks.

She isn’t sure if the stranger simply chooses to ignore her aggressive tone or has some sort of condition that prevents it registering. So she adds, “We’ve had a few journalists here before you with ‘questions,’ and they always go home with them unanswered. But they usually end up getting better home insurance.”

The direct threat seems to fly straight over the stranger’s untidy hair; who calmly spins around on the barstool and looks at the decor, the walls covered with photographs and pennants and jerseys.

“I don’t suppose you serve lunch here?”

The men by the door don’t know if this is a veiled insult or a polite question. But Ramona suddenly starts to laugh. She makes a slight gesture, and the men disappear through the door.

“You’re no journalist,” she declares to the stranger with her head slightly tilted.

Then her tone shifts quickly to one of displeasure again. “So what the hell are you doing in Beartown?”

The stranger’s hands settle neatly on the bar. “I thought I might start by eating lunch.”

* * *

Kira calls Peter again but gets no answer. Seriously? She’s had a feeling that something like this would happen, that the council would find a way to turn against Peter. He’s a romantic, but Kira’s a lawyer, and she figured out a while back that the easiest way for the council to bury the scandal would be to bury the club.

The whole of the Andersson family, Peter and Maya and Leo and she herself, agreed at the start of the summer that they were going to stay in Beartown. Stay and fight. But she is no longer feeling so sure. How long can you stay in a place that keeps trying to reject you like a hostile virus? And if Peter doesn’t even have a club here anymore, what have they got left?

Her colleague is back, sitting quietly on the other side of the desk, but of course Kira can remember all the things she’s said about Peter. “He’s an addict, Kira. You might think addicts always drink or take drugs or gamble on the horses, but your husband hasn’t got a problem with alcohol or gambling. He’s got a problem with competitiveness. He can’t stop trying to win. He can’t live without that rush.”

How many times has Kira lain awake wondering if that’s true? She calls again, again, again. Eventually Peter answers. Angry, even if that isn’t audible in his voice. Only to her. The tiniest little change in the way he says her name. She whispers, “I’ve been trying to call, darling, I . . . heard what happened . . .”

He doesn’t reply. So she asks, “Where are you?”

And then it comes: “In the office, Kira. I’m in a meeting. Let’s talk later.”

She can hear from the noises in the background that he’s in the car. He always used to do that when he lost games as a player: get into the car and drive for hours. He never used violence against anyone else, only himself. So he would drive out into the darkness without considering that there was someone sitting at home waiting for him, someone who was terrified that this would be the evening when the phone rang and it wasn’t his voice at the other end. That a police officer’s voice would ask, “Are you Peter Andersson’s wife?,” and she would hear the voice take a deep, sympathetic breath when she whispered “Yes.”

“I don’t know what to say, darling. I’m so very sorry,” Kira says now.

“There’s nothing to say,” he replies bluntly.

She hears the background noise, wonders how fast he’s driving. “We need to talk about it . . .”

“There’s nothing to say. They won. They wanted to kill the club, and they found a way to win.”

She takes a cautious breath, the way she always does, as if she’s done something wrong. “I . . . maybe . . . I know it feels like the end of the world right now, but—”

“Don’t start, Kira.”

“What do you mean, ‘Don’t start’?”

“You know what I mean!”

“I’m just saying that this could finally be a chance for us to talk about doing something . . . else.”

How many times has she asked him that? “When does hockey stop?” How many times has he said “Next year”? Next year he’ll cut back, next year he’ll work less, next year it will be her turn to really focus on her career. She’s been waiting twenty years for next year. But something always happens that makes him indispensible, a crisis that makes him essential and her selfish for demanding something so unreasonable as normal office hours, as his actually coming home.

He flares up now. It probably isn’t intentional. “What am I supposed to do, Kira? Become a house husband or what?”

So she gets defensive. That probably isn’t intentional either. “Stop taking your frustration out on me! I’m just saying that perhaps there’s . . .”

“There’s what, Kira? This club is my whole life!”

Peter can hear nothing but the sound of her breathing. She bites her cheek to stop herself screaming. He tries to calm down and apologize but is suffocated by everything else he’s feeling, and the only thing that comes out is “You know what I mean . . .”

How many years has she given it? They moved to Canada for his hockey career, they moved to Beartown for his hockey career, how many times has she thought that he of all people ought to understand her? All hockey players are driven by the need to find out how good they can become, but the same thing applies to lawyers. After they moved to Beartown she drank too much wine one evening and blurted out the truth: “Living here basically means accepting never reaching your full potential.” Peter thought she was talking about him, so he felt hurt. He felt hurt.

“You know what I mean!” he repeats now, and yes, she knows exactly.

And that’s the problem. Hockey is his whole life, so she hangs up.

* * *

Her colleague only just has time to duck before the phone hits the wall.

* * *

The stranger lays a creased sheet of paper on the bar, a list of names. “Do you know these people?”

The old bar owner looks at the list without touching it. “Today’s lunch is meat, potatoes, and sauce. When you’ve finished, you’re welcome to leave in any direction of your own choosing.”

The stranger’s nose wrinkles. “Do you have a vegetarian option?”

Ramona swears and disappears into the kitchen. A microwave oven pings; she comes back and carelessly puts a plate down on the counter. Meat, potatoes, and sauce.

“I’m vegan,” the stranger says, as if it were perfectly natural and not something a normal person should ever have to apologize for.

“You’re what?” Ramona grunts.

“Vegan.”

“In that case we’ve got potatoes and sauce,” Ramona says. She picks up a knife and starts pulling the pieces of meat off and putting them down directly on the counter, like an irritated mother.

The stranger watches this process, then asks, “Is there cream in the sauce?”

Ramona finishes her beer, swears again, snatches up the plate, and vanishes into the kitchen again. She returns with a different plate, one that contains nothing but potatoes.

The stranger gives an unperturbed nod and starts to eat. Ramona looks on irritably for a while before putting a glass of beer down next to the plate. “On the house. You need to get some sort of nourishment inside you.”

“I don’t drink alcohol,” the stranger says.

“Nor do I, I’ve given up!” Ramona says, pouring herself another beer and hissing defensively, “This? Not even five percent alcohol! It’s practically milk!”

The stranger appears to ponder asking Ramona what sort of cows she gets her milk from but decides not to. Ramona pours two shots of whisky and downs one of them. The stranger doesn’t touch the other glass.

“It’s not for the alcohol. It’s good for the digestion,” Ramona declares.

When the stranger still doesn’t touch it, Ramona downs that one, too. Twice as good for the digestion. The stranger glances at the pennants and jerseys on the walls. “Have you always been this fond of hockey in this town?”

Ramona snorts. “We’re not ‘fond’ of hockey here. People in the big cities with their bloody popcorn and VIP boxes, they’re ‘fond’ of hockey. Then the next day they’re fond of something else. This isn’t a big city.”

The stranger doesn’t react. That frustrates Ramona, because she’s usually better at reading people. The stranger finishes eating and stands up, puts some money on the counter, tucks the list of names away in a pocket, and is halfway out of the door when Ramona bellows, “Why are there only men on that list?”

The stranger turns around. “Sorry?”

“If you’ve come to Beartown to ask about hockey, why have you only got men on that list of yours?”

“I haven’t. You were on the list as well.”

The door opens and closes. The stranger pushes past the men in black jackets outside. Ramona stays where she is, confused. It’s not a feeling she’s used to and certainly not one she likes.

8