When the ball rolled away after yet another uncoordinated pirouette, Camilla buried her face in her hands.
Jane got up. She was only too aware of how out of place she would look out there on the exercise mats—shapely, adult, wearing a coat—as she stepped into the flow of raucous music. The coach had already reached Camilla, taken hold of her upper arm with a two-fingered pincer grip, as if touching an insect, and pulled her up. Camilla turned her face away. Unheeding, the other girls carried on with their moves. The mothers on the bench glanced briefly at the scene, then located their own daughters in the crowd and smiled.
As Jane started out toward the middle of the floor, the coach came closer to Camilla, picked up the ball, and squeezed it under her arm. Jane heard her whisper something at the same time as she moved her right hand from the girl’s arm to her waist and pinched a small fold of skin and leotard between thumb and index finger while shaking her head. Jane was pretty sure she had seen all she needed. Camilla twisted herself free and ran past Jane.
“Camilla, wait!”
Jane had a good idea of what the coach had said to Camilla, something about being overweight, which was absurd not only because the girl was so thin, but was quite out of order in any case. As Jane got closer, the coach kept nodding uncontrollably: tiny, twitchy head movements that made her gray hair, cut level with her pearl earrings, swing in time. Jane only stopped to tear the ball from her grip, using such force that the older woman was almost pulled off balance.
Shakily, with everyone staring at her, Jane went back to the bench, took Camilla’s bag, and hurried away and down the stairs.
Camilla was in a bathroom on the first floor, bending over a sink with the hot water tap running. The room was dark apart from an illuminated Emergency Exit sign, which bathed her face in a dull, greenish glow. When Camilla saw Jane, she pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and dried her face. Jane put her arm around the girl. Seen through the condensation on the mirror, they could have been mother and daughter.
“She’s always like that,” Camilla said. Somehow, it was meant as an excuse.
As she stroked Camilla’s back, Jane felt the warmth of the girl’s body through the material of her leotard.
“I have to go back up,” Camilla said.
“No, you don’t. Forget about it.”
Jane’s hand slid upward to a bony shoulder. She felt as if she were standing at the top of a dizzyingly tall staircase, holding on to the ball at the end of the handrail. She closed her eyes for a few seconds.
“You mustn’t listen to that woman. You’re very good.”
Camilla groaned as she threw the balled-up paper towel into the wire basket. She was ashamed of her poor performance and full of contempt for herself, just as the trainer had intended. The girl could not accept a compliment. Jane took a step back.
“You are, you know.” She breathed in, and the air seemed to have to force its way past various obstacles.
“Oh, yeah?” Camilla said and rolled her eyes.
A damp strand of hair dangled in front of her face. Jane pushed it back behind Camilla’s ear and kept her hand there for just long enough to work out a more pedagogical way of approach.
“What is the goal you are all working toward?”
“To become champions of Europe.”
Her pronunciation of English was adorable and her minor syntactical errors only emphasized how much of a child there still is inside a fourteen-year-old.
“What is your chance of that?”
“If I work hard for two more years and the Bulgarian girls don’t…”
Camilla avoided Jane’s eyes in the mirror.
“I see. The idea is, you’ll starve yourself for a couple more years and be bullied five times a week so that, maybe, you’ll be a European champion of a uniquely weird sport?”
“I’m not starving myself.”
“So you say. But her pinching you, what was that for?” She almost ended the sentence with “little miss,” a rhetorical habit from the days when she often discussed matters with a little miss.
“I don’t think she meant to pinch me.”
“Come on, I saw it. I’m sorry to have to say it but this outfit is an anorexia factory. There are little girls of nine up there who ought to be in the hospital.”
Camilla smiled, a little superciliously.
“I really have to go back.”
Jane shook her head. She had already gotten the car keys out of her coat pocket and rattled them to show she was serious.
On the way home, Jane filled the silence with a discourse on what mattered in life and what one should not put up with, as a person and as a woman. To leave that place had been a grown-up, rational decision. Jane thought there had been no other choice and would explain the situation to Eva. She would not escort the distraught girl back up that staircase; it was simply not an option. Jane was convinced that Eva had been pushing her daughter but could probably be forgiven for not having seen the light earlier, even though she had surely been aware of how the club operated. Camilla must have been training since she was about five years old, together with other girls whose parents also sanctioned with their silence the whole anti-cultural setup. They had been sliding slowly into acceptance of an insane situation, as an outsider could see at a glance. Time for the blushing admission one has to make at least once in a lifetime: Yes, I see… now you put it like that, well…
Eva met them at the door. Camilla hurried away upstairs and her mother followed her.
“It became a bit tense,” Jane said.
Eva stopped halfway up the stairs. She had a skewed view of Jane through the sheet glass panels. Small muscles were visibly twitching at her jaw.
“Yes, thanks, I know already. I’ve been informed.”
“Informed?”
“The head coach called.”
“Doesn’t she have just the most annoying voice?” Jane said.
But Eva was already taking the last steps up the stairs.
Jane went into the open-concept kitchen with her coat still on, poured herself a glass of water, and drank in small sips while she supported herself with one hand on the counter. The room seemed unnecessarily brightly lit, like a kitchen exhibit in a trade show. She thought about what to say next and, in her head, heard her own voice sound alternately regretful and self-justifying. Eva’s judgmental streak constantly threatened to surface. As if she lived with an incurable disappointment, as if the world owed her something better. Jane asked herself if this might be a characteristic trait of Norwegian women. A travel writer with a talent for gross simplifications might just have put it all down to the climate. Or all that oil money. Perhaps Norwegian women collectively suffered from a bad conscience because they were sober people who had suddenly become rich?
She had started to shake again.
Eventually, Eva came downstairs. There were red spots on her forehead but her eyes were impassive as she went to stand behind the solid dinner table. Just beneath Jane’s embarrassment and fear of losing control, she felt righteously exasperated on Camilla’s behalf. How could it be defensible to make these girls keep going back to the gym? She thought of their fragile, unknowing bodies, their small ears exposed by the tightly pulled-back hairdos. How alone they surely were, these girls, although watched by their seated mothers? Camilla should not return to that place ever again. Jane felt that she had better close her eyes, in case her mouth said things her brain would rather it hadn’t: