Fredrik Backman - Britt-Marie Was Here [Britt-Marie var här]

She nods towards the ginger-haired boy, who still can’t be seen. Britt-Marie smiles graciously and says:

“And I don’t suppose there are any girls’ teams for you to play on? No, of course not.”

Vega shakes her head.

“All the girls play for the team in town.”

Britt-Marie nods with absolute, absolute helpfulness.

“I suppose that team wasn’t good enough for you, was it?”

Vega looks annoyed.

“This is my team!” she says.

A player on the TV is rolling about on the pitch. Omar uses the stoppage time to climb up on one of the kitchen stools and start changing the lightbulbs on credit. Britt-Marie circles nervously.

Vega starts looking around as if there’s a person missing.

“Where’s the ball?” she calls out into the room.

“Shit! Outside!” Omar cries, looking out at the rain outside the window.

“You can’t possibly be thinking about bringing that ball in here!” gasps Britt-Marie in terror.

“It can’t just stay out there in the rain!” says Vega, with a similar level of terror in her voice, as if this was a question of a human life.

Before Britt-Marie has time to realize what’s going on, a chain of Stones and Scissors being put in Paper Bags is initiated across the room, until ginger-haired Pirate in some way loses and is on his way up from the sofa towards the door in a fluid movement.

“Mother of God! Not in your newly washed jersey! No!” She catches hold of his collar but he’s already wearing his shoes and has already gone over the threshold. Britt-Marie, in absolute agitation, gets into her own shoes and runs after him.

The boy is standing six feet away, with the muddy soccer ball in his arms.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, staring down at the leather.

Britt-Marie doesn’t know if he is apologizing to her or to the soccer ball. She holds her hands over her hair so the rain doesn’t ruin her coiffure. The boy peers at her, smiling sincerely, and then, embarrassed, looks down at the ground.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“Excuse me?” says Britt-Marie, the rain running down her face.

“Would you help me fix my hair?” he mumbles, avoiding eye contact.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” asks Britt-Marie while she keeps her gaze focused on a patch of mud left by the soccer ball on the boy’s newly washed jersey.

“I have a date tomorrow. I was going to… I was thinking… I wanted to ask if you could help me fix my hair,” he manages to say.

Britt-Marie nods as if this was quite typical.

“I don’t suppose you have any hairdressers in Borg, oh no. I suppose that will also be my responsibility now, is that what you mean? Is it?”

The boy shakes his head at the ball.

“Your hair’s really nice. I was thinking you’re good at doing hair, because your hair is nice. There isn’t a hairdresser in Borg because it closed down.”

The rain tails off somewhat. Britt-Marie is still holding the palms of her hands like a pitched roof over the top of her head, and the rain is running down into her sleeves.

“Is that what it’s known as these days? A ‘date’?” she says, a touch thoughtfully.

“What did you call it before?” asks the boy, peering up from the ball.

“In my days it was known as a ‘meeting,’ ” says Britt-Marie firmly.

Possibly she’s not an expert at this, she’d be willing to admit. She has only ever been on two meetings with boys. One of them she ended up marrying. The rain stops completely while they are standing there, she and the boy with the ginger hair and the muddy soccer ball.

“We say date, or at least I do,” mumbles the boy.

Britt-Marie takes a deep breath and avoids his avoidance of eye contact.

“You really must understand that I can’t give you an answer now, because I have my list in my handbag,” she says in a low voice.

The boy immediately starts nodding with altogether worrying enthusiasm.

“It doesn’t matter! I can make it anytime tomorrow!”

“Ha. I imagine school isn’t of much concern here in Borg.”

“It’s still Christmas holiday.”

And then their silence is so abruptly broken by the children’s howls of euphoria from within that Britt-Marie is startled and makes a grab for the boy’s jersey, and the boy in turn is so surprised that he tosses the ball into her arms. She gets mud on her jacket. Half a second later the men in the pizzeria burst into fits of braying until the neon sign above the door rattles.

“What’s going on?” Britt-Marie wants to know, with panic in her eyes, as she throws the ball on the ground.

“We scored a goal!” howls the Pirate boy ecstatically.

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” asks Britt-Marie.

“Our team!”

“I thought you didn’t have a team!”

“But I mean: our team, the one we’re supporting! On the TV!” the boy tries to explain.

“But how is it your team if you don’t play in it?”

The boy thinks this over for a moment. Then he seems to take a firm grip on the ball.

“We’ve supported this team for longer than most of the players in it. So it’s more our team than theirs.”

“Preposterous,” snorts Britt-Marie.

In the next second the sound of a front door being slammed cuts through the January night. Britt-Marie spins around in pure dismay and starts running towards it. The boy runs after. The door is locked from the inside.

“Like, they’ve locked it so we can’t come in! Because we were out here when we scored!” puffs Pirate, jubilant and out of breath.

“What on earth are you trying to say?” Britt-Marie demands and tugs frantically at the door handle.

“I mean it’s important that we stay out here, because while we were out here we scored! We’re bringing good luck out here!” hollers the boy as if that’s reasonable. Britt-Marie stares at him as if it certainly isn’t. But then they stand in the parking area, despite the rain that’s falling again, and Britt-Marie doesn’t say anything else.

Because it’s the first time in an absolute age that anyone has told Britt-Marie it’s important for her to be somewhere.

Soccer is a curious game in that way. Because it doesn’t ask to be loved.

The children open the door at half-time to let Britt-Marie and Pirate back in. Britt-Marie spends the second half in front of the mirror in the bathroom. Firstly because she doesn’t want to come out and risk having to talk to any of the children, and secondly because their team scores again so they forbid her from coming out until the match is over. So Britt-Marie stays in there and dries her hair and brings them luck and has a life crisis. It’s possible to do all of these things at the same time. Her mirror image belongs to someone else, someone whose face has been touched by many winters. The winters have always been the worst, both for the balcony plants and for Britt-Marie. It’s the silence that Britt-Marie struggles most of all to live with, because while immersed in silence you don’t know if anyone knows you are there, and winter is also the quiet season because the cold insulates people. Makes the world soundless.

It was the silence that paralyzed Britt-Marie when Ingrid died.

Her father started coming home later and later from his work, and at a certain point he started to come home so late that Britt-Marie would already be asleep by the time he walked in. Then she woke up one morning and he was only just coming home. And in the end she woke up one morning and he hadn’t come home at all. Her mother said less and less about it. Stayed in bed for longer and longer in the mornings. Britt-Marie meandered around the flat as children do when they have to live in silent worlds. Once she knocked over a vase just so her mother would yell at her from the bedroom. Her mother didn’t yell. Britt-Marie swept up the glass herself. And never knocked over a vase again. The next day her mother stayed in bed until Britt-Marie had made dinner. The day after that she got up even later. And in the end she didn’t get up at all. Of course several of her mother’s girlfriends sent beautiful flowers and condolences, but they were too busy with their lives to pay their respects to someone who was already dead anyway. Britt-Marie cut little notches in the flower stalks and put them in newly washed vases. She cleaned the flat and polished all the windows and the day after, when she took out the rubbish, she met Kent on the stairs. They stared at each other as children who have turned into adults tend to do. He had been married with two children, but he had recently been divorced and had now come back to the house to visit his mother. He smiled when he saw Britt-Marie. Because in those days he used to see her.