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teacher grabbed my shoulder and spun me round.
    ‘And what have you got there?’ he asked.
    For a moment I saw the whole world falling apart, everything fell, and it all fell at the same speed, a never-ending fall. The teacher towered over me like a figurehead on a galleon and I had to lean back to look him in the eye. Everything fell, we fell together, and it was more exhilarating than standing on the edge of the ten-metre board in Frogner Lido just before the big leap, even though I had never dived from such a height.
    ‘My father’s magazine,’ I said. ‘Which I’m going to show herr Lue.’
    ‘What sort of magazine?’
    ‘A travel brochure about Africa. My uncle was in Africa this Easter.’
    The senior teacher regarded me for a long time.
    ‘So your uncle has been to Africa, has he?’
    ‘Yes, he has,’ I said.
    He leant over me for longer still, his breath was unbearable, herring, fish oil and tobacco. Then he took a step back and shouted, ‘Well, get outside then, boy!’
    I ran up the steps into the sunshine. At that moment the bell rang and it felt as though it was inside me, somewhere between my ears. The rest of the skunks were standing by the gym, staring at me as if I had just landed on earth and was small, green and slimy.
    ‘How… how?’ Dragon stuttered.
    ‘He likes ’em smooth with cream on,’ I said, strutting past them.
    And all of sudden I felt drained, absolutely shattered. The gym teacher shouted to us from the door and we shuffled down to the sweaty dressing rooms with wooden benches and iron hooks and the floor that was always wet from the showers. I didn’t care if we weren’t outside today. At that moment Gunnar joined me. We hung back behind the others. I slipped him the envelope and he rolled it up in the sweater he had just taken off.
    ‘I’m a bastard,’ Gunnar mumbled.
    We stopped.
    ‘I left you in the lurch,’ he went on. ‘I’m a traitor.’
    ‘I was holdin’ the mag,’ I said.
    ‘I left you with the envelope. I’m a shit.’
    ‘You wouldn’t’ve been able to lie,’ I said.
    Gunnar straightened up, a faint smile spread across his broad face.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t.’
    We laughed. Gunnar adopted a boxer’s posture and punched the air with a fist, then he was serious again, more serious than ever before. He said in a low, almost chiding voice:
    ‘Don’t forget this, Kim,’ he said. ‘You’ll always be able to count on me!’
    And then he shook my hand, it was quite a solemn act, and his strong fingers squeezed mine as if they were a few sprigs of parsley, and I wondered whether I had seen anything like this in
Illustrated Classics
. Was it
Lord Jim
or
The Last of the Mohicans?
Then I remembered it was in an episode of
The Saint
and I began to look forward to the evening already, because it was Friday and there was an hour’s crime programme on TV.
     
    ‘And then it was six n-n-nil,’ Ringo shouted as we turned off by Bislett on our way towards Kåres Tobakk in Theresesgate. He was sitting on the luggage carrier as his bike had no spokes after his brakes had failed down Farmers’ Hill and Ringo had stuck his shoe in the front wheel out of sheer panic. It looked like he had trodden in an egg-slicer afterwards.
    ‘S-s-six nil, boy oh boy,’ Ringo repeated. ‘
Six n-n-nil
!’
    ‘If it’d been six against England or Sweden, but against Thailand…’ I said.
    ‘Nevertheless! Six g-g-goals!’
    Now Theresesgate began to climb even steeper and I didn’t have the wind to speak. John and George were cycling slalom in front of us and cheering and shouting, and behind us at the bottom the tram was coming, so now I had to pedal harder to reach Kåres Tobakk before it caught us up.
    ‘Where is Thailand a-a-actually?’ Ringo asked.
    ‘Left of Japan,’ I panted.
    And we made it before the tram. I was already looking forward to the ride down. Then it would be George’s turn to have Ringo on the back.
    ‘Wonder if they’ll put me on the