And apart from that? When has she been happy? A few moments. The jangling of keys in the door. The beating of Kent's heart against the palms of her hands while he lay sleeping. Children's laughter. The feel of the wind on her balcony. Fragrant tulips. True love.

If a human being closes her eyes hard enough and for long enough, she can remember pretty well everything that has made her happy. The fragrance of her mother's skin at the age of five and how they fled giggling into a porch to get out of a sudden downpour. The cold tip of her father's nose against her cheek. The consolation of the rough paw of a soft toy that she has refused to let them wash. The sound of waves stealing in over rocks during their last seaside holiday. Applause in a theater. Her sister's hair, afterwards, carelessly waving in the breeze as they're walking down the street.

The first kiss.

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?

A few moments. A human being, any human being at all, has so perishingly few chances to stay right there, to let go of time and fall into the moment. And to love someone without measure. Explode with passion.

All passion is childish. It's banal and naive. It's nothing we learn; it's instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe.

You have to love soccer for that.

A few times when we are children, maybe, for those of us who are allowed to be. But after that, how many breaths are we allowed to take beyond the confines of ourselves? How many pure emotions make us cheer out loud, without a sense of shame? How many chances do we get to be blessed by amnesia?

That is the reason why passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands that we risk. Our dignity. The puzzlement of others and their condescending, shaking heads.

Britt-Marie yells out loud when Ben scores that goal. The soles of her feet are catapulted off the floor of the sports hall. Most people are not blessed with that sort of thing in the month of January. The universe.

It's late at night, the cup was over several hours ago, and Britt-Marie is at the hospital. She's rinsing the blood out of a white soccer jersey in the sink while Vega sits on the toilet next to her, her voice still euphorically effervescent. As if she can't sit still. As if she could have run vertically.

Vega blinks. It hurts when she does that, because half her face is dark purple and swollen from her lacerated eyebrow down across her bloodshot eye, her nose with coagulated blood in her nostrils, and her split lip at the bottom so big that it looks as if she's tried to eat a wasp.

Britt-Marie's heart is still beating so wildly that she still can't understand how anyone could have the energy to live like this -- that is, if it's true what the children are saying, that it's possible to have a soccer team that plays a match every week. Who would be willing to do this to themselves on a weekly basis?

"I absolutely can't understand how you could get it into your head to behave in this sort of way," Britt-Marie manages to whisper, because her voice no longer carries, having been yelled to shreds.

"They would have scored otherwise!" explains Vega for the thousandth time.

"You threw yourself right in front of the ball," hisses Britt-Marie, with a reproachful gesture from the sink and the bloodstains on the jersey.

"They would have scored." Vega shrugs.

"I covered the shot," she asserts.

"With your face, yes. For goodness' sake, one doesn't cover shots with one's face," but it's unclear if she's mainly angry because Vega got blood on her face or blood on her jersey.

"What pain do you mean?"

Britt-Marie goes silent, ashamed of herself. Turns on the hot water. Closes her eyes. Vega leans her head back and peruses the ceiling of the bathroom.

"Any pain."

"Ha. No. I… ha. I don't know. I actually don't know."

Vega looks thoughtful. Then hesitant. "Have you never loved anything like that?"

"I dream about soccer when I'm sleeping," she says, as if this is quite reasonable, and then she asks, with sincere curiosity, as if she cannot understand what else you could dream about:

"I don't feel pain anymore when I'm playing soccer," says Vega, her eyes fixed on the number on the back of the jersey soaking in the sink.

"I can't for the life of me understand why you love soccer so much that you're prepared to risk your life in that way," hisses Britt-Marie as she furiously rubs baking soda on the jersey.

Britt-Marie adjusts the tap so the water is not too hot.

It just slips out of Britt-Marie; she whispers instinctively:

"Why not?"

Vega nods understandingly.

Her heart is still thumping so hard that she can count the beats. She looks at Vega, tries to smooth away a few hairs from her forehead and gently probes the swelling at the edge of her eye, as if it is hurting Britt-Marie more than Vega. Then she whispers:

"It's one of those things that just… never happened. Come here now and wash your face --"

"In that case soccer for me is like Paris for you. Have you been there a lot?"

"Why not?"

"You have to understand that when I was small my family and I went to the seaside. My sister always found the highest rocks to jump off into the water, and when she dived and came up to the surface, I was always still there at the top of the rock, and she would call out to me, 'Jump, Britt! Just jump!' You have to understand that when one is just standing there looking, then just for a second one is ready to jump. If one does it, one dares to do it. But if one waits, it'll never happen."

"Sometimes I dream about Paris."

"Never."

"What do you dream about?"

Because they were covering shots. Who would want to live like that?

"But your sister was?"

Vega stands up and lets Britt-Marie dab her cuts.

"She was like you. Fearless."

Then she folds a paper tissue and whispers:

"So that's why you don't go to Paris now? Because you're the type that doesn't jump?" asks the girl.

"I'm not the sort who jumps."

Vega meets her eyes in the mirror, then laughs so the blood runs from her lip across her teeth. Which makes her laugh even more, the lunatic.

"But not even she would have got it into her head to throw herself face-first in front of a soccer ball like an utter madwoman!"

"I'm too old for Paris."

To which Britt-Marie has no decent answer. Even though it sounds like an absolutely excellent crossword clue. She glimpses herself in the mirror. It's all quite ludicrous, of course. She's a grown woman, she is, and here she stands in a hospital for the second time in just a few days. A child sits here on a toilet seat, her face covered in blood, while, in another room at the end of the corridor, another child lies with a broken leg.

"Did you jump?"

"How old is Paris?"

"If you're not the type that jumps, Britt-Marie, how did you bloody well end up in Borg, then?"

Britt-Marie presses the paper tissue against her lip and hisses something at her about not using inappropriate language. Vega mumbles something angrily through the tissue, so Britt-Marie presses it down even harder. Then she pulls the girl outside into the waiting room before she says anything else.

Which is obviously not a very well-thought-through idea, because that's where Fredrik is. He's pacing back and forth outside the toilet door. Toad, Dino, Ben, and Omar are sleeping on the benches in a corner. Fredrik immediately points at Britt-Marie in a hostile manner.

His voice fades as he closes his eyes and tries to calm himself down. Vega pushes in front of Britt-Marie and slaps at his finger.

"If Max has broken his leg and misses elite training camp, I'll make sure you never get anywhere near h…"

Fredrik clenches his fists and backs away from her, as if, in his despair, he's afraid of what might otherwise happen.

"Shut up, will you! The leg will heal! Max was covering a shot!"

"Do you know what it means to go to elite training camp when you play ice hockey? Do you understand what we have sacrificed to give him this opportunity?"

Fredrik points at Britt-Marie again. Sinks down on a bench as if someone just dropped him.

"I banned him from playing soccer before the elite training camp. I told him that if he injures himself now it could damage his whole career. I told hi --"

"And maybe you could do with some furniture!"

"What bloody career is that? He's at bloody secondary school!" Vega cuts in.

"Are you spastic or something? It's the elite camp! Of course he wants to!" bellows Fredrik.

"Did you ask Max if he wants to, or not?"

"Maybe you could do with someone shouting at you!"

"No one needs to shout at him for playing soccer!" Vega bellows back.

They stand with their foreheads locked together, breathing heavily, and both utterly exhausted. Both have tears in their eyes. Neither of them will ever forget the cup matches Borg played today. No one in Borg will.

Admittedly they lost their second game 5-0. The match had to be stopped for several minutes halfway through because Toad saved a penalty and everyone had to wait until he had stopped running around the pitch like an aircraft. The crowd sounded as if Borg had won the World Cup, which, after repeated explanations, Britt-Marie understood was another soccer competition of particular importance if you were that way inclined.

In the third and last game the noise in the sports hall was so loud that all Britt-Marie could hear was a sort of sustained roar, and her heart thumped so hard that she lost her sense of touch, while her arms waved around her body as if they were no longer hers. Their opponents were in the lead by 2-0, but with another few minutes to go, Vega thumped in a goal for Borg with her whole body. Immediately afterwards, Max dribbled his way through the entire opposing team and scored, watched every step of the way by his begrudging father. When his head popped out of the pile of arms and legs of his teammates, Fredrik turned around in disappointment and walked out of the door. Max stood motionless by the sideline, staring at him as the referee blew the whistle to restart the game. By the time the roaring spectators had woken the boy up, their opponents had hit the post once and the crossbar once, and the whole team except for Vega was lying scattered on the floor. Then one of the opposing players gathered himself to take a shot at the open goal, and that was when Vega threw herself in front of the ball and covered the shot. With her face. There was blood on the ball when it bounced back to the player.

The match finished 2-2. It was the first time in a very, very long time that Borg had not lost a soccer match. Vega sat next to Max on their way to the hospital, singing extremely unsuitable songs all the way.

"Max wants to see you two. Just you two."

He could have killed the match by tapping the ball in with the side of his foot, but despite this, the player stretched his foot for a hard shot. Max ran straight into the pile of bodies and threw himself forward with his leg stretched out. He made contact with the ball but the opponent hit his leg. Max yelled so loudly that Britt-Marie felt as if she was the one with the broken leg.

"Just these two."

Ben's mother is standing in the doorway. She looks at Vega, then at Britt-Marie, then she nods as you do at the end of a long shift.

"I thought you were having the evening off," says Vega.

"I was. But when Borg plays soccer the hospital has to call in extra staff," she says severely, even though she's quite clearly trying not to laugh.

Fredrik swears loudly, but Ben's mother is implacable.

"Nice face! Totally an improvement on how you looked before!"

She throws a blanket over Ben on one of the benches, and kisses him on the cheek. Then she does the same with Dino, Toad, and Omar, all still sleeping on the other benches.

"Do bears shit in the woods?" Vega answers.

Vega snorts and nods at his leg.

He sniggers. So does she.

Britt-Marie feels Fredrik's hateful stare at her back as she and Vega follow her down the corridor, so she slows and walks behind Vega, to stop his stares hitting the girl. Max lies in a bed with his leg hoisted up towards the ceiling. He grins when he sees Vega's swollen face as she comes walking in.

"Really, Vega! Is that the sort of language you use when you're in a hospital? Well, is it?"

"Is my dad pissed off?" asks Max.

"You think the doctors can screw on your leg straight this time, so you can learn to shoot properly, or what?"

Vega laughs. Max too. Britt-Marie inhales, deeply self-controlled, turns, and leaves them and their language to it.

Fredrik is still standing in the waiting room where they left him. Britt-Marie stops, at a loss. Resists the impulse to pick one of Vega's hairs from his arm, where it landed while they were locking heads and yelling at each other.

He doesn't answer. Just glares down at the floor. So she summons what voice she has left in her throat and asks:

"Max wanted me to tell you that he'll most likely be able to start playing ice hockey within six months. His leg will be completely back to normal. His career shouldn't be in any danger at all."

"Don't ask me about what I love, then."

"Do you have any children of your own, Britt-Marie?"

"Ha," whispers Britt-Marie.

He raises his head and drills his eyes into her.

She swallows heavily and shakes her head. He looks down at the floor again.

They sit on their chairs without saying anything else until Ben's mother reemerges. Britt-Marie stands up, but Max's dad stays seated as if he can't summon any more energy. Ben's mother puts her hand consolingly on his shoulder and says:

Max's father doesn't move. Presses his chin hard against his throat. Ben's mother nods at Britt-Marie. Britt-Marie sucks in her cheeks. Ben's mother is heading for the door when Max's father finally lifts his hands to his eyes in two quick movements, tears dripping between his fingers, down into his beard. He doesn't have a towel. The tears stain the floor.

"Have you ever loved anything as much as these children do, Fredrik?"

"Soccer, then? When can he start playing soccer again?"

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks himself are about one thing: how should you live your life?