"Your voice is hoarse," says Sven with a smile.

"Please do," she whispers.

Britt-Marie sits alone on a bench on the pavement outside the accident and emergency wing. She has a bouquet of tulips in her arms, can feel the wind in her hair, and is thinking about Paris. It's strange, the power a place can have over you, even if you've never been there. If she closes her eyes she can nonetheless feel its cobblestones under her feet. Maybe more clearly now than ever. As if when she jumped into the air when Ben scored, she came back down to earth as a different person. The sort of person who jumps.

She can hear the voice is smiling. She also smiles, even before she has opened her eyes.

He laughs out loud. She laughs inside. He sits down and holds out a ceramic vase for her.

"Mind if I sit with you?" asks the voice.

She nods.

"It's the flu."

"Well, yeah, I made it for you. I'm doing a course. You know, I thought you could put your tulips in it."

She grips it and holds it tightly in her arms. The surface is slightly rough against her skin, like a soft toy you wouldn't let your parents wash.

As if life was so simple.

"It's been heavenly to feel enthusiastic again," she whispers.

"It's a wonderful sport," says Sven.

"It was quite fantastic today. I have to admit it. Absolutely wonderful," she manages to say.

He smiles and turns to her, looking as if he's about to tell her something, so she stops him by gathering up all her common sense in a single, suffocating breath and saying:

She sees him sitting there growing smaller in the seconds that follow. Her heart twists inside her. Also inside him.

"I have to assume that this, that this means that, well… I have to assume that it'll be Kent who's driving you home then," he manages to say.

"Yes," she whispers.

"If it's not too much trouble I'd be very grateful if you had time to run the children home."

He sits in silence with his hands gripping the edge of the bench. She does the same, because she likes holding it while he's also holding it. She peers at him and wants to say that it's not his fault. That she's just too old to fall in love. She wants to tell him that he can find himself someone better. That he deserves something perfect. But she doesn't say anything, because she's afraid he'll say she is perfect.

She's still clutching the vase as she sits in the car, the town and the road swishing by. Her chest is aching with held-back longings. Kent talks all the way, of course. Initially about the soccer and the children, but before long his focus switches to business and Germans and plans. He wants to go on holiday, he says, just the two of them. They can go to the theater. Go to the sea. Very soon; a few plans just have to fall into place first. When they drive into Borg he makes a joke about how this place is so small that two people could stand on top of the welcome signs at either end, having a conversation without even having to raise their voices.

"If you lie down here you'll find your feet are already in the next village!" he guffaws, and when she doesn't immediately laugh he says it again.

"Right away?"

"Okay, pop in and get your stuff now, and then we'll be off!" he says as the BMW stops outside Bank's house.

"Yes, I have a meeting tomorrow. Let's get going now so we're ahead of the traffic." He drums his fingers against the dashboard impatiently.

"Please, darling, it's not exactly much of a 'job,' is it?"

Her nails dig into the vase.

"Yes, yes, yes, that's not how I mean it, darling. Don't get irate now. Can't you just call them while we're on the road? It's not that important, is it? Come on, I have a meeting tomorrow!" He says this as if he's the one who's being flexible here. She doesn't answer.

"Why not?"

"We actually can't just leave in the middle of the night," protests Britt-Marie, her voice scarcely audible.

Britt-Marie sucks her cheeks in.

"I haven't even handed in notice to my employers yet. I can't just disappear without handing in my notice. The keys have to be returned, you have to understand."

"I'm not some criminal. I'm not traveling around in the car at night. I just won't do it, Kent," she whispers.

"Do you even get a salary for this 'job'?"

"It's a job as far as I'm concerned."

"Oh, good God, darling, you have to pull yourself together now," he groans.

"Well, only criminals drive around in the middle of the night."

Britt-Marie's nails hurt as they bend against the ceramic vase in her lap.

"I was given a crossword the other day, Kent. There was a question about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in it."

Britt-Marie's nails start slowly retracting from the ceramic vase. Her thumb dives over the rim and adjusts the tulips inside.

"No, no, no, okay then," sighs Kent. "Tomorrow morning if it's so important. I can't believe how this village has got under your skin, my darling. You don't even like soccer!"

Kent has started fidgeting with his cell phone, so she raises her voice:

"Air as well, I have to assume," adds Britt-Marie so quietly that she's almost not sure herself whether she says anything.

"It's popular in crosswords, it really is. The Hierarchy of Needs. So I read about it in a newspaper. The first stage is about people's most basic needs. Food and water."

"Mmm," says Kent, tapping away.

The second stage of the Hierarchy of Needs is "safety," the third is "love and belonging," the fourth is "self-esteem." She remembers it quite clearly, because this Maslow fellow is remarkably popular in crosswords. "The highest step of the ladder is self-actualization. That was how all this felt to me, Kent. It was a way of actualizing myself."

She bites her lip and lets go of his hand. Takes a firm grip on the vase and clambers out of the car.

"You do understand this is not your home, don't you, darling?"

He looks up from his telephone. Looks at her, breathing deeply and loudly, like he does just before he falls asleep and starts snoring.

"Three weeks," she forces herself to say.

She bites her lip.

When she doesn't answer he sighs and gets out of the car.

"And then? When those three weeks are over and you don't have a job anymore? Will you be staying on in Borg as an unemployed person, then?"

"Damn it, darling! Don't get annoyed again! I mean how long does this job last? How long will you be employed?"

"Yes, yes! Of course I can understand the whole darned thing, darling. I get it. It's superb, really superb! Self-actualizing. Bloody superb. So now you've got it out of your system. And tomorrow we can go home!"

She is walking away, but she knows he's right.

He breaks into a run and catches up with her. Takes the ceramic pot with the tulips from her, and carries them into the house. She walks slowly behind him.

"You just think it's silly, I suppose."

She closes her eyes. He kisses her on the eyelids. He always used to do that, in the beginning, just after her mother had died. When she was at her loneliest in the world, until one day when he stood there on the landing in their apartment building, and then she was no longer at her loneliest. Because he needed her, and you are not alone when someone needs you. So she loves it when he kisses her eyelids.

"I'm sorry, my darling," he says, with his hands cupped softly around her face, as they stand there in the hall.

Then he scoffs: "But you never know, if all three cars in Borg are out at the same time it could get a bit crowded!" She smiles, as if that's funny. Stands in the hall with the door closed until he drives away.

She wants to believe him. He grins and kisses her cheek and tells her not to worry. And that he will be picking her up tomorrow morning at six o'clock, so they don't end up in the morning rush hour traffic.

"I'm just a bit stressed. Because of the meeting tomorrow. But everything is going to be all right. I promise."

Then she goes up the stairs and makes the bed. Puts her bags in order. Folds all the towels. Goes down the stairs again, out of the door, and walks through Borg. It's dark and silent as if no one lives here, as if the soccer cup never even took place.

There are other voices too. Clinking glasses. Songs about soccer, and other songs sung by Bank, the lyrics of which, certainly as far as Britt-Marie is concerned, do not bear repeating.

But the lights are on in the pizzeria; she can hear Bank and Somebody laughing in there.

The girl from the unemployment office answers on her third attempt.

"I should like to hand in my notice," Britt-Marie whispers.

"Britt-Marie?" she manages to say, sounding drowsy.

She unlocks the recreation center and turns on the kitchen light. Sits on a stool and hopes the rat will turn up. It fails to do so. Then she sits with her cell phone held in her cupped hands, as if it was liquid and might otherwise be spilled. She waits for a long time before she can bring herself to make the call.

"I should like to hand in my notice. I need to… come home," whispers Britt-Marie.

Something about that question impacts Britt-Marie. It may be the case that after Ben's goal she really did come back to earth as a different human being. She doesn't know. But she takes a deep breath and tells the girl everything.

It sounds as if the girl is stumbling about and knocking something over at the other end of the line. A lamp, perhaps.

"Hardly a good time to be drinking coffee," answers Britt-Marie.

"How did the soccer cup go?" the girl asks after a long silence.

"Sorry. I was talking to my daughter. We fell asleep on the sofa."

"I have two," the girl replies, and it sounds as if she walks into a kitchen and turns on a lamp and starts making coffee. "What time is it?"

"What can I do for you, Britt-Marie?"

"I wasn't aware you had a daughter."

"I beg your pardon?"

About communities situated by main roads and rats and people who wear their caps indoors. About boys' first dates and jerseys hung up on pizzeria walls. It all pours out of her. About Faxin and bamboo screens, beer bottles presented in cellophane, and IKEA furniture. Pistols and crossword supplements. Policemen and entrepreneurs. Doing the Idiot in the beam of a truck's headlights. Blue doors and old soccer matches. Purple tulips and whiskey and cigarettes and dead mothers. Flu. Soft-drink cans. 1-0 against the team from the town. A girl who covers a shot with her face. The universe.

"No, no, Mummy is just talking on the telephone, darling, go back to sleep, sweetie…"

The girl at the other end of the line can't quite keep her voice steady as she replies:

Britt-Marie coughs.

"The shit?"

"Have I told you why I work here, Britt-Marie? I don't know if you know this, but you're at the receiving end of an unbelievable amount of crap when you work at the unemployment office. People can be incredibly mean. And when I say 'crap,' Britt-Marie, you should know that I really do mean that quite literally. One time, someone sent me some shit in an envelope. "As if it's my fault that there's a financial crisis, sort of thing?"

"Might one ask how on earth they got it into the envelope?"

"I suppose this must all sound very… silly," she concludes.

"It must have been quite hard to… aim."

"Do you know why I work when there's all this crap, Britt-Marie?"

The girl laughs loudly for several minutes. Britt-Marie is pleased about losing her voice, because it means the girl can't hear that she's also laughing. It may not be the universe, maybe not so, but the emotion levitates her slightly off the stool.

"You're my sunny story, Britt-Marie."

"You too."

Britt-Marie swallows.

Britt-Marie sits on the stool with the palms of her hands cupped around the telephone.

"Anyone home?" Sami calls out from the door.

"Sleep well, Britt-Marie," says the girl softly.

"Why?"

She catches herself wishing so fervently for the rat to turn up that when there's a knock on the door, she thinks it finally has. Then she comes to her senses and realizes that rats can't knock on doors, because they don't have knuckles. At least she thinks they don't.

Britt-Marie flies off her stool.

"My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile." The next words that come are smiling:

"Did something happen? Has there been an accident?"

"It's inappropriate to talk on the telephone in the middle of the night. I should like to contact you again tomorrow."

He stands calmly leaning against the doorpost.

She wants to tell him she has to leave Borg first thing tomorrow and go home, but before she has time to open her mouth he says:

"Yes. It was… nice." She smiles.

"Okay, cool," he laughs.

"No. Why?"

"What sort of friend is that? It's the middle of the night."

"Certainly not," she hisses.

They each take a stool by the kitchen window. Look at the stars through the cleanest windows in Borg.

"But if you'll make do with a Snickers instead you can come in."

"It's the middle of the night, Sami. Surely one doesn't just show up unannounced at people's homes like some vacuum cleaner salesman unless something has happened!"

She doesn't appreciate that at all.

"Chill, Britt-Marie. I was driving past and I saw your lights were on. Wanted to see if you fancied a cigarette. Or a drink." He laughs at her expense.

"You must surely understand what I mean --"

"It was nice today," says Sami.

"Right, I have to go into town. I have to help a friend."

"Do you live here?" asks Sami, with a grin.

She adjusts her skirt.

Britt-Marie stares at him. He nods. Smiles ironically at himself.

She stands up. Gently takes his plate. Hesitates for a long time, then at long last tenderly lays her bandaged hand against his cheek.

"Yes, I do."

"Why would something happen to you?" she asks, the color draining from her face.

"Ah, nothing is going to happen to me, I'm fucking Superman. But you know. If something does happen. Will you make sure they can live with some good people?"

"If something happens to me can you promise you'll look out for Omar and Vega and make sure they're all right? Can you promise me you'll find good people to look after them?"

"Magnus. He's having problems with a few guys there. Owes them money, you know."

"You don't always have to be the one who steps in, Sami."

She washes up. He stands next to her, drying the plates.

"I know what you're thinking. But this is Borg. We forgive each other in Borg. We don't have a choice. If we didn't there wouldn't be any friends left to get pissed off at."

She elaborately dries her hands on the towel, so he won't notice that they are shaking.

The sun hasn't come up yet. She picks a hair off the arm of his jacket. Puts it in a handkerchief and folds it up.

"Neither are you!"

"Why are you asking me? Why don't you ask Sven or Bank or…"

"Because you're not the type to walk out, Britt-Marie."

"What soccer team did your mother support?" she asks quietly.

"Our team."

He grins, as if it's quite obvious, and answers the question as all sons with mothers do:

But she does it anyway.

He drives her to Bank's house. Kisses her hair. She sits on the balcony with her packed bags and watches him driving off towards town. He has made her promise that she won't sit up all night waiting for his car to come back.

He places himself on the threshold and lights a cigarette. She stands to one side behind him, breathing in the smoke.