by Anne Holt
By the time she gave up, ten deaths had been announced on Utøya.
She had phoned Isak, the man she had been married to a lifetime ago and who, last Sunday, had taken Kristiane and Ragnhild with him to Sainte-Maxime for three weeks’ holiday. Of course he had not taken a phone with him, either. Johanne had thought of phoning her sister, but the idea evaporated as quickly as it had arisen. They had not seen each other for six months, and this was hardly the time to patch up a sibling relationship that, to be honest, had hirpled along since early childhood.
Without really considering it deeply, Johanne had finally dialled her mother’s number, who had answered the call after three rings, declaring calmly that she would come as quickly as she could.
Her mother had really changed after she had been widowed one January night exactly six months earlier. As usual, Johanne’s father had taken one drink too many before falling asleep beside his wife of forty-six years, in his winceyette pyjamas and bedsocks, but never woke up.
Johanne had constantly worried that her mother would be left on her own. The thought of having a somewhat confused father to look after seemed less frightening than having her bustling, neurotic mother at her door more often than before. But something had happened. Even when she arrived with the message about her father’s death on the morning of the day that Ragnhild turned seven, it was as if her mother was a different person. So self-possessed and sensible, Adam had said that same evening. More like resigned and devastated by grief, Johanne had responded. She had died a little, she thought, as if the symbiosis between her parents had been quite literal and the seventy-three-year-old woman was now merely half-alive.
It did not pass.
Johanne’s sadness over her father’s death had quickly been submerged by astonishment at the person her mother had become. After the funeral, Johanne had dutifully offered to let her stay on with them. For a while, she had said, just until the house at home no longer seemed so empty. Her mother had refused vehemently, packed her suitcase and insisted on driving home in her own car.
Something in her mother had been extinguished, and Johanne secretly felt guilty because she liked her better like this. As winter slipped away and spring and then summer arrived, her mother slid into a solitary existence that Johanne could hardly have anticipated. She phoned less frequently, and never turned up in Hauges vei without being explicitly invited. Her mother had always been brilliant with the children, patient and loving, and it was as though she now treated them all like children. Rather indulgently, with a little smile at everything that she would once have resisted with endless, futile arguments. She had even stopped complaining about Jack’s moulting.
Her mother gently shook a thermos flask. The scant rustling encouraged her to head for the kitchen to make more coffee.
‘Where on earth is Adam?’ she asked.
‘God only knows,’ Johanne answered distractedly, pushing his note underneath a newspaper. ‘But as things stand, I can’t really hold it against him. Now at least they’ve caught that damned terrorist, and maybe he— Shh!’
Her mother filled the coffee machine with fresh water and ground coffee and tiptoed back.
The newly appointed Police Commissioner could only just have managed to obtain a uniform for himself. As far as Johanne was aware, he had been in the post barely a week or so before the start of the summer holidays. His voice seemed deeper than Johanne remembered from the nineties, when he had been a politician.
The news was even more depressing.
‘Eighty,’ her mother whispered, covering her face with her hands.
‘Eighty!’ Johanne repeated with a short, sharp cry.
She could not recall when she had last shed tears in the presence of anyone else.
Not even at her father’s funeral had she given way to the hard lump of sadness at the lost opportunities for reconciliation with a father for whom she had felt nothing but a trace of contempt for far too long. Now the floodgates opened. She leaned half-reluctantly, half-searchingly towards her mother, who embraced her, rocking Johanne tenderly from side to side as she whispered little meaningless words of comfort.
‘I’m crying because...’ Johanne sobbed, but could not go on.
‘I know,’ her mother said softly. ‘Just cry.’
But her mother did not know. She had no idea that just at that very moment Johanne – stunned as she was by the events of that night – had lost control of herself over something quite different from the grotesque crimes in the government quarter and on the island of Utøya. The death toll from the double catastrophe was still too unreal. It was too late at night, too early in the morning, with too many individual fates to take in.
Instead Johanne was weeping over one in particular.
She was crying for a boy whose parents had not succeeded in keeping him alive for more than a mere eight years. Johanne shed tears for Sander, the big, cheerful, intense boy who had so recently been given a fire engine that he would never have a chance to destroy.
II
‘Johanne, you need to wake up.’
The voice sounded distant and muffled. Johanne struggled to surface from a slumber so deep that for the first few seconds she had no idea where she was. The room was dark and chilly, and it was only when she caught the scent of her own bedclothes that she remembered.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, yawning, and sat up.
‘Half past five,’ her mother answered from the doorway. ‘If you sleep any longer now, you’ll turn night into day.’
‘Half past five? Half past five? In the afternoon?’
She yanked off the quilt. When she realized she was naked, she wrapped it quickly round herself again, but her mother had already left. A nasty headache pounded behind her eyes as the dreadful events of the previous night crept back into her brain.
‘Half past five,’ Johanne repeated to herself. ‘Good Lord.’
She had slept for nine hours. The whole day. If her mother hadn’t woken her, she would have slept for at least another three, she realized, from her body’s sluggishness and reluctance as she slumped back on the bed. She had felt really worn out lately. Tired and listless. Maybe she was coming down with something.
Adam. He must be home.
The children. They must have called.
They really must have phoned by now.
‘Adam!’ she shouted, as she tried for the second time to get to her feet.
She wondered fleetingly whether she ought to take a shower, but then it dawned on her that she had indulged in a prolonged soak in the bath before she had gone to bed. Instead she grabbed some clean underwear from a half-open drawer, pulled on a pair of jeans lying discarded on the floor and picked up a reasonably clean sweater from the top of the laundry basket behind the door. It struck her that she really ought to make a fresh start on a fitness regime. She had put on weight in the past couple of weeks, she thought. Her jeans were too tight and her bra was stretched to the limit.
‘Adam?’
‘He’s not here,’ her mother called from the kitchen. ‘But he phoned. He couldn’t get hold of you and had the good sense to phone the landline. He’s fine.’
Of course he was fine, Johanne thought irritably. She wasn’t worried about Adam. She wanted him to be worried about her, after all the messages she had left on his answerphone.
A strong smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted from the living room, and Johanne rumpled her hair with both hands, before padding barefoot to take the cup her mother held out.
‘Thanks. My God, what a sleep I’ve had.’
She automatically braced herself for the inevitable reproof. Her mother could not bear even the mildest form of swearing.
‘It probably did you good,’ her mother said instead. ‘Milk? I’ve heated some up.’
Johanne curled her hands round the blisteringly hot cup and crossed to the window.
‘No thanks. I think I need it black just now. Any news?’
She nodded in the direction of the TV
set, turned to the NRK channel, with the volume turned down.
‘Loads,’ her mother replied curtly. ‘Far too much. You can get the summary on the Dagsrevyen programme at seven o’clock.’
‘Have you managed any sleep, then?’
‘A little.’
‘But, Mum, you must...’
‘At my age you don’t need much sleep. Just you wait! I went for a walk with Jack. Quite a long walk, in fact. His legs are even stiffer than mine, but we managed OK. Anyway, I had some errands to run.’
‘Have you been out? I didn’t hear anything, Mum, I must have—’
‘Here,’ her mother said, handing her a mobile phone.
‘Whose is this?’
‘It’s yours. The old one was completely kaput. Apparently it’s not legal for me to buy you a new one.’
Her mother waved the new Android mobile phone invitingly at her.
‘Take it, then! The nice young man at the retail centre said you really need to sign for it yourself, and suchlike, but this dreadful tragedy seems to have done something to people. It went fine. I had your old mobile phone with me, so he transferred the DIM card and got it all ready for you.’
‘SIM card,’ Johanne said. ‘Thanks. Thank you very much, Mum.’
She was overcome by an intense wave of nausea just as she made to take hold of the new smartphone. She swayed with dizziness and her mother only just managed to snatch the mobile away as the almost-full cup of coffee fell to the floor. Johanne used her hand to cover her mouth and dashed out to the bathroom.
‘I’ll bring ice cubes and a cloth,’ she heard her mother say.
‘No,’ Johanne groaned as a sense of recognition immediately caused her to retch violently. ‘No!’
She missed. The vomit ran over the toilet seat, down the outside of the toilet bowl, a thin, sour fluid that floated in minute, trickling streams over the floor tiles, and she puked again. Nothing was left in her stomach. Supporting herself with one hand on the wall, she stood up gingerly, struggling not to faint.
‘It just can’t be,’ she whispered, placing one hand gingerly on her right breast.
Johanne was forty-three years old and never felt any younger than that. On the contrary, she was often amazed at Adam, well over fifty, and his playful, pragmatic approach when life became somewhat too arduous. He had always been so much younger than her. More flexible. Johanne needed things to be like that, wanted them like that and, as the children grew up, it became increasingly easy to smile at their crazy antics, even though she never really entirely took part. For her, the children represented worry and concern and a love so all-consuming that it sometimes threatened to suffocate both them and her.
This couldn’t be right.
‘It’s understandable to have a reaction,’ her mother said sympathetically as she popped an ice cube between her lips. ‘After such a dreadful day. Suck on the ice before you brush your teeth. It feels nice, very refreshing. Are you finished? Let me clean up here, if you just—’
‘No, Mum, I’ll do it myself.’
Her mother of old would have swept her away and insisted on her right to scrub the bathroom. Her new mother, this woman with whom Johanne was still not entirely familiar, took a step back, stroked her hair gently and said quietly, ‘I’ve washed worse things for you and your sister both. And for the grandchildren, too. But of course I won’t be pushy. The offer’s still there, though, if you do change your mind.’
And then that smile – that curious, undemanding smile – before she closed the door carefully and ambled back to the living room, still clutching a tumbler filled with clinking ice cubes in her hand.
‘Mum,’ Johanne whispered silently. ‘Please come back.’
*
When the brand-new phone rang at half past eight that night, none of them recognized the ringtone. Only Jack lifted his head from its usual position under the coffee table and pricked up his ears inquisitively. It took four rings for Johanne to realize that she was the one somebody was trying to reach. The man in the phone shop had not transferred her contact list to the new Android phone, and she could not identify the number.
‘Hello,’ she said hesitantly.
‘You have to come,’ a female voice sobbed.
‘Hello,’ Johanne repeated. ‘Who’s this I’m speaking to?’
‘It’s me!’ screeched the woman at the other end. ‘Ellen! You have to come, Johanne. They’ve taken Jon! They’ve been here and taken Jon!’
Johanne swapped the phone to her other hand.
‘You need to calm down,’ she said. ‘I can’t understand a thing you say, if you don’t stop screaming.’
A sob was followed by a coughing fit that subsided into more muffled crying.
‘They’ve arrested Jon,’ Ellen stammered. ‘A policeman came and arrested him a few hours ago. He’s most likely in jail, Johanne! Jon, who’s never—’
‘He’s most certainly not in jail. Why would—’
‘They think he’s killed Sander!’
‘Of course they don’t think he’s—’
‘Yes, they do! That policeman from yesterday – that skinny, horrible policeman from yesterday – came and just...’
The rest disappeared in a flood of tears.
‘Listen to me,’ Johanne said, raising her hand in a reassuring gesture, as if Ellen could actually see her. ‘Now you really must calm down. I’m on my way. Do you hear? It’ll take only ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour, and I’ll be with you. Is that OK?’
Still only the sound of weeping on the other end of the line.
‘Is that OK, Ellen?’ Her tone was harsher now.
‘Yes. Fine. Thanks.’
The call clicked off.
‘What on earth was that?’ her mother asked, her eyes still glued to the TV screen, where the same absurd photos of a mass murderer were being shown over and over again.
‘Ellen. She was quite hysterical.’
‘Not so strange, that. Losing your son in such circumstances, and in the midst of all this.’ Her mother used her hand to point at the TV. ‘It’s enough to make us all lose our minds.’
‘She claimed that Jon’s been arrested.’
Finally her mother’s gaze was wrenched away from the TV screen and she turned to face Johanne.
‘Arrested?’ she said with a dry little laugh. ‘That can’t be! In the first place, the police have more than enough to keep them occupied and don’t have time to waste on an obviously accidental death. You said yourself that this Sander was a fairly uncontrollable boy, didn’t you? A sort of ADBH boy, you said.’
‘ADHD,’ Johanne corrected her.
‘Besides, the post-mortem can’t possibly have taken place yet. Not under normal circumstances, and certainly not with all this other stuff going on.’
Once again she waved her hand towards the TV screen.
‘I suppose so,’ Johanne muttered. ‘What do you know about post-mortems?’
‘I watch TV as well, my dear girl. Detective series and that sort of thing – there’s hardly anything else on the box at that time of night when I can’t sleep. Isn’t that so?’
A fleeting smile passed across her face, almost apologetic, as if she had come out with an outrageous admission.
Johanne studied her face without answering. Her mother had grown distinctly older in a short space of time. Although still always well groomed, she no longer invested much effort in looking like the immaculate housewife she had been her entire adult life. Her make-up was lighter and a touch more carelessly applied. Her hair, which for as long as Johanne could remember had been shampooed and set by Mrs Gundersen in Blåsbortveien every Friday, and thereafter sat like a neat helmet on her head for the remainder of the week, seemed to have collapsed and was no longer able to conceal her delicate pink scalp. All her life she had expended her energies on her appearance, her husband and her children, in that order, until the arrival of her grandchildren, when her life had gained new meaning.
But it crossed Joh
anne’s mind that her mother was too old to be a grandmother again.
I’m too old to go through it all once more; she tried hard to suppress the thought.
Perhaps she was mistaken about it all. Perhaps other physical changes had arrived prematurely. Tenderness, nausea and anxiety might also be due to something else entirely. Something that might pass.
‘Can I borrow your car?’ she asked. ‘I think I should call round at Ellen’s and see what this is all about. Adam’s taken the Volvo, and that ancient Golf of ours dies on me at every second street corner.’
‘Of course,’ her mother replied, surprised. ‘Do you want me to stay here?’
‘Yes,’ Johanne said, nodding, without giving the matter any further consideration. She hesitated momentarily before adding, ‘At least till tomorrow. Until I know more about Adam. It was lovely to talk to the children tonight, but I won’t feel completely at ease until I’ve heard more from Adam. Does that suit you?’
‘Yes. I collected some toiletries and a change of clothes when I was out this morning, just to be on the safe side. But only if you really want me to.’
Her mother was again staring fixedly at the television screen.
‘My keys are hanging on the hook inside the front door,’ she continued, her voice trembling a little. ‘I thought that would be best. I’ve started to get a bit mixed up. With keys and...that sort of thing. Everything in its place is the best policy, that’s what I’ve come to appreciate.’