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"He's taking it down."

"Is he putting out a 'For Sale' sign?" asks Britt-Marie.

Britt-Marie is not sure exactly at what point the sun broke through the eternal gray haze of the January sky, but it seems to be looking ahead into the new season. Borg somehow looks different today. They drive past Toad's house, the one with the greenhouse outside. A pregnant woman is moving about inside. They pass more gardens, with more people in them, which is deeply strange now that Britt-Marie has got used to Borg's only road always being deserted. A few of them are young, a few have children, a few of them wave at the car. A man with a cap is standing there with a sign in his hand.

"Things have changed. They're going to the soccer cup. They no longer want to go, they want to see what happens next. It's been awhile since anyone in Borg wanted to know what happens next."

Sven slows down and waves at the man.

"Why?"

The white car with the blue door travels through Borg, and only when they go past the sign announcing that they are now leaving Borg does Britt-Marie realize that they are being followed by other vehicles. History will remember this as the first time there's ever been a traffic jam in Borg.

Britt-Marie follows on behind. Max opens the door before they have even pressed the doorbell, barges his way out and, looking stressed out, closes the door behind him. He's still wearing the tracksuit top with "Hockey" printed across the chest, but he has a soccer ball under his arm.

Max lives in one of the big houses beyond the boundaries of the village, on its own secluded street and with windows so big that they could only have been put there by someone who thought it more important for people to be able to look in than out. Sven explains to Britt-Marie that the residents here have fought with the local council for years, with mounting hostility, to put them under the jurisdiction of the town rather than remaining a part of Borg. In the next moment he slams on his brakes as a BMW backs out, without looking, from a garage at the far end of the street. Fredrik is wearing sunglasses, spinning the wheel as if it's fighting his efforts to do so. Sven waves, but the BMW roars past; it might as well have driven straight through them.

"Bloody lemon arse," mutters Vega and gets out of the backseat.

"Surely you don't need more than one ball?" Britt-Marie goes on.

"You can't!" he says, looking worried. "Sorry!"

"Are you worried I'll see how bloody over-the-top your house is? You think I care if you're millionaires?"

"Well I need to use your bathroom," moans Vega, moving impatiently towards the door. Max's hand catches her shoulder; she instantly slaps it away.

Vega peers suspiciously at him.

"No need to bring a ball, Vega has already put one in the car," Britt-Marie informs him.

"Need?" As if that's a word that bears any relation to soccer balls.

Max tries to push her away from the door, but she's too quick; she slips under his arm and goes in. He bundles in after her, then they stand there, both rooted to the spot. She with her mouth wide open, he with his eyes closed.

"We had to sell it," mumbles Max after a moment, closing the door without looking at the room.

Max blinks uncomprehendingly.

Max looks at the ball. Looks at Britt-Marie.

"I… what the hell… where's your furniture?"

Vega peers at him.

"No one has any money in Borg," says Max, opening the door and stepping out, heading towards the car.

"But… what the…" Vega starts saying as she climbs in after him, until she's stopped by a hard shove from Omar.

"Don't you have any money?"

"Because then everyone will know he's given up," says Max with a sigh, and climbs into the backseat.

"So why doesn't your dad just sell his bloody BMW, then?" Vega calls out after him.

"I only want to kn --" she protests, but Omar gives her another shove.

"Drop it, sis, what are you? A cop or something? Leave him alone."

"Leave it! He talks like one of them but he plays soccer like one of us. You got it? Leave him alone."

Max doesn't say a word on the way into town. When they stop outside the leisure center, he gets out of the backseat with his soccer ball tucked under his arm, drops it onto the asphalt, and drills a shot into the wall that is just about the hardest Britt-Marie has ever seen a ball being struck. Britt-Marie lets out the dog and Toad from the trunk. Bank follows them inside. Dino, Omar, and Vega come behind. Sven is at the back. Britt-Marie counts them several times and tries to work out who's missing, then hears Ben's voice, sounding rather pathetic, from somewhere around the far corner of the backseat.

"Sorry, Britt-Marie. I didn't mean to."

When she can't immediately locate the voice he manages to say:

"I've never played in a cup before. I got so… nervous. I didn't want to say anything when we were at the petrol station."

"Oh… I… sorry. Don't worry about it! It'll come off with baking soda!" Britt-Marie stutters, and goes to dig out some spare clothes from the trunk.

Britt-Marie still isn't quite sure she can hear what he's saying, so she sticks her head into the car. Sees the dark patch on his trousers and the seat where he's sitting.

"Sorry," he says, squeezing his eyes shut.

She holds the bamboo screen over the window while Ben gets changed inside. Then she covers the seat with baking soda. Brings his trousers into the sports hall and rinses them in a sink in a dressing room.

Because that's the sort of person she's become in Borg, she realizes. Someone who goes to soccer competitions with spare clothes in the trunk.

He stands beside her with an embarrassed pout around his mouth, but his eyes are sparkling, and when she's done he blurts out:

The other children are kicking two soccer balls around the corridor outside, and Britt-Marie has to exert considerable self-control not to rush out and give them a stern talking to about the unsuitability of kicking balls around indoors. She actually feels it's inappropriate even having sports arenas indoors, but she has no intention of being looked at as if she's the one with crazy opinions on the matter, so she keeps silent about it.

"Mum's coming here to watch today. She's taken the day off work!"

The sports hall consists of a tall spectators' stand and a flight of stairs of equal height, leading down to a rectangular surface full of colorful lines running to and fro, which Britt-Marie assumes is where the soccer matches will be played. Indoors.

Bank gathers the children in a circle at the top of the stairs and tells them things that Britt-Marie does not understand, but she comes to the conclusion this is another one of those pep talks they're all so taken with.

The way he says it, it's as if the building they're in is made of chocolate.

"Do you have anything you want to say before the match, Britt-Marie?"

After Bank has finished she waves her stick in the air towards where she's figured out Britt-Marie is standing, and then says:

"A good impression on who? That lot? They hate us, don't you get it?"

Britt-Marie has not prepared for this sort of eventuality, it's not on her list, so she grips her handbag firmly and thinks it over for a moment before saying:

"I think it's important that we try to make a good first impression."

She doesn't know what exactly she's driving at with this; it's just something Britt-Marie finds a good general rule in life. The children watch her, with their eyebrows at varying heights. Vega keeps eating fruit from the bag and nodding sourly at the spectators in the stands.

Britt-Marie has to admit that most of the people in the stands, many of them wearing jerseys and scarfs emblazoned with the name of their own team from their own town, are looking at them as you might look at a stranger on the underground who just sneezed in your face.

Britt-Marie doesn't know what that's supposed to mean, but when Toad hauls out a soft-drink can from his pocket she decides that this is certainly not a way of making a good first impression, so she cautions him not to open it. Toad immediately insists that his blood sugar is a bit on the low side, whereupon Vega gets involved and shoves his shoulder, while hissing:

Halfway down the stairs stands the old codger from the council and the woman from the soccer association, the same ones that paid a visit to the training session in Borg a couple of days ago. The woman looks concerned, the old codger has his arms full of papers, and next to them stands a very serious man wearing a jersey on which it says "Official," and another person with long hair and a tracksuit top with the name of the team from town printed on one side and the word "Coach" on the other. He's pointing at Team Borg and bellowing something about how this is "a serious competition, not a nursery!"

"Are you deaf or what? Don't open that can!" Unfortunately she catches Toad off balance and he falls backwards helplessly. He tumbles halfway down the stairs, shrieking with every step, until his body thumps into the legs of the woman from the soccer association, the old codger from the local council, the official, and the coach person.

He makes deranged quotation marks in the air when he says "coach" and "team." Bank's stick pokes at the coach person by accident the first time, and possibly a little less by accident the following five times. The woman looks concerned. The old codger with the papers moves behind her and, chastened by experience, keeps his hand over his mouth.

By the time Britt-Marie and Bank have reached the section of the stairs where Toad came to a stop, the coach person is yelling with even greater indignation, for reasons already described. The old codger and the woman and the papers are whirling about in a persistent rain of lemonade. The coach person has such an amount of lemonade in his hair, on his face, and over his clothes that the amount of lemonade in the can must in some way have bypassed the natural laws of physics. The coach person points at Bank and Britt-Marie, so angry by this stage that the pointing action is executed by both hands, which, at this kind of distance, makes it difficult to determine whether he's actually pointing at all, or just demonstrating the approximate size of a badger.

"Are you the coach of this so-called team?"

It's not what you'd in any way describe as a top-notch first impression, it really isn't.

Upon which he decides to open the can.

"Don't open that can!" roars Vega.

"We're the coaches," Bank confirms.

"So organize the exemption then!" snorts Bank.

"An old biddy and a blind person, seeeriously? Is this a seeerious competition? Huh?"

"One of the players in your team, this Patrik Ivars…"

"What about me?" Toad bursts out anxiously from the floor.

"Patrik is two years younger than the others. He's too young to play in this competition without exemption being granted," says the woman, coughing down at the floor.

The official shakes his head gravely. The woman, more concerned than ever, peers at Bank.

"Really? Really! Come here you little…" yells Bank, striking furiously at the coach person with her stick, whereupon the coach person tries to grab her stick in order to avoid falling, and at the same time manages to pull her with him down the stairs, whereupon they both lose their footing and drop over the ledge, before a big hand in a single, forcible movement closes like a handcuff around the tracksuited arm and stops their fall.

The coach person grins and looks angry at the same time.

"Yeah, what about Patrik?" asks a third voice.

"Rules are rules!"

Toad's father is standing behind Britt-Marie now. He has combed his hair neatly, and dressed up. There's a red tulip tucked into the lapel of his jacket. Kent stands next to him in a wrinkled shirt. He smiles at Britt-Marie, and she immediately wants to take him by the hand.

"What about him?" growls Bank.

"If you try to push a blind woman down a staircase I'll sue you in the courts until your family is buried in debt for the next ten generations."

The coach person hovers, leaning backwards over the stairs, with eyes wide open as he looks at Kent, who keeps his implacable grip on his arm and leans forward and declares in that clear and straightforward way of his, which he makes use of when explaining to people that he's actually going to do business with Germany:

The coach person stares at him. Bank regains her balance by happening to put her stick in the coach person's stomach two or maybe three times. The concerned woman, trying a different tack, holds out a piece of paper.

"My name is Vega!" snarls Vega from farther up the stairs.

The woman scratches her earlobe self-consciously. Then smiles, as if after a local anaesthetic. And turns to Britt-Marie, who by now seems to be the only reasonable person in the assembled company.

"There has also been a protest from your opponents concerning this 'Viga' in your team. We can see by her social security number that…"

"You're scared!" yells Bank and accidentally pokes her stick into the tracksuit top and a bit into the old codger with papers.

"So you're going to ban Patrik and Vega, purely because this town team is too scared to play against a girl and a kid who's two years younger!!" says Kent.

"You have to have an exemption before girls and younger players can take part."

"We're not bloody sc --" mumbles the coach person.

Britt-Marie and Kent stay there on the stairs, just the two of them. She picks up a hair from the shoulder of his shirt, and adjusts a crease on his arm so softly that it's as if she never even touched him.

The other children run onto the pitch and start taking some warm-up shots at the goal, which admittedly looks as if they're taking general warm-up shots at everything except the goal.

And that is how Vega and Patrik get their exemptions so they can play. Patrik goes down the stairs to the pitch with his dad's arms around his shoulders, looking so happy you'd think he'd sprouted wings.

"How did you know to say that thing about them being scared?" she asks.

Kent laughs again.

She brushes some invisible dust from his chest. Controls herself.

In a commonsense approach, she clasps one hand in the other and says:

"I have an older brother. It always worked for me. You remember when I jumped off the balcony and broke my leg? All the dumbest things I ever did started with Alf telling me he didn't think I had the guts to do them!"

Kent laughs in a way that makes Britt-Marie also start laughing inside.

"It was nice of you. And you were sweet to leave the tulips," whispers Britt-Marie, without asking if she was also one of those dumb things he did.

"Good luck!" says Kent, leaning forward and kissing her on the cheek so warmly she has to grasp the metal banister to avoid falling down the stairs.

"I have to go. They'll be on soon."

"I bought them off that Toad boy's dad. He's growing them in a greenhouse in the garden. What a lunatic, eh? He nagged the heck out of me about how I had to get the red ones instead because they're 'better,' but I told him you like the purple ones."

Britt-Marie breathes in deeply with each step. Bank and the dog are waiting for her on a bench next to the pitch. Somebody as well, with a particularly satisfied expression on her face.

When he goes to sit in the last empty seat in the away section, she realizes that this is the first time Kent is somewhere for her sake. The first time in their lives that he has to present himself as being in her company, rather than the other way around.

In the seat next to him sits Sven. With his eyes fixed on the floor.

"Who will come to shop, Britt? Everyone in Borg -- here!"

"How did you get here?" asks Britt-Marie.

"Drove, you know," Somebody answers casually.

Britt-Marie adjusts invisible creases in her skirt at such a speed that it looks as if she's trying to start a fire. Somebody pats her calmingly.

Somebody shrugs.

"Nervous, huh? No problem, Britt, I said to that official, huh: I will sit on the sideline with Britt. Because I have one of those, what's-it-called? Calming effect on Britt, huh. The official just said 'Forget it,' so I said 'Can't see one of those disability areas here, illegal, huh.' I said: 'Could sue you, you know.' So now: I sit here. Best seat, isn't it?"

"What about the pizzeria and the grocery store and the post office, then? What about the opening hours?"

"It's normal. You often get food poisoning just before important games."

With vocal support from an entire community where just about everything has been closed down. But only just about.

The first thing that happens is that Dino gets tackled -- or elbowed, to be more precise -- by a large boy with a complicated haircut. The next time Dino gets the ball, exactly the same thing happens, only even harder. A few feet away from Britt-Marie the coach person bounces up and down in a soaking wet tracksuit jacket while yelling his encouragement:

Britt-Marie excuses herself, leaves the sideline, walks down a corridor and into a toilet, where she vomits. When she comes back to the bench, Somebody is still talking, her fingers nervously drumming against anything within reach. The dog sniffs in Britt-Marie's direction. Bank offers her a pack of chewing gum.

Britt-Marie chews the gum with her hand covering her mouth, because people might come to the conclusion that she has tattoos (or something similar). Then the spectators burst into applause, the referee walks onto the pitch, and a team from Borg that does not even have its own pitch starts playing.

"Max! Huh! You're such a, what's-it-called?" Somebody says, overwhelmed with joy.

Britt-Marie is convinced she's about to have a heart attack, but when she explains this to Bank, Bank says, "That's how it's meant to be when you're watching soccer." Who on earth would want to watch soccer, then, Britt-Marie thinks to herself. The third time Dino gets the ball the big boy accelerates from the other side of the pitch and runs at full speed with his elbow raised. The next moment he's lying on his back. Max stands over him with his chest out and his arms straightened. He's already walking back towards the bench before the referee has sent him off.

Bank taps her stick against Max's shoes.

"Exaaactly like that! Make them respeeect you!"

Max smiles and says something, but Britt-Marie can't hear what.

"He talks like one of them. But he plays like one of us."

The match resumes, and Britt-Marie finds, to her surprise, that she's standing up. Her mouth is hanging open and she doesn't even know how. On the pitch, three players have collided and the ball has bounced haphazardly towards the touchline, and suddenly it's just lying there right at Ben's feet with a clear shot at the goal. He stares at it. The entire crowd in the sports hall stares at him.

"Shoot!" yells a voice from the stand.

It's Sami. Next to him stands a red-faced woman. It's the first time Britt-Marie has ever seen her wearing anything but a nurse's uniform.

"Shoot," whispers Britt-Marie.

"Shoooooooooooooot!!!" cries Bank, waving her stick to and fro in the air.

So Ben shoots. Britt-Marie hides her face in the palms of her hands; Bank almost overturns Somebody's wheelchair while she yells:

Borg lose the match 14-1. It makes no difference. They play as if it makes all the difference in the universe.

The stands are silent as if no one can quite believe how this has happened. At first, Ben looks as if he's going to burst into tears, then as if he's looking for a hiding place. And he doesn't have time to do much more than that before he finds himself at the bottom of a screaming pile of arms and legs and white shirts. Borg is in the lead by 1-0. Sami charges around in the stand with his arms held out, like an aircraft. Kent and Sven bounce up from their seats so abruptly that they accidentally start hugging each other.

A red-faced woman makes her way out of the chaos and runs down the stairs. A couple of officials try to get in her way when they see she's going to run onto the pitch, but they can't stop her. They couldn't have stopped her even if they were carrying guns. Ben dances with his mum as if no one can take this away from him.

It does make a difference.

"What's happening? Tell me what's happening!"