THE ISLAND
Ben McPherson

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Ben McPherson 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photographs © Mary Wethey/Arcangel Images (front cover), Logan Olausen/Arcangel Images (island on back cover)

Ben McPherson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007569649

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780007569663

Version: 2020-03-13

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Island

Prologue: Midsummer’s Eve

Part One: The Foreigner

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part Two: The Sceptic

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Part Three: The Spectator

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Part Four: The Assassin

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Part Five: The Hunter

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Ben McPherson

About the Publisher

Imagine a girl.

Imagine her sleeping alone on a grassy bank at the side of a glistening fjord.

If you were here beside her you might wonder if the girl is breathing, she’s lying so very still. When at last you see the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest you feel foolish for doubting the everyday miracle of breath.

Her kingfisher dress glints like the sun on the water. Seventeen, you might guess, though in truth the girl is fifteen and wishes she were older. A peaceful face, strong-jawed and determined. But something about her makes you want to protect her as she sleeps. All that life ahead of her: all those people not yet met, all those choices not yet made.

And now she’s here, on this island, sleeping in the dappled light beneath this tree, because the thought of all those people – of all those possible lives – has left her nervous and exhausted. And so she sleeps away her fears, and in her dreams she is limitless.

In the city at the top of the fjord there is a flash. Then a silence. Then a roar like a world ending. Glass drops in sheets from the fronts of buildings, becomes sand under the feet of the people as they flee. Songbirds grow silent, then take to the wing. Even crows.

Seconds pass.

In the suburbs people murmur thunder, though the sky is clear and the air pressure low. Dogs do not bark. Cats cower by fences, looking up.

Again, seconds pass.

On her bank by the water the girl hears nothing. For a moment the air tightens. The surface of the water grows opaque. Boats rise, then fall. Hawsers thrum against masts; hulls strain against ropes.

Bare-legged in her sundress of kingfisher blue, the girl does not stir.

The shockwave from the bomb has passed.

PROLOGUE

She blinked hard, twice.

Some change in the sound of the day had woken her. The pattern of waves against the wooden dock. A boat engine idling.

The engine was thrown into reverse. It whined, then cut.

She sat up, turned to face the water.

A policeman was swinging his foot from boat to shore. A look, she thought, as he glanced down at her. Steely. His uniform was neatly pressed, his belt a little tight. Everything about him was sleek: his torch, his nightstick, both shiny and new.

She rearranged herself on the grass, raised herself up on an elbow.

Light danced on the fjord; the mainland hazy now and far away. In the policeman’s hand the nylon of the rope shone blistering white. Unused, she thought. Strange. The POLITI decal on the boat was fresh, the aluminium of the hull unscuffed.

The policeman knelt, tied off the boat at the bow. A second officer leaned out from behind the wheel and dropped a figure-eight loop around a pillar. He cut the engine, pinched sweat from his eyes.

Beside her the phone vibrated against the warm earth. She turned it over.

Ropes tightened. Two battered holdalls landed on the dock. The second policeman stepped from the boat, knelt by the first holdall, unzipped it and examined something inside. He stood and handed it to the first.

Cracked leather, water-stained and scuffed. Also wrong, she thought lazily.

The two men were nodding at each other. Small eyes, high cheekbones, prominent teeth. Small mouths too. They could almost be brothers.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said the first. He had noticed her staring. He had spoken in English.

He flashed her a smile that was anything but a smile.

She smoothed out her sundress. Why would she be worried?

The same non-smile from the second policeman. ‘Gather your friends.’ They began to head up the rise.

Her phone started to ring. She rejected the call with a text.

Somewhere out of sight an invisible hand was tapping a microphone. Voices reflected back at her from across the fjord, over-amplified, heavily distorted.

On the rise, the officers were facing each other. They were checking each other’s equipment, tapping each other down.

She found herself thinking of her father, though she did not know why. She pushed the thought from her mind.

She looked at the boat, straining at the dock. Further up the coast people were swimming, but here on the island, down by the water, there was no one about. From here you could see only the path that led from the boat dock up towards the camp. She looked up again towards the rise. She could not see the men.

Her phone vibrated. A text from Leela.

You coming?

It had been a mistake to take the ferry on her own. The people on the way over had seemed sophisticated, long and cool in their shades and their sun hats, though many were younger than she was. She had hung back, embarrassed, let them pass up the rise ahead of her, wishing Leela was there with her. It was getting harder and harder to imagine herself amongst the thronging crowds. More and more tempting to turn and head for home.

She could hear the applause now. Stirring music played.

She texted a reply:

Soon.

The boat key was in the ignition. Strange, she thought. Tempting fate. She looked at the outboard motor. Evinrude 225 e-tec. Barely used, its white surface completely unscuffed. She looked about her.

No one was watching as she stepped aboard at the bow on to the aluminium tread-plate deck. The boat barely tipped. She sat cautiously at the wheel. She was breaking some law, she was certain of that. But she was fifteen, and she was alone. If anyone stopped her she would speak English. She would be naturally nervous and hesitant, and that would work in her favour. They would let her off with a warning.

Sorry, officer.

She clicked the key into the first position. Lights on the console. A loud chime. She swung the wheel to the left, felt the gentle tamping as behind her the engine turned in its mount. Everything was expensive. Everything was new. She turned, guiltily – a sudden sense of being watched – looked up towards the rise. No sign of the officers. No sign of anyone.

She slid the key round to position two. The engine thrummed quietly into life.

Where ARE you?

She texted back:

Come down to the dock.

Of course she wasn’t going to, but something about the idea of taking the boat appealed to her. It wasn’t even tied right. And there was no one here to tell her she couldn’t …

She stood up, leaving the boat in idle. Everything was showroom-fresh. No oil spills, no salt stains. But the decal on the starboard side was cracked, as if a hand had slipped. Sloppy, she thought, on a police boat. And the hatches … why were there no padlocks on the hatches?

On the bench seat at the stern was a blue metal box, rusted at the corners, held shut with a combination lock. She looked at the box. It seemed out of place, like the holdalls.

Her phone vibrated.

Police want to talk to us. You need to get up here.

She texted back:

Sigh …

She heard the police boat strain against the jetty, leaned out and looked down. The rubber cladding on the dock was marking the hull. Had they forgotten their fenders? A little random.

The port locker was empty. In the starboard locker there was an anchor, a chain, and a rope. The rope was not tied to the chain, and the chain was not tied to the anchor.

Also random.

What police boat would be so unready? Where was the radio? The life vests? The fenders? She dialled Leela, raised the phone to her ear.

Ringing on the line. Leela’s voice. ‘Finally. Where are you?’

‘You know that feeling where you kind of know you’re asleep? Which probably means you’re only dozing?’

‘You were asleep?’

‘On the grass, by the water. It was nice.’

Leela didn’t sigh, but she could feel the edge in her friend’s voice. ‘You need to be up here.’

She put the phone on speaker, laid it on the deck before the aft locker.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But someone left a brand-new boat down here with the key in the ignition.’

‘Now,’ said Leela. ‘You need to be here.’

‘We actually could take it out. For, I don’t know, twenty minutes or something.’

‘Or did you somehow not hear what happened in town today?’

‘Literally no one would know. Why? What happened in town?’

‘There was this huge explosion. The town hall.’

She could feel her mind as it refocused. ‘Sounds bad.’

‘It’s most probably a bomb,’ said Leela.

‘A bomb,’ she echoed.

She felt bad. She should ring her father, tell him she was OK. But what if her father begged her to come home?

Of course she would never take the boat. She was processing, or something. An explosion in town. Police here to talk to them. She really should ring her father.

So far from home.

She picked up the metal box. It was heavy. She shook it, but whatever was inside it was carefully held in place.

‘So,’ said Leela. ‘So, the police have information they need to give us. And the marshals are taking a roll call. I already told them you were here. Don’t make a liar of me.’

‘Did I ask you to lie?’

Leela sighed theatrically. ‘Give me a break …’

The metal box looked important, but also somehow wrong, like an object kept outside, in the rain.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll be three minutes.’

‘Maybe we could go for a ride later?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, this was pretty much our only chance.’

What was it that made her take the key from the ignition? What made her pick up the metal box and stow it in her backpack? Some instinct that she couldn’t yet name, some growing feeling. She slid the key and her phone into the side pocket. She jumped ashore. When she looked back she saw a grey half-footprint on the deck by the aft locker. She frowned. The earth on the island was dry and brown.

She slung the pack across her shoulder, headed up the hill. She would find the policemen; she would give them the key and the metal box.

She tightened the straps as she walked. The edges of the metal box chafed at her skin through the backpack. She felt sweat gathering where the pack met her dress, felt it pooling in the small of her back. Hard to believe it could be so hot.

At the top of the rise she paused. From here she looked down into a clearing a hundred metres across. There were pinewoods on every side, thick with the heat of the afternoon. Vast faces hung from the trees. Posters. Girls of her own age holding stuff: kayak paddles, stethoscopes, ice axes, phones. All in close-up. All with an eye to the camera, one thumb raised. At the bottom of every poster the letters IFF, white on red, and the thumbs-up logo. Near the middle of the clearing, to the left, was a large red-painted stage. To the left of that were seats banked up to meet the pine trees behind. Red banners cascaded from the lighting rig:

International Future Female: Empowering Everyone, Starting With Girls

To her right she could see the back of the main house. Here too there was a giant banner: two girls, one light-skinned, one dark, right hands crossed at the wrists, thumbs up, left hands across each other’s shoulder. All those eyes, gazing down on you.

Don’t be racist!

Take no drugs!

Recycle, recycle, recycle!

‘Bring condoms and whisky,’ Leela had said, laughing. Had she meant it? Hard to be sure. She had brought both, in case Leela wasn’t joking, though she wasn’t expecting to use either.

At the far end of the clearing were the first of the dormitory cabins. People were trailing from the cabins to the stage; others were already sitting on the banked seats, talking without animation, looking nervously down at the two policemen who stood before them in the middle of the stage.

The policemen were smoking, letting the ash fall from their cigarettes. Behind them at the edge of the clearing was a vast poster of a girl looking down, crushing a cigarette in her left hand, her right thumb up.

She knew she should walk across the clearing to the policemen, hand them the key. But that would draw their attention, and she wasn’t sure she wanted their attention. Something about that look they had given her down at the dock, a sense of something out of place.

There were way too many eyes; there would be too much staring. She would wait until the policemen had finished speaking; she would approach them as people were drifting away. There were a lot of people here. Overwhelming numbers. There were boys dotted around too, in amongst the girls, talking earnestly, nodding a lot, demonstrating they were listening. Boys got extra points for listening to girls.

One of the policemen, she noticed, had his hand on his service weapon. Which was weird, she thought. He hadn’t been wearing a pistol as he stepped from the boat. She was certain of that.

She walked forward past the main house and along the rear of the stage until she was standing directly behind the men. Both wore pistols, she could see now, on holsters by their right hip. The shorter of the two was fidgeting the knuckle of his hand against the grip. At his feet were the two cracked leather holdalls.

Random. Something about this was definitely random. She took out her phone, dialled Leela.

‘Hey,’ said Leela.

‘Leela, who brings a pistol to speak to a bunch of girls? Like really, what’s the threat?’

‘I mean, a bomb went off,’ said Leela. ‘Where are you?’

‘Yes, but here?’ she said. ‘What’s the threat here?’

‘I guess sisterhood is powerful.’

A loud click on the PA system. The taller policeman cleared his throat. ‘Hello. I would like to ask everyone, whatever their role, to gather in the meeting room of the main house. I have important information to share about the bomb in town. I’m sure you have many questions.’

Leela laughed. ‘Seriously, where are you? I don’t see you.’

‘Leela,’ she said, ‘wait.’

‘Wait, why?’

‘We could … not go …’

The policeman was repeating his words in Norwegian. People began to flow from the seating bank around the sides of the stage and towards the main house.

‘How come stealing a boat is not a problem for you, but meeting people is?’

‘I mean, it’s probably nothing, but I’m getting a vibe …’

‘You’re getting a vibe?’

‘It’s all a bit too random. I’m going to the cabin. Come with me.’ The words came out wrong. She sounded as if she was pleading.

‘Seriously? No.’

‘Then tell me what they say. See you later.’

She began walking against the stream of people and across the clearing towards the trees.

‘Number 47,’ said Leela. ‘Past the first bunch of cabins, down the path towards the generator block. I put my towel and my elephant washbag on your bunk. You utter rando.’

She stopped at the first line of cabins. This feeling – it was more than nerves. More than paranoia. She was sure of it. She sat cross-legged on the grass, slid the metal box out of her backpack. Weird that it would be so rusty, so old-looking, when everything else about the policemen was so new. Like it had been stored in a barn, or something.

The combination lock had three digits. She tried the easy combinations: all the 1s, all the 2s … People were still streaming up the hill and into the clearing. The metal of the box felt cool against her lap; the edges dug into her thighs. On 555 the latch flicked up. The inside was lined on both sides with dense grey foam, custom cut. In the lid was a row of flattened grey metal boxes. She turned one on its end, saw the bullet readied at the top, the brass casing and the jacketed tip. Pistol magazine, she guessed. In the bottom of the case the magazines were larger, wider and longer, recently painted green.

Her thoughts stopped her in her tracks. Because the boat, the uniforms, the guns, the holdalls … She snapped the box shut, slid it into her backpack, left the pack standing at the side of the path, turned towards the main building. So much here that wasn’t right … Those were not police uniforms; that was not a police boat: she was sure. She could not believe she had not realized sooner.

She began to walk in the direction of the main house. There were marshals on the path, guiding people towards it. She could see through the bay windows the people thronging the front room.

‘Come on,’ said a boy in a slogan T-shirt. ‘Come on!’

Important not to panic. Don’t arrive out of breath.

‘Please,’ she said, as soberly as she could. ‘Stop people from going in.’

‘But the police—’

‘They are not police,’ she said.

‘They have come to speak about the explosion—’

‘Those men are not policemen,’ she said. ‘Stop people. Tell the other marshals. Everyone must leave. Ring the real police.’

The boy smiled at her blandly.

‘But the police are—’

She stifled the urge to scream at him. She was running now, at the side of the path, overtaking the people who were making their way towards the house. She was at the steps. The front door led directly into the main room. She pushed abruptly into the room, found herself standing beside the men in their too-new uniforms.

The shorter one looked directly at her. ‘Take your place.’ He motioned towards the people crowding the back of the room. ‘Don’t block the door.’

For a moment she felt compelled to obey. It took all her strength to pause, to stand tall, to shout.

‘No!’

The policeman heard her. The crowd did not.

‘No!’ she shouted again, louder now.

‘What did you say?’ said the man, quietly.

She looked towards the faces at the back of the room. ‘These are not the police!’ she shouted.

The room fell silent. All faces, all staring. Where was Leela?

‘You are mistaken,’ said the shorter officer. The tone of his voice was reassuring, friendly almost. For a moment she doubted herself.

‘We are here to provide information,’ said the other officer. ‘You are mistaken.’ But she saw his hand tighten on the grip of his pistol and she knew that she was not mistaken.

Her eyes found Leela in the crowd, near the back, her black hair hanging sleekly by her right shoulder, half-frowning, half-smiling. A moment of stillness.

‘Leela,’ she mouthed. ‘Leela!’

Leela’s half-smile froze. Her eyes began to dart.

‘You need to get out,’ she shouted, as clearly as her breathing would allow. Her voice sounded hoarse, unreal.

‘All of you,’ she shouted. ‘Now!’

She turned. She was at the door. She heard the movement of bodies as behind her people pressed forward.

She felt the force of the bullet as it tore through her right shoulder, heard the shouts behind her, then the screams. She brought her left arm up, folded it across her chest and on to her left shoulder, pushed through the door, ran limping along the path.

A marshal tried to stop her. ‘Are you hurt? What happened?’

‘Run,’ she said. ‘Please, run.’

She could hear gunshots now, in pairs, distant, unreal. But the shouts and the screams were very real indeed.

She turned, saw people piling out through the front door, saw a window thrown wide, saw a distant flash, and another. People began to pour from the window. Beside her the marshal, a girl of her own age, eyes wide, frozen. Still the gunshots came, in pairs.

‘You need to run,’ she said.

The other girl seemed to see her suddenly, to notice the wound in her shoulder.

‘You’re bleeding.’

‘I’m shot. You need to run.’

‘The police are here.’ The marshal put an arm around her shoulder, pointed towards the house.

‘Those are not the police.’

‘Look,’ said the marshal.

The gunshots stopped. As she watched, the taller of the men appeared on the veranda, walked slowly down the steps. His pistol was holstered. He had a rifle slung across his back.

‘Don’t be alarmed!’ he shouted. ‘We are here to prevent further trouble.’

‘You see?’ said the marshal. She took her hand, tried to lead her towards the house.

She slipped her hand from the other girl’s. ‘He is not a policeman.’

‘I’m going to get you some help,’ said the marshal. She began to walk towards the house.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Please.’ It hurt to talk; she wasn’t sure if the girl had heard her.

‘Everybody!’ yelled the false policeman. ‘Everybody, come! You’re safe! We have the situation under control.’

She looked about her. People were arriving from all directions, converging on the house. People who did not know, though they must have heard the shots.

The second man joined the first. They stood, arms folded, waiting.

No, she wanted to scream. No.

When the marshal girl was three metres from the men, they drew their pistols. The girl stopped. Around her the others stopped too. The shorter of the men raised his pistol and shot the marshal girl twice. She stayed upright for a moment, swayed, then collapsed to the grass. The second man aimed carefully. Two more shots. A tall boy fell forwards. His body struck the girl standing next to him. The girl stood frozen. She did not turn and run. The man shot her twice, and she too collapsed to the ground.

Why aren’t they running? she wondered. There must have been two dozen people, standing fanned out around the men in their police uniforms. Not one of them moved. She made to turn, but found that she could not. Two more shots. Another body hit the ground.

You cannot look. You must not look.

The men, she knew, had seen her.

Turn.

They would come for her. She had to move.

Run.

She could not run. She could barely move, but she set off down the path towards the cabins. Still the shots came, always in pairs. At any moment, she thought, two more bullets will come for me.

Think.

The dormitory cabins. A single room, four bunks, a window at each end and door in the middle. There were sixty of them. Would they search every one? Something told her that they would. These men were methodical, efficient. They knew what they were doing.

Once they were inside, you were dead.

Think.

Her backpack, ahead of her, to the side of the path. Her phone; the boat key.

Sharp crack. A bullet tore into a tree to her left.

Don’t turn.

A stray.

Don’t turn.

She had to believe the bullet was a stray. She had to keep going, towards her backpack. She had to get to the water. Then she would figure out how to get to the boat.

She knew she must not turn, but she turned.

In front of the men were bodies, unmoving on the ground. Six figures stood, facing the men, rooted to the spot. As she watched, one seemed to come to life. A girl. She turned, began to sprint towards the nearby trees. The tall man raised his weapon, fired twice. The girl dropped to the ground.

She forced herself to turn away. Five pairs of shots, five more bodies, and then they would come for her.

Two paces and she was at her backpack. She hooked her left hand into the shoulder strap, winced in pain, carried on down the path.

Another pair of shots; then another.

It was obscene to be counting off the shots, counting off the lives of the girls, the boys, who stood, rooted by fear, in front of those men.

Don’t look.

Two more shots.

She was at the trees now. From here the path snaked around the edge of the lake, then led down some steep steps cut into the rock to the sea. Off to the right were the dormitory cabins. She wondered if she might be safer there.

She reached into her pack, slid out her telephone and the key to the boat. Then she thought again. She held the pack around the ammunition box, shook her possessions on to the side of the path.

Pain rooted her to the spot. She forced herself to breathe through it. She found the ziplock bag with her toothbrush and soap in it, tipped them out of the bag. She dropped in her telephone and the boat key, sealed the bag, dropped it into her backpack.

It bothered her that she couldn’t find a wound on her front. She knew – perhaps she had read – that it was best if the bullet passes right through you. When she reached her hand round to the entry wound it was small. The wound itself didn’t hurt a lot, but every time she moved her shoulder nerves shrieked and her jaw clenched shut; it was all that she could do not to sit rocking in pain. Still, not having an exit wound on her chest meant she could draw the straps of her backpack tight.

This had to be survivable. There were two hundred young people on the island. Plus a few adults. Those men couldn’t kill every last one of them. If she could make it down to the water, perhaps she could swim along the shoreline to the dock.

How many people would the boat carry? Eight, she guessed, easy. Maybe ten or twelve. Maybe more.

‘Do not be alarmed.’

The voice was chillingly close. She pushed her clothes under a bush.

‘There has been an incident on the island.’

She held her pack in her arms, threw herself into the trees, not thinking about her shoulder. The underbrush was dense here; she could not get more than a few metres in.

‘You may have heard shots. We have the situation under control. Be assured that you are safe. Please approach my colleague and me for assistance and further information.’

She heard the approach of footsteps. She saw a shadow on the path in front of her, saw it turn this way, then the other. She crouched down, forced herself to slow her breathing.

Hold out, she thought. You have to hold out.

A second shadow followed the first. A single muttered word.

The shadows moved off towards the cabins.

A hand reached for hers in the gloom. It took all her strength to keep from crying out. A boy. A tiny little boy.

In truth, she realized, he couldn’t be much younger than she was. Her sister’s age, maybe. Thirteen, but small. His skin glowed dully. His eyes were wet.

‘De er ikke politi,’ he said. Not the police.

No, she said. Those men weren’t the police.

Were they safe here?

No, she said, she didn’t think they were. He should come with her to the boat. He could swim, couldn’t he?

Yes, he said, he could swim.

Well then, she said. But she could not persuade him to leave the cover of the woods, no matter what she said.

A pair of shots. A pause. Another pair of shots.

He was clinging to her very tightly. He was hurting her. She was injured, she explained. She couldn’t stay here. She needed him to loosen his grip.

‘Sorry,’ he said in English. So sorry. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

You didn’t, she told him, though the pain was more than she had ever known. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, clutched at her thighs with her nails. The boy was looking at her hands. She could hear his breathing, and her own, ragged and hoarse. She knew she was frightening him. But more than that she knew she must not cry out.

When the pain subsided she asked him to take her pack, to unzip it and take out the metal box, and to place the box under a long piece of rotting pine bark on the forest floor. The boy did what she asked, wordlessly. His face was streaked with dirt and tears. In the forest gloom the blood from her wound was black on his white T-shirt.

When she told him it was OK, that he would be OK, she saw how hard he tried to smile and it almost broke her. You’re being very brave, she told him.

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘What’s your name,’ she asked him.

‘Arno.’

‘Then we have to go, Arno,’ she said.

He nodded. She promised him he would not die. But he would not leave, and she knew she could not stay.

She kept to the trees on the left side of the path, by the lake. It was heavy going through the underbrush. She had imagined she would slip past the dormitory cabins in the cover of the trees, but as she drew near, panting – her body twisted in anticipation of the pain that increased with every step – she realized that it would not be simple. The cabins were arranged in four straight rows on the other side of the path. Anyone standing outside could see directly on to the path. Worse, the trees on the lake side had been cut away opposite the cabins to give a view directly on to the water.

Why hadn’t she rung someone? Her father? The police? Too late for that now; she would give herself away.

She came to the edge of the wood by the lake, turned to face the cabins. They were small, square, cheaply built, with miniature terraces and mean little windows.

The pattern of the gunshots had changed. Short, jagged bursts. Had they run out of pistol ammunition? She heard another burst of gunfire, saw, she thought, a muzzle flash, heard the sound of a heavy object collapsing against wood, forced herself not to think of bodies. Though it could only be a body.

In the second row, in the nearest cabin, a face appeared at a window. The window frame was pushed roughly out, breaking a hinge. A boy of her own age pulled his arms through, braced them against the outer wall of the cabin, pushed hard. He forced one shoulder out, then the other, snaked his body through. He hung, upside down, then landed, catlike on the faded grass. He paused, listened, then sprinted up the path towards the clearing. As she watched another face appeared at the window, a girl this time, looking out.

The unmistakable sound of footsteps on the grass, heavy, relentless. The sound of a door swinging open. She saw – she felt – the panic in the girl’s face as she stared towards the door of the cabin. She heard a commanding male voice.

‘Please remain calm.’

She saw – she felt – the girl’s confusion. The girl stood there, her face in profile, framed by the window. How close she was. Three metres, perhaps four.

The girl made to say something.

A sharp burst of gunfire. The girl stood there still, expression draining from her face. Then she fell out of sight. She heard the girl’s body as it collapsed on to the wooden floor.

Christ.

She pushed herself in among the trees, stared at the path. That girl – there and then not there.

Please Lord Christ make this stop.

The face of the taller man appeared in the window, looked out. As he did so, his companion rounded the corner, stood on the path between her and the cabin. She hunkered down, made herself small.

Please Christ. Oh, please. Please Lord.

She had to control her breathing. She knew that she was approaching panic, and that panic would kill her. Weird that she could remember the school drills so well. Macabre. She had to quiet her breathing, her raging pulse. She had to damp down the desire to stand up and scream. Because these men, she knew, would cut her down.

It was dark here in the cover of the trees, and the men were standing in direct sunlight, and perhaps that simple fact would be enough to save her. She began counting as she breathed.

In, two, three, four.

Hold two three four.

Out two three four.

It hurt to breathe deeply, made her wonder where the bullet was lodged, made her hope her lung was OK.

Both men were in front of her, though she had not seen the short man move.

‘Re-up?’

She saw the smile they exchanged: confident, ready, friendly.

‘Yep!’

There was nothing about them that betrayed the horror of what she had witnessed. Their eyes were bright, beady, like dogs on the chase. She could see no aggression in them, no malice. She saw the tall man take what looked like a pill, then wash it down with water from a small metal flask. The short man did the same. She heard the water in his throat as he swallowed, smelled on his breath the chewing tobacco, sickly and sweet.

The taller man took something from a pocket. Three flat metal boxes, which the short man dropped into his own pocket. Pistol magazines, like the ones in the rusted case. Then he bent down, picked up his rifle. She saw him disengage something boxy, which he handed to the short man.

‘BRB, buddy.’ Both men laughed. Be right back.

The tall man fitted a new magazine to his rifle, turned, walked towards the third row of cabins. She leaned forwards, watched the small man till he was out of sight, then crossed the path. She flattened herself against the first cabin in the third row. She heard his footsteps in the cabin, felt the slow, deliberate cruelty. But he did not fire his weapon. She heard and felt him move towards the door, forced herself forwards along the side of the cheap wooden building, made herself watch him leave this cabin and enter the next.

She walked as briskly and as quietly as she could across the gap that divided the third row from the fourth. At any moment, she thought, another bullet will tear into me. A burst of bullets, and they will shatter my lungs and my heart and my liver and all that is me will end, and Christ, please Christ …

The bullets did not come; the man had not seen her.

She calmed herself.

She wondered. She could save some people. Surely she could. If she tried to enter any of the cabins in the third row she would be in direct line of sight of the gunman. But would he see her if she went from cabin to cabin on the fourth row? How far could she get before he rounded the corner and began to move towards the lake? How many could she save?

She heard a burst of gunfire. Her courage deserted her. She had thought – hoped – that the men would run out of ammunition, that losing the rusted box would cost them, but they had bullets to spare. She was wounded and she was frightened. She needed to get to the water, and to the safety of the boat.

There was no hope for the children in the cabins. How many of them would even move? She must get to the water, save herself and anyone else she could. It was too late for the children in these cabins. It was not too late for her.

She continued down the path to the edge of the island, and down the narrow steps cut into the pink-grey rock, like a tunnel towards the sea below. To her right was a narrow ledge a few metres above the water.

A man on the ledge. An adult. He had cut his leg open dragging himself up the rockface.

‘Come up here,’ he said. She thought again of her father. The man smiled down at her, extending his hand, and for a moment she felt she was saved. But this man was not her father, and she was not yet safe.

The man’s hair was wild, his T-shirt torn. She recognized him, she thought. Part of the welcoming committee as they had stepped on to the dock with the other kids. Did something in the office, he had said.

As she frowned up at him she heard an engine approaching, the familiar ruck-ruck-ruck of chopper blades. She felt the rush of air, saw the water begin to swirl and dance in the downdraught, and when she looked up she saw the helicopter, forty feet above.

Christ, she thought. Thank you, Christ.

The man threw himself from the ledge into the water and vanished. She scanned the water. He surfaced, waving wildly.

She looked up again, and saw the camera mounted beneath the fuselage, saw the white-on-red of the TVZ logo. The helicopter hovered, hummingbird still, and she realized that the camera was lining up on her.

They’re filming us.

From the top of the steps a boy and a girl appeared, running as if for their lives. The boy from the woods, she realized, little Arno, with a girl she had not seen before. Another two girls appeared. They pushed past her, stood at the foot of the steps, waving. A burst of gunfire, close by. The plexiglass in the nearside door shattered. The helicopter lifted upward, turned and headed inland.

‘Where did they go?’ said one of the girls. ‘Where the fuck did they go?’

The man in the torn T-shirt began running up the steps shouting after the helicopter. ‘Here! I’m here.’ He reached the top, disappeared, still shouting.

She could see the others looking up the steps after him. One of the girls began to move past her. She put her hand on the girl’s arm.

‘We should—’ said the girl.

‘We can’t.’

‘He is the only adult,’ said Arno very quietly.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But we are not going to do that.’

She swung the backpack off her shoulder, took off her dress.

All faces, all looking at her. The girl at her side reached out towards her, as if seeing for the first time the wound on her shoulder.

‘Did you get shot?’

‘I’m OK,’ she said.

Fear on every face.

She pulled on her pack, tightened the straps. ‘Come on.’

The helicopter was fading away. From nearby they heard the man’s voice, increasingly desperate.

‘Guys! Hey over here! Guys, we’re over here.’

A shot. Then another.

The man stopped shouting.

No one spoke. The three girls looked at her, terror in their faces. The boy too.

‘We’re trapped,’ one of the girls said quietly.

She looked up through the rock towards the top of the steps. The other children followed her gaze. She could see them thinking the same thought. The helicopter had given them away.

Every face turned towards her.

The men would be here in a minute. She had her backpack on the ground, was stepping out of her dress.

I’m the oldest person here, she realized. I’m the adult. Funny. Almost.

‘We’re trapped,’ said the girl again.

‘No.’ She set her teeth against the pain and pulled on her backpack. She pushed past the girls to the bottom of the steps, crossed her arms over her chest, jumped forward, let herself fall, body tensed and stretched like a dart. For a moment she felt only the air around her. Then the shock of the water, the roar of the sea all about her. She felt herself drop, let her body relax, waited for the water to carry her up towards the light. Her right shoulder ached, but the water cooled it and soothed it, and she found she could swim with her left arm.

Not a sound behind her. She turned to find all faces looking at her. The girls, the boy, rooted in place.

‘There’s a boat. It’s at the dock. I have the key.’

One by one they joined her in the water. Only Arno remained. ‘Arno,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’

Two gunshots nearby.

‘Arno, please.’

Arno crossed his arms over his chest and jumped.

She kicked hard. The straps of her pack cut into her wound and she winced. But if she held her body stiffly she could make progress. Two girls on one side of her, swimming strongly; on the other side Arno and the other girl. The only sound was water; water and breath.

Arno was the weakest of the swimmers. He held his head too high, kicked too hard, tiring fast. The girls swam quietly, efficiently, their bodies low in the water, pacing their breathing to their strokes.

She turned, treading water, waiting for the boy to catch her up. Her shoulder was stiff, to be sure, but she was all right. Better now than before. She would survive this. They would all survive.

She looked back at the cleft in the rock. She did not see the men.

‘I’m so slow,’ said Arno as he drew level with her. ‘Sorry.’

‘Shh,’ she said, because as he spoke the smaller of the men appeared in the cleft in the rock, his pistol in his right hand. If the man turned, if he saw them …

‘Listen to me.’ She put her arms on Arno’s shoulders. ‘Take two deep breaths and dive to the bottom.’

‘Two?’

His eyes widened. She could feel the panic in him. He wanted to look back.

At the steps in the cliff the man was looking to his right, straining to see on to the ledge. In a moment he would turn to his left and he would see them as they swam for their lives and everything would be lost.

She felt Arno gasping air. ‘Swim down, Arno. Grab a rock. Hold on.’

She pushed his shoulders beneath the surface; she turned, caught the eye of one of the girls. The girl nodded and slipped below the surface.

She kicked down to the bottom. The water was peaty and dark, but she found the boy quickly, his arms wrapped around a boulder. Bubbles spilled upwards from his mouth. She wrapped her own arms around his, brought her face very close, made sure that he could see her.

She smiled, but Arno did not respond. She could feel him trying to free his hands.

She shook her head, tightened her grip on his arms.

Panic in his eyes. Arno, please, she thought, you have to hold on.

He was grimacing, making a strange kind of Mmmm sound.

Please. Just a little longer.

He began to struggle. So tiny yet so strong.

She let him go. She saw a dark shadow above her as his body reached the surface. He thrashed there for a moment. She watched, certain that he had given himself away, certain that the bullets would strike him, that his body would seize, that blood would leak from him in dark clouds.

Instead his body calmed; she saw him begin to swim again. She released her grip on the boulder, came up facing the rock staircase, certain that they were discovered, but the man in the police uniform was gone. Ahead of them the three girls surfaced. They swam on, the island to the left of them, treading water from time to time to wait for the boy.

No one spoke.

As they swam she began to see the corpses at the water’s edge. You could see people hiding too, boys and girls that the men had not found, though you saw them clearly from here, cowering into crevices in the cliffs or hiding in the underbrush. Gathering near the children were the news helicopters: three of them now. Filming the children as they hid for their lives. Revealing their presence.

Where were the police? The army? The camp staff, even?

She began to plan. The boat was held at the dock by two ropes. The engine was in position, the electrics on. They would come on board at the stern; she would be at the console in seconds, the key would turn, the boat would slip its mooring, reverse quietly out into the fjord.

It helped to know what she would do, what she would say. It held at bay the terror that threatened to engulf her.

The men would not hear the engine before she gunned it towards the mainland.

Everyone down.

Stay out of sight.

They were going to make it.

Through her backpack she felt her phone ringing. Still there in its ziplock bag.

Can’t speak now, Dad.

Funny.

Almost.

The boat was in sight now. Ahead of her were the girls. Behind her was Arno. She waited until he caught her up.

‘I’m going to go on board first,’ she said. Her voice sounded foreign to her, unreal. Out of breath, though she was barely swimming.

The boy nodded. She could see that he was near the end of his strength.

‘Need to let the others know. You be OK, Arno?’

‘Yeah.’

She pressed on towards the girls, swimming swiftly, ignoring the ache in her shoulder. Two minutes. Maybe less. Keep them out of the way.

Everybody stay low.

The water in front of her flicked as if slapped. Twice. She heard the gunshots as they echoed from the far banks of the fjord. She turned to face their attacker, though she knew that she should not; she stopped swimming, though she knew that she must not.

There he was, the short man. He was standing on a rock near the water’s edge. His black shirt was open at the neck. There were sweat patches under his arms. His pistol was raised, held in both hands, braced. He was looking at her, she realized. Sighting up. It was casual, matter-of-fact, without malice.

Behind her was Arno. Brave little Arno.

For a moment Arno flailed. Tiny waves radiated out from his body, lapping towards her across the mirror-black surface.

She looked up at the man. Please, she thought. Not Arno.

How calm the man was. His gaze did not waver. He closed his left eye.

She felt the bullet strike. It crushed her clavicle, tore into the wall of muscle behind, obliterated the lung tissue that lay in its path, lodged itself deep within her.

She gasped. The man paused. The sound echoed back at her.

She saw the man check her position; she saw him check his own position; again she saw him close his left eye.

All was lost now, she thought.

This is the end of me.

PART ONE

1

The apartment building stood on heavy concrete pillars, held tight to the rock below by deep-driven steel spikes. Øvre Øvrebøhaugen 4: an address I could spell but never pronounce. Inside, the dark rooms were low-ceilinged and triple-glazed, built to hold the winter at bay. But today the Nordic summer heat had forced us out on to the terrace at the back.

I felt a low vibration through the concrete of the terrace. The apartment windows trembled in their metal frames.

‘Thunder,’ I said, though the day was bright and the sky was clear.

‘Thunder,’ agreed Elsa, watching me over the top of her glass.

We had loved this place when we first saw it – so much space, so close to town – but our daughters never did. There was something about the austerity of the buildings that silenced children, that made them speak to each other in monotones or whispers. Everything was low-slung and hard-lined, the wooden cladding painted black, the concrete grey and weathered. Everywhere there were stern little signs – play no ball, ride no bicycle, feed no birds – and children very quickly got the message that they were tolerated but never welcome: at Øvre Øvrebøhaugen the only voices that carried were old.

Today, though, none of that mattered. Midsummer’s Eve was our anniversary. Seventeen years married. Today our elder daughter was at summer camp, our younger daughter at a friend’s, our baby son asleep in his crib. And besides, we’d be gone in a week.

On a stone patio table stood two hand-cut martini glasses, emptied now. Elsa was smiling at me as she always used to smile, running her fingertips across my palm. Upright and lean, her dark blond hair scraped and casually tied, her eyes keen and sharp.

Those eyes of Elsa’s: the eyes of a wolf, shot through with ice. Her irises are always a shade too blue, a fraction too pale. Nordic eyes, you might be tempted to say, though no one here has eyes like Elsa’s. Even now, at times, I feel tracked by an alien intelligence.

She turned my hand over, made a play of looking at my watch. ‘How about another?’

‘We have twenty-five minutes.’

‘We do.’

I picked up the glasses.

On the kitchen wall hung three metre-square prints, all colour and photographic grain. Elsa was a photographer. Her work in the years before the children came had been very pure; very expensive; very art. All looming shapes, shot without a lens on the camera. Carmine 12, Cinnabar 44, and Burnt Umber 11.

‘Why are they so out of focus?’ people would ask.

‘Keep thinking about that,’ she would reply. ‘Because the lack of focus is important.’

I could never look directly at Elsa’s pictures without a stab of guilt. She would tell me she was done with photography, that she had said all she had to say about colour and form, that she loved having time to spend with the girls, but these vast images followed us everywhere, a reminder of a time when my wife was the promising one and when I had no career to speak of.

A cloud of tiny insects hovered around the fruit bowl. I selected the lemon with the heaviest skin, cut two long strips with a peeler, trimmed the edges straight with a long knife.

From the freezer I took a steel cocktail mixer already filled with ice cubes; two cut-crystal martini glasses, each with a wooden spill on to which I had threaded three olives; and an ice-frosted bottle of gin. I poured a few drops of vermouth on to the ice, then cradled the glasses and the mixer in my hands, jammed the bottle between my right forearm and my chest, and walked carefully back on the other side of the apartment. Here the windowless walls damped down the sounds of the world to a dull hum.

I paused in the box room. In his wooden crib our tiny blond baby curled and uncurled his fingers, wrapped himself tightly into his soft panda, limb against limb. He sucked at the panda’s draggled snout with milky lips, as if seeking sanctuary from some unknown force. I stood, watching his chest, listening for the sounds that told me what I already knew.

In. In. Out. Those soft reedy breaths, almost inaudible. An everyday miracle.

Franklin Curtis his name was, though he did not yet know it.

Elsa was looking out towards the hills when I returned. I placed the glasses on the table as silently as I could, slipped the gin bottle from under my arm with my left hand. I poured gin into the cocktail mixer. The ice fissured and cracked. Elsa turned.

‘That sound. Never fails.’

Her transfixing irises; the merest suggestion of a squint.

I stirred gently, poured the liquor into the glasses, held back the ice with the spoon. Elsa watched me all the while. Her eyes flicked to the glass as I set it in front of her, then flicked to me.

‘How do you get them so perfect, Cal?’

Always the same words.

‘Everything has to be very, very cold,’ I answered, as I always answered. ‘Your olives …’ I stopped.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You haven’t actually tasted it.’

‘Oh, Cal. Don’t screw up the ritual.’

I smiled, waiting for her to taste. She raised the glass to her lips, took a sip. Winced slightly.

‘It’s good,’ she said.

‘But not perfect.’

‘All right.’ She sighed. ‘There’s a shade too much vermouth, and I feel like you didn’t check the strength of the olive brine. What? Stop looking at me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘You’re laughing at me inwardly.’

My wife, who lives by a code of honesty so brutal that it used to terrify me. And still does. Who told me when we met that she preferred men to be taller and a little better looking, but that she liked my smile and was in the mood for sex. I made a joke about penis size to cover my confusion. She didn’t laugh.

‘The size of your penis is not relevant. Tonight we shall have non-penetrative sex.’

I was crushed, but strangely elated. I could see that Elsa was out of my league, taller than me in her heels and beautiful with it, supple and strong and used to attention.

‘Of course,’ I said, as though non-penetrative sex made perfect sense, given the imbalance between us.

And oh, the many colours in her dark blond hair, and oh, the jut of her thigh and the warmth in her ice-blue eyes. And later, when we were both breathing hard, naked in her vast wooden bed, our lips almost touching, our eyes locked, she said, ‘Please don’t circle your thumb on my clitoris in that way, Cal.’

‘All right. Just …’

‘Thank you.’ Her voice so soft, her eyes smiling at me.

‘Just … Did I misread something?’

She sat up. ‘Misread how?’

‘I thought you were close.’

‘To coming?’ She nodded. ‘If you keep using your thumb in that way I might come, but it will then make me think of a man who used to make me come in that way. And I do not wish to think of that man. Please find another way.’

That night I did not make Elsa come. But in the months that followed I learned how to bring Elsa to orgasm, all fingertips and tongue, in a way that was uniquely mine.

My wife, who cannot tell a lie.

I looked across the top of my glass; Elsa looked back with a level gaze.

‘I love you, Elsa.’

Even now I can feel the pause, as her eyes dropped away and lost focus, as the corners of her mouth quivered. It was as if my words took her off guard; as if – on this, our wedding anniversary, at this most perfect moment – they were the last thing she was expecting to hear.

‘I love you,’ I said again.

It was almost as if she were considering her response. Her eyes flicked to the horizon, to the trees beyond the garden in the far hills.

‘And I love you too, Cal.’ And oh, the warmth in her voice, and the longing. And oh, how it sounded like love. But when her eyes at last met mine there was an emptiness that did not look like love. And yet …

‘Seventeen years married,’ I said.

I took a swig, felt the citrus and the salt as the alcohol warmed me, though the day already was hot.

‘Seventeen years.’ She knocked her glass hard against mine, drained it half down.

She was looking at me matter-of-factly. The emptiness was gone.

‘What?’ I said.

‘He will arrive three minutes early, because he always does. Which means we have eighteen minutes.’ She must have seen me looking in through the door, towards Franklin, because she said, ‘Franklin is asleep, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, then …’ She reached over, let her hand trail in my lap.

Still that directness about appetites that stops me short.

What is this? I wanted to say. What are you doing? But I let her guide me to my feet and into the bedroom.

‘Wait here,’ she said. She crossed to her side of the bed. She turned towards me, raised her arms above her head, let her dress slip to the floor. She looked at me as I looked at her, half-naked, matter-of-fact. And that smile, and the certainty of it, and despite myself I found myself smiling back at her.

‘Now you,’ she said.

I heard you return home, I wanted to say. The clock said four.

Instead I undressed and lay down on the bed while she stood in her Calvin Klein underwear, looking down at me.

Where were you, Elsa?

And still I could feel desire gnawing at me. Her smile, her eyes drinking me in. The jut of her lips. The tilt of her thigh. The sheer confidence she had in her body, unlike any other woman I’d known. Her pride in the gentle curve of her belly. She turned. I watched as she walked through the door past Franklin and into the bathroom. I heard the taps run.

From the terrace I heard voices. Neighbours. Elsa wouldn’t care that the door was open. I did. I got to my feet, padded naked out on to the terrace, fetched the drinks and closed the door. I returned to our room, put a glass on each nightstand, lay with my head against the headboard.

When Elsa came in, she was naked too.

I heard you, I wanted to say, when you came home this morning at four. When I felt you roll in beside me I looked at the clock. But she had been up at seven with the baby as if nothing was wrong, and I knew that if I asked her she would laugh it away.

It’s what we do here, Cal.

And oh, her lips, her breasts, her tilted thigh.

‘Venus,’ I said.

She looked down at me, amused, cupped her left hand across her pubis and her right across her breasts.

‘Swollen Venus,’ she said.

‘Venus Venus,’ I said. ‘Now and forever.’

She sat down on the bed beside me. She looked at me, ran her hand along my jaw. ‘Why are you so sweet to me, Cal?’

‘Take the compliment,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘But thank you. I appreciate the thought.’ For a moment she looked vulnerable and small. I wondered if I had misread her.

Your confidence, Elsa …

Then there it was; her smile returned. She ran her hand down my thigh. ‘Also,’ she said, ‘how can you possibly be so hard?’ And when we kissed it felt as if she meant it, for the first time in months. She held me close, pushed her tongue deep into my mouth. I ran my hand down her back, let it rest, flat, at the base of her spine. She bit my lip and I pushed her forwards and on to me.

The doorbell. A two-tone chime.

I pulled away. ‘Fuck,’ I said.

‘Fuck,’ said Elsa.

The doorbell rang a second time.

2

‘You’re going to have to answer,’ I said. ‘I am going to have to shower.’

‘OK,’ she said, getting up. She turned. ‘Although, actually, why?’

I got off the bed, threw on my dressing gown, began to walk towards the bathroom. ‘Because I am not answering the door to your father in this state.’

‘OK, that is not an image that I want in my mind.’

‘Or your father’s.’

‘You made your point.’ She bent down, picked up her dress, pulled it easily over her head and down, smoothed it around her thighs. ‘Go take your shower, Cal.’

I showered my erection away, braced, swearing as icy needles of water bombarded my shoulders, cascaded down my chest and on to my groin. I took shampoo from the bottle, lathered it into my hair, then stepped forward so that my head was fully under. I counted to thirty through gritted teeth, then reached out and turned off the tap.

In the bedroom I pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Elsa and her father were next door in the living room, their voices hushed. Odd. You could barely hear them, but it was enough to put me on edge. Elsa’s pitch was wrong, as if her voice had slipped out of tune.

My phone chimed. A text message on the lock screen, from a number unknown.

CELEBRATE

Cheers, I thought. Whoever you are. There was an attachment. A video. I turned the phone on the side so it filled the screen, pressed play. A screenful of black.

I deleted it.

I found a pair of black trousers in the drawer of the wardrobe and pulled them on, then went to join my wife in the living room.

‘Hey, Cal,’ said Henrik.

‘Henrik, hey.’

The television was on, though neither of them was looking at it. On the screen a building, indistinct in the smoke.

Henrik watched me as I crossed the floor to greet him. A strong jaw; his daughter’s eyes, like a waiting animal, patient and appraising, all senses firing. He drew me towards him, hugged me solemnly, then looked questioningly at Elsa.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘There’s been an explosion in town,’ said Elsa.

‘A big one,’ said Henrik.

I looked at Elsa. Elsa nodded.

‘Viktoria is all right,’ said Henrik very quietly. ‘Frightened, but all right. I spoke to her from the car. Said that Cal, you would collect her. The next train leaves in eleven minutes, so you will leave in five.’

I looked at Elsa. Elsa nodded.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Licia, I could not reach,’ said Henrik. ‘Though I did try. Several times. And of course your telephones are switched off.’ He stepped forward again, held me by the shoulders. ‘You have no landline, Cal.’ There was a critical edge to his smile.

I looked at Elsa. She looked back at me. She had her phone in her right hand, my phone in her left. She was turning her phone over and over, her fingers fluid and nimble, though her eyes remained fixed on my face. I smiled. Are you OK, love?

Elsa nodded at me. She blamed herself for switching off. I could see it.

I turned to Henrik. ‘I mean, we decided we didn’t necessarily need—’

He cut me off. ‘Licia’s telephone rings, but she does not answer her telephone.’

‘She’s at summer camp,’ said Elsa. ‘So she’s miles away.’

Henrik made to speak.

‘What, Dad?’ said Elsa.

He turned to me, smiled. ‘I mean, this explosion … probably nothing – right, Cal?’

Elsa switched her phone out of airplane mode and dialled Vee’s number.

The explosion didn’t look like nothing. On screen the town hall stood shrouded in smoke. Papers swirled in the breeze, though outside our apartment the air was still.

In his windowless room off our bedroom little Franklin, tiny Franklin, slept his own restless sleep. Elsa stood on the threshold, watched the stuttering rise and fall of his chest through the bars of his wooden crib.

‘Hey,’ I said.

‘Hey.’

We had brought the crib with us from DC. The first piece of furniture we had bought. Both girls had slept in it. Now it was Franklin’s turn.

‘Hey.’ I stood behind Elsa, wrapped my arms across her chest.

She said, ‘Oh man, the way my dad says probably nothing, like it’s the end of the fucking world.’

‘He tried to apologize,’ I said.

‘And I have no idea what conversation he had with Vee, but you can bet he was happy to leave her thinking this was a major terrorist event. Even Franklin looks stressed to me. And I don’t think I can blame my father for that.’

She was right. Something had left Franklin fearful and tense. His tiny fists clenched and unclenched, his elbows tight at his side.

Elsa leaned gently over Franklin, slipped a hand behind his back and another behind his neck, drew him up and into her breast as she quietly roused him from sleep.

‘Sweet child,’ she said. ‘My sweet, sweet baby.’

Franklin clung to her gratefully, chuttering and fretting at her, anxious for milk, for comfort, for love.

‘Do we need to worry that we can’t reach Licia?’ I said.

‘Licia will be fine,’ said Elsa. ‘She’s safe on her island.’

I took the path towards the station.

At a few minutes after eight that morning Elsa and I had followed Licia down this same path, until Licia turned, and laughed, and asked us please to stop. We had stood there, Elsa and I, smiling at our daughter as she smiled back at us. Her kingfisher dress shimmered brilliant in the sunlight: every imaginable green and blue.

‘What?’ she said, almost shyly.

World at your feet, I thought.

Elsa held out her hand. ‘Here.’

Licia stepped forward. Around her wrist Elsa placed a heavy silver bangle with a large embossed dragonfly. Licia held up her wrist, turning the bangle before her eyes.

‘The first piece of jewellery your dad gave me.’

‘I know,’ said Licia, looking from Elsa to me. ‘Mum, I can’t.’

‘Love,’ I said, ‘we want you to have it.’

‘Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Mum.’

Still strange after all these years to hear her say Mum – never Mom, always Mum – the only trace of Britain she and Vee carried with them when they spoke.

‘Go and have fun, love.’

Something very adult about the look Licia gave me as she tightened the straps on her backpack and turned away. We watched her all the way to the station, holding hands, our hearts full of pride. As she reached the steps down to the platforms I saw her wave to another girl, who approached her and hugged her. I saw Licia hold out her wrist, and I saw how the bracelet glinted and the kingfisher dress shone.

Our daughter, all shrouded in sunlight.

The train I took into town was half-empty. By the doors sat a woman in a headscarf, talking animatedly into a telephone in a language I did not understand. When she ended the call I made a point of smiling at her. The woman smiled cautiously back.

Footsteps echoed around me at National Theatre station. A crowd flowing into town, towards the centre of whatever it was that had happened. All heading towards their loved ones. Faces of every kind, all set in the same expression: stoical, impassive, determined.

At the side of the royal park a man stood, shouting. His face was bloodied, his clothes torn. At his side a woman stood, a phone by her ear, trying to summon help, listening for an answer on the line that did not come.

3

Light blazed through the stained glass on the stairwell. After the clamour of the streets the stillness of the building felt wrong. There was a grandeur here, a wastefulness both beautiful and intimidating. Painted angels looked down on me from the plasterwork.

I rang the doorbell. From the wooden floors inside the apartment I heard footsteps. A gap between the door and the threshold. I heard my breath too, panting and heaving, though I was only three flights up. My nerves. The windows were out all along the street. There were glass fragments under the soles of my shoes.

The door swung open.

‘Hi,’ I said. Because I couldn’t remember her name. Julie’s mum.

‘Hello,’ said Julie’s mum. Immaculate in three-inch heels and a two-piece suit, her asymmetric bob artfully mussed. In her left hand was Vee’s gaming headset.

‘Cal,’ I said.

Julie’s mum smiled coolly, offered her right hand.

‘Nora. Did we meet already?’

‘We did.’

Her eyes would not fix on my face; there was something unsteady about her stance.

Behind her stood Vee, lit up with nervy energy, shoes in one hand.

Relief flooded my veins. ‘My little girl.’

‘Hey, Dad.’

Julie’s mum passed the gaming headset to Vee.

Vee hunched her shoulders as she stepped across the threshold on to the tiles outside the apartment, bending away from me. And when I reached down to hold her she slipped from me and headed down the stair in her socks.

‘Bye,’ she said without looking back. ‘Thank you so very much for having me.’

‘Vee,’ I said. ‘Your shoes.’

‘I’ll put them on downstairs.’

‘Now please Vee.’

Julie’s mum put a hand on my arm.

‘Your daughter is a brave girl. A bomb goes off and she does not lose her head.’

‘If we can be certain it was a bomb.’

‘Did you not see the glass in the street?’ The look she gave me told me she was in no doubt.

‘Proud of you, honey,’ I called after Vee, who ignored me and carried on down.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Wait.’

Vee didn’t turn round.

‘Have a safe day,’ I said.

‘You too,’ said Nora Gundersen as she closed and locked the door.

Vee heard my footsteps behind her, quickened her pace. When I got to the lobby she was standing there, hunched and shaking, trying to fix the laces on her sneakers.

‘Hey, Vee. Vee. It’s all right. It’s OK.’ I tried to take her in my arms. ‘My love,’ I said. ‘You’re safe. You’re safe, OK?’

She shook me off. ‘Who are they trying to kill, Dad?’

‘We don’t know that anyone is trying to kill anyone, Vee.’

‘It was a bomb,’ she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact.

‘It was certainly an explosion.’

‘It was a bomb.’

‘If your plaits weren’t screwed down so tight I would ruffle your hair.’

‘Just don’t, Dad.’

I could feel the resentment dripping from her. I was speaking to her as to a child.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘You never listen. You … you impose your version of what happened.’

I could see that she meant it. ‘I’m listening now. I promise. OK?’

‘OK.’

We sat side by side on the third step, looking out. The building was cool in the summer heat: old and grand, and nothing like ours. The world beyond looked peaceful. You couldn’t see the glass fragments that littered the street outside.

‘OK, so, there are two beds in Julie’s room. And I was sitting on the spare bed, and Julie was sitting on her bed, and there’s just this flash. I mean, it was bright. Julie was just a silhouette. It was so weird. And then the window fell away.’

‘It fell away?’

‘It was like it bent inwards first. You’d swear it bent inwards. And I kept thinking it was going to shatter, and we’d be stumbling bleeding into the street. It was like I could see that. And then there’s this moment where Julie’s looking at me, and I’m looking at Julie and she reaches across and takes my hand. And at the same moment the window was sucked out. The whole pane, and the wood and everything just kind of pivoted on the lower edge and fell away. And there’s just this really creepy silence …

‘It felt like the birds stopped singing. And then you heard this huge roar. Like the end of the world. And we both turned over on the beds and put our hands over the backs of our heads. We knew what to do. Which is also weird. And then finally you hear the glass shattering in the street. And we just lay there face down on the beds until Julie’s mum came to get us.’

I reached out, pulled her gently towards me.

‘Mum’s going to say I’m dramatizing.’

‘She won’t.’

Then Vee wrapped her arms very tightly around me, and I wiped the tears from her face and told her everything was going to be OK, and this time she allowed me to comfort her.

The streets had emptied. At the sound of rotors Vee stopped and looked up. A news helicopter. It made a lazy sweep towards the palace, then tipped and headed towards town.

‘Dad,’ she said, ‘About Licia …’

In my pocket my phone was vibrating against my thigh. Vee made to speak.

‘I’m sorry, love. I think this could be important.’

‘But Dad—’

I raised the phone to my ear.

‘This is Lori from WXWD in Washington DC.’ A pleasant American sing-song. ‘Am I speaking with Cal Curtis? Dan said now might be a good moment to bring your eyewitness testimony to our listeners.’

‘Tell Dan I’m collecting my daughter. Could we speak in half an hour?’

‘Sure. Speak then.’

I hung up.

Vee looked at me, reproachful. ‘What?’

‘Your Uncle Dan wants me to talk about what people are feeling after the explosion.’

‘What are they feeling, then?’

I laughed. ‘Maybe it would be better if you did the piece. You have a headset, and everything.’

For a moment Vee laughed too. Then she stopped, became serious.

‘Dad, who’s collecting Licia?’

‘Licia’s safe on her island,’ I said.

The glass was sand beneath our shoes. We heard sirens, though we saw no police. The few people we did see floated past, empty-eyed, or stood on corners, watching the clouds of smoke and brick dust as they rolled and turned in the Midsummer air.

I stood on the subway platform, Vee’s headset covering my ears, the cable attached to my phone. In front of us was the empty carriage, lights on, doors open. Even down here the air was filled with dust.

‘Dad,’ mouthed Vee.

I lifted the earpad from my right ear. ‘What, love?’

‘Is it true you can breathe in bits of people and not know it?’

From my left ear I could hear the station assistant’s voice. ‘This is Lori. Am I speaking with Cal Curtis again?’

‘I’m sorry, Vee. They’re patching me through to the studio, love.’ I replaced the earpad over my ear. The sound of the subway disappeared. All I could hear was my own breath.

‘So, Cal,’ said the voice on the other end. ‘Dan tells me you are a satirist.’

‘I am.’

Lori laughed as though I had said something funny. ‘And Cal, we are good for level and we are all set, and the next voice you hear will be Carly’s. Patching you through … now.’

‘And from Oslo, Norway we have Cal Curtis, a Scottish satirist who has lived for many years in Washington DC, but is currently on a career break in Norway. Cal, you were an eyewitness to the fearful explosion that rocked the Norwegian capital less than an hour ago. What was your first thought when you heard the bomb that tore through the town hall?’

‘Well, my first thought was thunder. My daughter’s first thought was that this was a bomb.’

‘Your daughter was a witness to the explosion?’

‘My daughter is a very brave young woman.’ I smiled down at Vee. Vee tried to smile back. ‘She was in the centre of town. The window in the room she was in was sucked out by the blast. She and her friend lay face down, bracing the backs of their heads, waiting for help to arrive, just as she was taught in school.’

‘Dad,’ mouthed Vee urgently. I lifted one earpad. ‘We need to get on the train.’

I replaced the earpad, put a hand on Vee’s shoulder. ‘One second,’ I mouthed.

I saw her mouth move. ‘But Dad …’

I turned away, folded my hand over the earpiece. ‘It’s important to stress we don’t yet know what has happened. The government has confirmed that there has been an explosion. They have asked us to be vigilant. No word of a bomb. No word on casualties. We are in the centre of the city and the streets here are virtually empty.’

‘Dad.’ Vee was in front of me, tugging at my elbow.

I held up my hand. Wait.

Carly’s voice. ‘Theories must be emerging, Cal.’

‘Right.’

‘What are people saying?’ I didn’t know what people were saying. I thought for a moment. ‘Yes, at this stage I suppose it’s impossible to rule out a terrorist attack. This country has had military presences in many Middle Eastern flashpoints.’

Lights flashing. The Doors Closing signal.

Vee stepped away from me on to the train. ‘Dad, come on …’

I stepped on board; the doors slid shut.

‘Thank you, Cal Curtis in Oslo, Norway. More on that story as it emerges.’

A click, and the feed from the studio faded out.

Vee sat facing me, stared me full in the face, arms folded angrily across her chest. I took off the headset.

‘What is it, Vee?’

‘Why did you say the Muslims blew up Oslo?’

‘Vee, you know I would never claim something like that.’

‘Actually you pretty much did. And you were speaking in this weird deep voice, like you think that’s how radio people speak.’

‘Please tell me I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘Was I?’

She nodded at me sternly, then her face broke into a smile.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, that isn’t good.’

Vee stepped across the threshold, leaned in to her mother, let herself be held, then pulled away and headed towards her bedroom. Elsa watched her go, wondering perhaps if she could call after her.

‘How is she?’ she said.

‘It’s all coming out as anger. She was very close to the bomb.’

‘If it even was a bomb.’

‘From what she says, it was.’

‘Maybe.’ She said it on the in-breath. A strange little sighing sound.

I followed Elsa through to the kitchen, stood, looking up at her unreadable pictures on the white wall above the table. The pictures were of crime scenes in Washington, photographed with the cooperation of the police. Elsa would work methodically, using whatever light was available, shooting on large-format film cameras, always without a lens.

Carmine 12 was taken at the scene of a stabbing; Cinnabar 44 a shooting; Burnt Umber 11 a hammer attack.

‘Why murder?’ people would ask.

Elsa never explained.

The serious newspapers loved my wife’s work; critics made favourable comparisons with Munch. ‘A Postmodern Scream for the New Post-Enlightenment’ was my favourite headline; the article was as hard to decipher as Elsa’s pictures.

‘Elsa,’ I said, ‘there’s something I need your help to understand.’

She looked levelly back. ‘What’s that?’

That video file, I wanted to say. Timestamped three a.m. When you came home at four. On the morning of our anniversary.

No hint of guilt in Elsa’s gaze. Instead there was something complex and loving and warm.

‘You guys about ready?’ Henrik’s voice from the hall.

Elsa smiled. ‘Dad’s going to drive us to the marina.’

‘You sure, Henrik?’ I called out.

Henrik stepped into the hall from the kitchen. ‘Important not to be dramatic. I shall drive you.’

‘I mean, Henrik, that’s great, but it doesn’t feel—’

Henrik cut me off. ‘If it is terrorism, we do not want such people to win. And if it is not terrorism, what is the risk? Your marriage is a precious thing to you, no?’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Henrik, no disrespect, but Vee is in pieces, and we haven’t spoken to Licia.’

‘Viktoria is playing a computer game, which involves shooting people and then dancing. I do not think she is in pieces.’

Elsa smiled. ‘I texted with Licia. She was fine.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Something about this doesn’t feel right.’

‘Cal, you must go,’ said Henrik. ‘Simple.’

‘Henrik,’ I said, ‘again, with respect, it isn’t simple.’

‘What Viktoria needs is calm and normality. A good walk, out in nature. Pine trees and forest animals. Maybe we will see an elusive moose.’

‘Or I could come with you, Dad.’ Vee’s voice. She had slipped into the room, unseen. ‘Please, Dad?’

4

Elsa swung the wheel, slipped the motor into gear. The engine note rose, and our little rented speedboat continued its arc out of the bay and into the fjord beyond. Vee lay on the sun seats by the motor, staring up at the sky. Beside her, her laptop bag and her gaming headset.

I sat beside Elsa, the passenger seat angled towards her, my bare feet on the edge of her seat, watching her. A woman perfectly in command of a boat, in a strapless black dress and fitted life preserver. An everyday sight in Norway, perhaps; still exotic to me.

‘What?’ said Elsa.

I grinned. ‘You, at the helm of a small speedboat.’

‘Eyes on the water in front, Mum,’ shouted Vee from behind us. ‘And Dad, shut up.’

‘OK, love.’ Elsa grinned again, and turned to face forwards.

The boat was an indulgence. We couldn’t afford it, but everyone we knew in Oslo had one. And besides, Elsa was comfortable on the water. She stood behind the windshield, sunglasses pushed high on her head, turning from time to time to check for other boats coming in from the side, watching the marina disappear behind us, poised and in control. The engine pitch rose to a soft whine; the bow of the boat kicked up.

Elsa looked at me and nodded. We took a step forward, used our weight to bring the nose of the boat down, stepped back into place, sat down. In seconds we were skimming fast across the fjord, cutting a perfect wake across the glassy water.

Vee’s eyes were closed now.

Elsa leaned in to me, whispered, ‘You smell of really good food.’

‘I smell of sweat and sexual frustration.’

‘Trust me, you don’t.’

Behind and to the left the scattered bays, the painted houses by the water. The land was green, the rocks pink, the water a deep northern blue.

On islets near the shore you could see wood stacked neatly in vast piles, ready for the evening’s bonfires. Further out, birds dive-bombed shoals of herring fry and ahead, though it was partly hidden by the headland, you could see the sweep of the Oslo waterline, the cruise ships and the grain towers and the monstrous industrial cranes.

‘We could buy a little boat back home,’ said Elsa. ‘Be good for the girls.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Maybe we could.’

The smoke. We saw it as we rounded the headland. It rose in a vertical plume from the middle of the C-shaped bay. Elsa eased off the throttle; the boat dropped down on to the surface of the fjord. Vee sat up, instantly awake.

The bay was divided in two between light and dark. In the centre of town the buildings lay shrouded in a grey pall. The twin towers of the town hall vanished into the smoke. News helicopters dipped in and out, rotors shifting the edges of the swirling grey column above, ruffling the water below.

Elsa’s eyes scanned the shoreline.

‘We can turn around,’ I said.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ said Elsa. ‘The ferries are running.’

To our right were the islands. The smoke from the mainland had not reached them. They stood there, jewel-green in the sunlight.

‘Still,’ I said. ‘We really don’t have to go.’

‘No, Dad,’ said Vee firmly. ‘That way the bad guys win.’

The engine ticked quietly. Elsa eased us past the boatyard and into the shallow channel in front of the restaurant. A single-storey building, its wooden cladding painted green, with a fleet of small boats moored to the pontoons outside. Ahead, on the outermost pontoon, our friend Jo stood waiting, a bottle of beer in each hand, looking blond and fresh. On his T-shirt an inverted swoosh, and the words MATE, JUST DON’T.

As we drew level he passed a bottle to Elsa, took from her the rope she carried in her left hand, pulled the boat gently towards the pontoon, and tied it off at the front.

‘Hei, Cal!’

‘Hey, Jo.’

He handed me the beer. I leaned across, put an arm around him, felt the scrape of his stubble on mine.

Jo turned towards Elsa. ‘Hey, nice dress, darling,’ he said, in his practised London English. ‘Seriously frodig, darling.’

Elsa took Jo’s hand, stepped easily on to the pontoon. She embraced him, cheek against cheek. Jo turned towards me. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘What’s frodig?’ I said.

‘Yeah, Jo, don’t be dirty!’ said Vee.

‘Sorry, Vee. Didn’t see you there.’

Vee smiled. ‘You so did. Stop laughing, Mum. And Jo, don’t say that stuff.’

Jo put his hands up. Guilty as charged. ‘You’ve got it, darling. Where’s your sister?’

‘Feminist summer camp.’

‘Ooh. Fun.’

‘Not if I know my sister. Where’s the new boyfriend?’

At this Jo became serious. ‘Edvard sends his love. He’s trying to put a helicopter in the air.’

Vee said, ‘There are lots of helicopters.’

‘Not a single one from the police,’ said Jo.

We stared towards the the town. Jo stood between us, an arm over Elsa’s shoulder.

‘Edvard says no one died,’ he said. ‘Can you believe that? Literally not one person. Come on, you.’ He took Elsa’s hand in his and led her into the restaurant.

I hung back with Vee. ‘Well, that’s a result,’ I said. ‘You OK?’

‘Can I tell Julie?’

I looked at the ash cloud that hung above the town. It must be half a mile across.

‘Don’t want to cause trouble for Edvard and Jo.’

Vee nodded. ‘All right. Got it.’

On the wooden steps outside the restaurant was Hedda, smoking a cigarette, a beer in her left hand. Tiny compared to Elsa, barely taller than Vee, in stacked heels and black knee-length dress, her dark hair hanging in ringlets around her face, watching the town.

‘Love,’ I said, ‘why don’t you go in, get Mum to get you set up with a table? I want a word with Hedda.’

‘You don’t even like her.’

I laughed. ‘I do like Hedda.’

‘I do like Hedda,’ she mimicked through clenched teeth. ‘You always say that in exactly the same way. And anyway, I asked Mum if you liked Hedda—’

‘See you inside, Vee.’

‘Don’t you want to know what Mum said?’

‘See you inside.’

Vee began to walk towards the bar. I put my phone in my pocket, walked towards Hedda, whose eyes remained fixed on the horizon.

‘How was your night out?’ I said.

She looked up at me, eyes twinkling. ‘Which night out?’

‘With Elsa? Last night?’

‘Oh, that night out.’ She got to her feet, stood swaying slightly, examined her cigarette as if trying to remember something, then smiled again. ‘Nice, thank you. Why aren’t you asking Elsa?’

She hugged me demonstratively, as if making a point, then planted a kiss on my cheek.

‘Elsa came home at four,’ I said.

‘Sounds about right. All those married men at Lorry, quietly slipping their wedding bands into their pockets, sending over trays of drinks, sliding in at our table, bumping hard against our thighs …’

I pulled away slightly, trying to read her expression.

A smile twitched across her face. ‘Obviously I’m joking.’

‘Obviously.’ I put my arm around her, patted her twice, then tried to step out of the embrace, but she held on to me, pulled me towards the restaurant, then pushed me gently through the door and into our anniversary party.

‘Skål for Cal and for Elsa, everyone!’

‘Skål!’

A toast. To us.

A hand exchanged my beer for champagne. I raised my glass, met the eyes of each person around the table in turn, ending with Elsa.

‘Seventeen years,’ mouthed Elsa.

‘I know,’ I mouthed.

Elsa stood up, raised her glass to me. We drank to each other, standing at the head of the table, as around us our friends got to their feet. Knives chinked on glasses. People at the other tables were watching us. I rested my hand in the small of her back. ‘Well, this isn’t in any way embarrassing.’

A half-smile from Elsa, knowing and complex. She leaned in very close. She smelled of sunlight on clean skin. The white-blue iris of her left eye; the amused curl of her lip; and below her the faces of her friends, smiling up.

‘Speech, Cal,’ someone shouted.

‘Yes, speech!’

‘Elsa,’ I said. ‘Did you say I would speak?’

‘I did.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. Elsa looked at me, serious now. I stood at the head of the table, looking around. ‘Seventeen years married, and still that question: who is this woman I share my life with?’

The faces around us were expectant.

‘I don’t know where the rest of you are in modelling the psyche of your wife, your husband, your – forgive me for saying this, Jo – your life partner, but I’m stuck in the black-box model of marriage.’

People were quiet. No one laughed.

‘Tough crowd. OK, let me give you an example. The sexist version of this joke is this: I know, through observation, that a dropped pair of underpants on the bathroom floor – that’s stimulus A – results in icy atmosphere at dinner – that’s response B. But the route from A to B cannot be mapped, because it’s taking place inside a black box.’

Sporadic laughter.

‘For anyone who hasn’t figured it out, the black box in this joke – the sexist version of this joke – is the inside of my wife’s head. Because women are a mystery to men.’

A couple of good-natured boos.

‘OK, good. We agree that no one comes well out of that version of the joke. Right?’

People nodded.

‘Right. But you guys are way beyond the black-box model, right? You formed a hypothesis about why underpants on floor equal icy atmosphere at dinner.’

I selected Hedda.

‘Hedda, you hypothesize that Elsa is mad because I left my underpants on the bathroom floor, and she feels – reasonably, I should stress – that as an adult …’

Hedda smiled. ‘… you should pick up after yourself.’

‘Now my wife is no longer the butt of the joke, and I come across as an imbecile who is incapable of change. But …’

Elsa’s eyes locked on to mine.

‘Twenty years ago I slipped a note on to the desk of a girl sitting on her own in the New York Public Library. Six months ago the third of our beautiful children was born. And I know there’s got to be a connection there somewhere …’

I looked around the table. The laughter was indulgent. Eyes were shining.

‘Here’s the point in the routine where I say something that demonstrates that I’m not a complete imbecile. That’s my schtick, right? Idiot savant says something profound. And I’ve been searching blindly for what that thing is, and truthfully, I don’t know. I have a wife who is more intelligent than me, and who demands from me a level of honesty which no man can reasonably be expected to achieve; I struggle to see connections that are obvious to her, and most likely to all of you. Though Elsa, I genuinely do do what I can to meet the standard you set.’

Elsa was looking at me levelly. She nodded, half-smiled.

‘Also, full disclosure about a little lie of omission: I’ve started shaving the outside of my ears and hoping you won’t notice.’ Elsa pretended shock. I turned away from her. ‘But here I am with the most beautiful woman I know, with our beautiful family, in the happiest country on Earth. I don’t know how I got so lucky.’

‘So why won’t you stay?’ said Hedda, loudly.

‘We should, Hedda. We should. These past eight months have been amazing. But you guys knocked me off my game. Everyone’s so fucking incorruptible and so fucking nice. And I can’t make satire about good people doing good things. I need sleaze, American style. Quickly, before the newspaper closes my column.’

People were laughing again. At the far end of the room I could see Vee looking up from her screen at me, anxious. There was the real reason we had to return home. In the most perfect place on Earth, Vee was unhappy. We had not understood how hard she would take moving to this strange and beautiful land; what it would cost her to leave behind her friends and her social status, to find herself at the bottom of the heap.

I smiled at Vee. Vee smiled back, uncertain, then returned to her game. Elsa, who had followed my gaze turned towards me, nodded.

I said, ‘I thought I was used to being a foreigner. I thought it came easily to me. And in Washington DC it pretty much does. But here I really am a foreigner. You all very kindly speak my language to me, but here I can see there is this part of Elsa that I can’t fully know, and it’s available to all of you, and not to me. And if I’m honest I’m a touch jealous of you all for having that part of her, when I don’t.’ Our friends clapped and smiled.

‘And Elsa told me it was an easy language, but you know and I know that’s simply not true. Which leads to the horrible question: Have I – finally – caught my wife in a lie?’

Elsa smiled, meeting my eye, and I was sorry I had doubted her.

I looked around at her friends. ‘Thank you for listening, you beautiful people. I’m Cal Curtis, and I used to be a lot funnier.’

Elsa was on her feet beside me, eyes sparkling. We toasted the brightness of the summer day, and the resilience of the Norwegian people. All the while I watched Elsa, thinking how happy she looked.

‘I love you,’ I mouthed.

‘No, Cal, I love you,’ she said, loud enough for people to hear. ‘You strange, sentimental fuck.’

I had a bad feeling about taking her home to America, a sense that it would do her some quiet violence, that at some level Hedda was right, that we should stay. But for the sake of our children …

Vee sat in a quiet corner of the bar, laptop plugged in, headset on, lounging in her chair. On her screen an avatar, a slim white girl in a tight T-shirt, short black hair covered in a blue beanie hat, staring out. Lasser8. Another avatar appeared beside the first, dark-skinned and muscular. Marldathug.

‘A week Tuesday,’ she was saying. ‘So maybe, I don’t know, like a pizza, or something? Good to go here, by the way …’

‘You all right, Vee?’

‘Wait a second …’ She smiled, lifted the earpad from her right ear.

‘I was asking if you were OK.’

‘Dad, can I go out for pizza Tuesday when we get back?’

‘Who with?’

‘Marlon. A couple of Marlon’s friends.’

‘Sure, love. Sounds like a good idea.’

‘Thanks.’ She replaced her headset over her right ear and picked up her control. ‘Good for Tuesday. And we are … go …’

On screen her avatar was skydiving towards an island. ‘Marlon, low building top right.’ Below, other avatars were landing, picking up weapons, disappearing from sight.

I stood watching her face, looking for some sign of trauma.

She noticed me staring. ‘I’m really OK. You should go be with Mum.’

Her avatar landed on a roof, picked up a rifle, ran to the edge of the roof and began to shoot.

For a while the euphoria carried us along. We drank white wine and ate crab from steel platters, half-dazzled by the sun on the fjord.

Only Jo kept checking his phone.

I leaned forward. ‘Everything OK with Edvard?’

‘Am I being that obvious?’

‘Come and talk.’

The bar was fuggy with the heat of the afternoon. Fruit flies flew lazy loops above the beer taps. In the corner, Vee seemed lost in the world of her screen. She was talking easily to Marlon. Excited about going home. The barman and a few customers stood watching a large TV screen showing pictures of the waterfront.

Through the windows you could see the same cityscape, the buildings grey-brown in the smoke. I chose a table near the door, away from the television, facing Vee.

Jo sat opposite me. ‘Please tell me I didn’t just see my goddaughter pickaxing a guy to death?’

‘It’s a game. Tell me about Edvard …’

‘Yeah, Edvard,’ said Jo, serious again. ‘Edvard is having a really shitty day. He spent the afternoon trying to scramble the police helicopter. They have three pilots, and guess what? One pilot’s with his family in the Arctic, one can’t be contacted by phone, one is with her family on Tenerife.’

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘I realize you think this country is some kind of safe space where nothing ever goes wrong, but Edvard can’t track down a helicopter pilot because it’s Midsummer, and everyone deserves to be with their family on Midsummer. I mean, why aren’t you satirizing that?’

Through the doorway I could see Elsa, sitting talking intimately to Hedda. She must have felt my eyes on her; she looked up, then away. There was something furtive about her glance now, something very different from the way she had looked at me earlier, as if talking to Hedda made my wife love me less.

‘Cal, mate?’ Jo was staring at me.

‘Sorry. Yes.’ Elsa had turned in her chair. She was facing away from me. I looked at Jo. ‘I think maybe Edvard should speak to a journalist.’

‘You have news connections. Edvard likes you, Cal. He’d prefer to speak to you.’

Cheers from all around. They were announcing it now: no one had been killed in the bomb.

I stood at the far end of the pontoon, earpiece in. ‘Patching you through to Carly in the studio.’ A click, and I could hear the studio feed. Carly’s voice was clear and strong.

‘Back to that explosion in Oslo, Norway, and to eyewitness Cal Curtis, whose family experienced these traumatic events at close hand. Cal, everyone here is delighted that your family is safe.’

‘Thank you. And yes, you can almost feel the country breathing a collective sigh of relief. Sources close to the police tell us that not a single person lost their life in what looked, at one point, to be a major terrorist incident. The town hall bomb appears to have been something of a damp squib, an act of spectacle terrorism on a building where no one was working, though it does raise important questions as to the level of preparedness of this proud little Scandinavian nation.’

‘Thank you, Cal Curtis in Oslo.’

I took off the headset, looked out across the bay. The entire city was shrouded in smoke and dust. Terrifying, but strangely beautiful, cut by heavy shafts of sunlight.

A voice shouted. ‘Cal!’

I turned. Hedda, framed in the light of the bar.

The plume of smoke on the mainland. The concern in Hedda’s face. The urgency in her voice. ‘Cal, you have to see this.’

Fear beginning to take hold.

I was on my feet, running. Hedda turned, moved out of my way, touched my hand as I passed, followed me in. There was Vee, fighting her way through the people and next to Vee was Elsa.

‘My daughter,’ I said to the couple beside me. They moved to let me pass. I reached out. Vee grasped my hand. I pulled her towards me.

New images on the screen.

A girl sheltering by the water’s edge, a man waving desperately from the water. In the downdraught from the helicopter the fjord frothed and turned.

We crowded around the bar, every face staring up at the screen.

‘Lyden,’ said Elsa. Sound.

The barman nodded and turned up the volume.

Pictures from TVZ. A sundress of kingfisher blue. A shooting on an island near Oslo.

I saw the terror in Vee’s eyes.

‘Licia,’ she said.

I stood outside the restaurant, eyes fixed on the water, phone in hand. I could not look at Elsa or Vee, though I could feel their eyes on me, willing Licia to pick up.

A click. Licia’s voice.

Can’t speak now.

Funny.

Almost.

Punchline to a horrific cosmic joke.

5

That dread silence.

Further along the coast bonfires lit up the fjord. Here the pyres remained unlit. The sun was down now, the air cold.

We stood on the mainland opposite Garden Island, watching as the boats came in.

A hundred of us, maybe more, looking out across the fjord, waiting for our children to return, barely daring to speak. From time to time a hand sought out a hand, a body leaned towards another. Whispered words, furtive almost. But mostly I remember the silence.

In my hand I held the form that we had filled out:

Name: Alicia Curtis

Height: 5' 6"

Age: 15

Skin colour: white (pale)

Hair: blond

Clothes: blue dress (kingfisher, sequinned). Silver dragonfly bangle. Converse sneakers?

Identifying marks: none

Elsa had crossed out the height, had rewritten it in centimetres.

Height: 167.5 cm

As if that might make the difference.

I leaned towards Elsa.

‘Focus on New Year in Whistler,’ I whispered. ‘Focus on Licia coming back.’

Heavy winds had been forecast in Whistler that New Year’s morning, but it was lunchtime and the storm had not come.

I tried to hand Licia her phone.

‘No need, Dad.’ She smiled, dropped her skis to the snow, stepped into them, began fish-boning up the slope. Vee was waiting by the lift, arms crossing and uncrossing, tiny and impatient in her helmet and her stormproof one-piece. They were skiing without us for the first time, drunk on the excitement of it. Licia was the better skier, fearless, skilful, and fast.

‘Licia!’ I shouted after her. ‘Phone!’

She stopped and turned, waved, called out, ‘Enjoy your meal!’ Then she turned to face her sister, who cuffed her playfully across the temple.

And so Elsa and I sat drinking Riesling, toasting the New Year in, eating Swiss fondue from long skewers as we held hands under the table. We did not see the blackening sky. We were happy in each other’s company, easy in the warmth of the wine, and of the food, and of the fires in the grates.

That first gust. A metallic shriek, not easily forgotten.

We were on our feet, outside before we knew it, looking up.

Heavy sheets of rain beat down across the slopes, freezing as they hit the snow. Clouds curdled across the mountainside. Chairs swung in the lifts.

I ran up the slope, skis in hand, tried to make my way through the barrier.

‘Lift’s closed,’ said the man in the booth.

‘It’s still turning.’

‘For people heading down. You can’t go up.’

‘My daughters,’ I said.

‘Give a description to Mountain Rescue.’

An hour Elsa and I stood in the doorway to the restaurant, wet through, waiting for our daughters, each hiding our fear from the other. I pleaded with a god I did not believe in to return them to us, safe and unharmed. Vee was so small and Licia so naive. How stupid we had been to allow them to go.

And then they were there in front of us, laughing, high on the electric excitement of danger, wrapping themselves into us as we held them close.

‘It’s her fault,’ Vee was saying. ‘She made me not take my skis off. I must have fallen like fifty times.’

‘Dad, she snuck on to the lift again.’

‘Liar! You frickin’ dared me!’

I said, ‘I thought all the upper lifts were closed.’

Vee gave her sister a conspiratorial look. ‘Not if you know what you’re doing. And you didn’t have to come with me the second time, Licia. Or the third.’

Licia turned to me. ‘Dad, you might want to think about having my sister baptized. For her own safety. Before something bad happens.’

The event had become a happy memory. A disaster averted. A narrative of sisterly heroism.

‘Cal, this is nothing like Whistler,’ Elsa was saying, quiet as breath.

I tried to take her hand. She tried to take mine.

We could not do it; we could not touch. And when I looked around us I saw that the other parents stood as we stood, holding papers with their children’s details on them, undone by nerves, separate and alone, eyes fixed on the island across the water where something had happened, some dread thing for which we did not yet have a name.

A larger boat this time, bullet-nosed, striped green and orange at the bow. It seemed to lift itself above the fjord as it rounded the headland. Every face in the crowd watched. The boat turned a lazy arc, came to rest by the slipway. From the bow, two armed policemen surveyed the crowd, submachine guns readied. In the stern were two female officers, rifles half-shouldered as they scanned the shoreline.

Two more uniformed officers emerged from the wheelhouse, one tall, one small. Both men were blond, both were unarmed. Something strange in the way they carried themselves; some unnatural swagger. They stood on the deck, looked out at the crowd, expressionless. Narrow white bands cuffed their wrists. Two further female officers appeared close behind them, pistols drawn and pointed at the men.

I turned to Elsa, wanting to know if she felt my confusion, but she simply stood staring. I looked from face to face in the crowd. In every face I saw that same blank incomprehension that I saw in my wife.

Police officers.

I had not thought the perpetrators would be police officers. I thought they would be darker-skinned, that they would be … had expected to see the words jihadisme or islamisme in the news feeds, to hear those words whispered knowingly amongst the other parents, spoken carefully into microphones by the reporters on their live links. Our values. Their values. Allahu akbar.

To be plain: I had not expected these men to be white.

In the bow an officer lowered his submachine gun, dropped a gangplank into place. Metal slid on concrete. The officer beside him stepped ashore, his weapon at the ready. Grit crunched beneath his shoes. Both officers were onshore now, surveying the crowd, weapons readied. They glanced at each other, nodded. One of them turned, nodded towards the escort.

The unarmed men – could they really be police? – began to move towards the gangplank and on to the shore, each followed closely by a pistol-carrying officer who tracked their every move.

The crowd split into two, made room. These men – these suspects – were not just white, they were archetypically, almost comically white. Their hair was bleached, their noses narrow, their eyes blue, their foreheads high. So close they were now. You could almost reach out … I caught the eye of the first, the taller of them. The man nodded. I felt myself beginning to nod back.

I checked myself. Because this man … because surely no policeman would have done … what? What had these men done?

Please, where is my daughter?

None of us spoke. We parted quietly, made room for the police escort and for the two unarmed men who could not – surely they could not? – be policemen themselves. Their collars were undone. Their boots were scuffed and muddied. Badges hung from their shoulders, as if torn by briars.

The shorter man spat something on to the slipway. A gobbet of chewing tobacco, grey-black and shiny.

I caught the eye of another father, a man of my own age, saw in him my own confusion and rage. These men walk easily by us, arms cuffed, uniforms torn. When our children …

What have they done with our children?

Elsa was muttering something. I could feel her stiff staccato words, could hear the S sounds, and the Ks and the Ts. I did not look at her – could not look at her – must not let her see my fear.

The pistol-carrying officers led the men up the rise to two waiting police cars. The policewomen in the stern tracked the path of the men with their rifles, while the officers on the slipway scanned the crowd. I looked around. Still that dread silence. Still the faces, empty of emotion, though every parent there was thinking the same thought: Please. Our children. What have you done with our children?

The machine-gun-carrying officers moved away to join their colleagues at the cars. Doors opened. The officers separated the suspects, one into each car. The men sat calmly in the back seats, facing forwards; they offered no resistance. An armed officer got in beside each man, and another into the passenger seat.

Doors closed, headlights lit, engines started. The cars stayed where they were.

In my pocket my phone vibrated. I held it in front of me like some alien thing.

Dan.

I stepped carefully up the slipway and away from the crowd. I brought the phone to my ear.

‘Hey,’ said my brother’s voice, ‘just wondering …’

‘Nothing yet.’ My own voice sounded jarring, even at a hoarse whisper, as if I might cry.

A thin man in a black suit was quietly collecting the forms. Something familiar about him.

‘Sorry, Dan. I just …’ I turned away from the man.

‘Listen, Cal, whatever you need, you tell me, OK?’ I could hear the catch in my brother’s voice, though he did what he could to disguise it. The knowledge that things were bad, that Licia most probably wasn’t …

I couldn’t allow myself the thought so I said, ‘We’re good. We’re really looking forward to this whole thing being over.’

‘Everyone here is sending love, Cal. Daisy wanted you to know she’s thinking of you. Oh, but Lyndon’s at soccer practice, so he doesn’t yet know.’

‘Love back,’ I said, and ended the call.

The thin man in the suit approached me, hair mussed, shoes covered in dust. I looked down at the sheet of paper in my hand. I held it out to him, began to turn towards Elsa.

‘Cal.’ I felt his hand on my shoulder, saw the concern in his eye.

‘Oh my God, Edvard. Thought you were at police headquarters. Jo said …’

‘We’re all doing everything we can,’ said Edvard. ‘But it’s a mess. I’m really sorry.’

‘What do you mean?’

He nodded at the men in the police cars. ‘You don’t bring them ashore somewhere crowded. Things could have got out of hand. No one’s following protocol.’

‘So those men …?’ Again I couldn’t finish the thought.

‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘This is bad, Cal.’

I swallowed down my fear.

I nodded. ‘Wait …’ I reached into my pocket, pulled from my wallet a strip of passport photos that Licia had taken and never used, folded at the middle. I had rescued them from the trash, carried them with me without her knowing. I held out the strip of pictures to Edvard.

‘These will help,’ he said. He took a paperclip and attached them to our form, added the form to the top of the pile in his hand.

‘You’ll tell me?’ I said. ‘When you know something?’

His look told me not to expect too much.

Another boat, closing fast.

Behind, around, voices murmured then fell silent. Paramedics opened ambulance doors, unloaded equipment on to the slipway, waited. The boat was closer. I searched for Licia’s face, but Licia was not there.

Elsa knew it too.

Licia is not here.

Parents stepped forward, reached out, held to them their boys, their girls as they stumbled forwards from the boat. Some drew their children gently from the scene and away. Others knelt beside gurneys, ruffled hair, kissed foreheads and backs of hands. Beside them, nimble fingers found veins, attached cannulas, fitted monitors. These sons, these daughters: amongst us again now, but changed.

Water lapped. Wood strained against wood. Gurneys slid into ambulances, doors slammed, motors started. Around us, amongst us, news people spoke hushed words into shielded microphones. Ambulances began drifting up the rise, silent, blue lights flashing. We forced ourselves to turn to face the island. Too early for despair, too late for hope.

Down by the slipway children were standing in small groups, confused, waiting for parents who had not yet arrived.

A hand pressed gently against my back, another placed a coffee cup into my hand. I could not see Elsa.

‘Here.’ An arm in a grey sleeve, steadying me, so that I might not spill the coffee.

‘Thank you,’ I murmured. That small unbearable kindness: I looked only at the hand that offered it, afraid that I would give myself away if my eye met the eye of this stranger.

‘Be assured that all will be well.’ Words spoken softly, in accented English, the man’s mouth by my ear.

I glanced upwards, saw a shock of black hair, a grey vestment.

You can’t know that all will be well, I thought. But there was kindness in the man’s eyes. I nodded and thanked him for the coffee.

Further down the slipway I saw Elsa, staring out across the fjord. A new boat was crossing the mirror-flat water. A fresh wave of ambulances was approaching from the rise. All else was silence.

When I looked around again the priest was gone.

I was about to return to Elsa when I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate.

CELEBRATE

That same word. Another film clip that was not a film clip. This was either a mistake, or a cruel joke. I deleted the clip and blocked the number from my phone.

There was one child on this last boat. A boy, shockingly young, statue-like in the bow, arm in a blood-blackened sling. The officer at the wheel took the key from the ignition; his colleagues moored the boat to concrete posts on the jetty.

‘Oh please God, no.’

Every face turned towards Elsa. The boy stared at her, eyes wide. She had spoken the words loudly and clearly. I took my wife by the shoulder, drew her away from the group towards a rocky spit that pointed out towards the sea.

She looked across at the jetty. I followed her eye, saw the boy carried up into the air, held tightly in his mother’s arms. The arc lights picked out the wetness of their faces, the relief, the love.

‘I mean,’ Elsa said, her voice level, ‘we don’t know, of course, because no one has told us. But actually we do know, and every other parent here knows.’

She looked over her shoulder at the other parents. The group had scattered. Some stood looking out across the ink-black fjord. Others sat huddled in groups, blankets around their knees, clustered around the arc lights and the heaters. Elsa sat down, stretched her legs out along the rock, pointing out towards the island.

‘How many of us are there left?’ she said.

‘Sixty?’ I said. ‘Seventy?’

‘So that’s what? Forty missing kids? Fifty?’

‘These are just the parents who live near Oslo,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing.’

‘So it’s more?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So strange,’ she said. ‘Right now I feel calm.’

‘Because we aren’t out of hope.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, actually we are.’

The boy looked smaller than ever. He sat bolt upright, saying nothing, still in his orange life preserver, as his mother talked to the medical crew.

‘Cal,’ said Elsa, ‘you need to understand this: that boy is the last of the children.’

As the next boat drew near we saw the shrouded bodies on the deck and turned away.

A new wave of adults began to arrive. The parents of the missing, contacted by the police, setting out across the country, desperate for news.

Further up the rise were four rows of white tents. Officers were leading people inside, singly, or in pairs. Lights on metal stands threw vast shadows. You could see the stark outlines of the parents on white nylon walls, as they stood and identified their children. We saw hands raised to faces, saw shoulders bend and heads shake in disbelief.

When our turn came, a police officer led us to the nearest tent on the bottom row. On the canvas wall silhouetted figures slid a gurney into place.

‘I can wait with you, if you like,’ said the officer.

I shook my head. Elsa shook hers.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘No.’

‘Someone will be with you shortly.’

It was only then that we cried, wordless, by the white canvas wall that separated us from the body of our murdered child. We cried to prepare ourselves for what was to come: the fragmenting of bone, the tearing and obliteration of muscle and lung. We cried silently because we could not surrender to the pain, could not let it consume us, could not scream and rail and shout when we were surrounded by other parents who knew – but had not yet seen the proof – that their sons and their daughters would not be coming home.

‘Cal Curtis and Elsa Steen?’

I looked at Elsa. Elsa looked at me. She nodded.

‘Yes,’ I said, my voice as steady as I could keep it.

‘Yes,’ said Elsa.

‘This way.’

Dry earth. Stale air. Disinfectant.

The body had been covered with a hospital sheet, ruched at the thigh. Pearl-white underwear on milk-white skin in the blinding light of the arc lamp.

‘Is this how she was found?’ I asked.

The officer nodded.

Half-naked, and so very vulnerable. She must have jettisoned the kingfisher dress.

I loved her for wearing that dress. Those iridescent blues, constantly changing. So exuberant; so very unlike Licia.

‘Promise me you will have fun,’ I had said in the hall.

‘Why would you think this time would be any different?’ Vee had said. ‘You know she never does.’

‘I promise I will.’ Licia smiled a serious smile as she leaned in to kiss me, as if having fun would require preparation.

‘Love you, Licia.’

‘Love you so much, Dad.’

My little girl.

How unlike herself she was now. How strange her hand looked, palm up, fingertips bleached in the glare of the arc light, like an object I knew but could not recognize.

I turned to the police officer who stood between us and our daughter. She looked exhausted, worn out by other people’s grief.

The officer stepped out of the way. Elsa knelt down, began to draw the sheet down Licia’s torso.

‘Please,’ said the officer. ‘You mustn’t touch.’

The child-white skin. The pair of bullet wounds in her shoulder, a finger-length apart, just above the left clavicle. The bruising that radiated outwards.

Seawater had emptied the wounds of blood.

Elsa’s hand up by her mouth. ‘Oh, my …’

Something odd. Wrong.

I stepped forwards, crouched down. A beautiful face. A girl’s face, tiny pink spots the only disturbance on her otherwise perfect skin.

Elsa put three fingers on the strap of the girl’s bra, ran them up and down.

‘You mustn’t touch,’ said the officer again.

‘Elsa,’ I said. ‘Step back.’

‘This is not …’

‘I know …’

‘But …’

The girl’s lips were a fraction tighter than Licia’s. Her forehead a fraction broader; her hairline a fraction higher.

‘Fuck,’ said Elsa. ‘Oh fuck.’ She gave a confused laugh.

I turned to the officer. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Laughter is not uncommon,’ she said levelly. ‘People often swear.’

‘She doesn’t understand,’ said Elsa.

‘There is no correct response,’ said the officer reflexively. ‘You are both very much in shock. I am here …’ she gave a professional half-smile, designed to reassure. ‘… to help.’

‘This is not my daughter.’ Elsa’s eyes were blazing.

‘Also a common reaction. Would you like me to call someone?’

‘It isn’t her,’ I said.

‘Would you like to be alone?’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. ‘This girl is not Alicia Curtis. This is someone else’s daughter.’

* * *

At four the sun came up. At six someone brought us waffles and hot chocolate. At eight we agreed with the police that we would go home. All the while that other girl lay there on her steel gurney in her plain white tent, still and alone, waiting for parents who did not come.

After the last ambulance left we stood on the shoreline, eyes fixed on the fjord, as if something might change, as if some new and better reality might dislodge this one. And as the lights in the tents were extinguished one by one I felt a guilty, vertiginous hope take hold of me.

What if our daughter were not amongst the dead?

PART TWO

6

We thanked the policeman who had driven us home, walked the last fifty metres up the tarmacked path, turned left at the barrier.

Another police car was parked on the path outside the apartment. Its doors were thrown open, blocking the way. Next to it was a grey van.

At the front of the van Elsa’s father stood talking to a detective in a dirty suit.

‘Henrik,’ I said.

Henrik turned, began to walk towards us. ‘Oh, Cal,’ he said. ‘Elsa.’

The detective moved with him, tracking him. He was fifty, I guessed, face ugly with lack of sleep, his cuffs stained with late-night food.

Henrik and Elsa held each other, all sinews and silent suffering. I knew Elsa. She and her father would not cry, either of them. Not here in front of strangers.

Henrik embraced me. I heard him whisper, ‘Courage, Cal.’

I stepped away. We looked at each other, nodded. After all, we still didn’t know.

The door of the apartment building swung open. Two ponytailed female officers. The first carried Licia’s iMac in a large plastic crate, along with Vee’s gaming laptop. The other woman carried a smaller crate that contained two iPads, two old mobile phones, and my own laptop. She smiled at me as if we were friends. I saw the green drinking glass from the bathroom, spattered with toothpaste, and in the glass our toothbrushes. I did not return her smile.

Some tiny movement at the edge of my vision.

Vee was standing in her sister’s window. She looked bleached out, drained of blood.

‘You OK?’ I mouthed. Vee blinked hard and looked away. When she lifted her head to face me again, she nodded.

‘Mr Curtis?’

I turned. The detective in the dirty suit. His smile was friendly, though there was something behind the eyes that was not. He held out his hand. ‘May I have your cellphone?’

Licia’s bed was made. The blind was closed, the air stale and lifeless.

I walked to the window and wound the handle. Outside, metal slats jerked open. Light flooded in. Everything was neat, with none of the easy disorder of Vee’s bedroom. The plain blue carpet and the clean white walls and the cheap IKEA bedframe, none of which we owned. Licia had never made the room her own.

I sat down on her bed. My little girl, I would say, and she would sigh, and roll her eyes, and make her voice deep. ‘Don’t tell me I’m little. Who wants to be little?’ Still she would lean in to me briefly, before thinking better of it, pushing me laughingly away. The closest she ever got to rebellion.

I lay my head on the pillow, smelled the washing powder and the soap and the patchouli scent that make up Licia’s smell.

My little girl, I thought. Fifteen and gone. But my other daughter’s voice pulled me back.

‘Dad!’

‘Coming, Vee!’

There was Vee in the living room, balled into the rented blue sofa, a bag of cheap yellow sweets on the table in front of her, flicking through the channels on the rented TV. On every channel a new opinion over the same images, over and over and over. The bomb, the obliterated town hall, the ash raining down through the burnt air. Hard to know what you were looking at; everything grey and indistinct.

Above the sofa a two-metre square of deep red-brown. Another of Elsa’s photographs, Carmine 34. The only object in the room that we actually owned.

From the kitchen I could hear Elsa’s bare feet scuffing about.

‘Vee,’ I said. ‘Let’s eat.’

‘Not hungry. Thanks though.’ Looking at me all the while.

‘What you got in that bag?’

‘Scum bananas. They’re actually pretty good.’ Still staring at me. ‘Are you really not going to get that?’

‘Get what?’

The doorbell chimed.

Vee turned towards the hall. ‘You didn’t hear it the first time?’

‘Did it ring before?’

Vee nodded.

I walked through the dark interior of the apartment to the hall, looked at the screen on the entryphone. Edvard, staring awkwardly down at the camera.

I pressed the button, heard the door to the building swing open. I opened the front door, watched as he appeared around the corner. He was carrying a scuffed plastic bag, wearing yesterday’s shirt. He looked flat and ragged, as if he had been up all night. He reached out, hugged me awkwardly, patted my back as he stepped away.

‘Jo sends his love.’

‘Thanks, Edvard,’ I said. ‘Appreciate it.’

He gave a little half-smile. ‘I did think you might need these.’ He looked down at the plastic bag in his hand. ‘Normally they’d just download your phone and hand it back, but they’re up to their eyes right now.’

He opened the bag, handed me three simple grey mobile phones.

From his shirt pocket he took three folded envelopes. ‘Sim cards.’

‘They didn’t take mine.’ Vee was beside me, blinking up at Edvard.

Edvard smiled. ‘They will. Once they realize they haven’t.’

‘OK.’ She reached into her jeans pocket, held out her phone.

Edvard shook his head. ‘I’m not on the clock.’ He stood there for a moment, staring at Vee. ‘I can’t imagine what this is like for you, Viktoria.’ He smiled awkwardly, turned and walked briskly along the passage.

Vee watched him go, listened as his footsteps faded down the passageway. The main door swung open; it swung shut. She turned to me. ‘Jo’s so great, and Edvard’s so weird.’

She headed into the living room. I heard her sit heavily down on the sofa, followed her in.

The images had switched to aerial shots from the news helicopters. Clothing lay scattered. Bodies lined the water’s edge, some in bags.

‘Love,’ I said, ‘I don’t think watching this is a such a great idea.’

‘But yesterday, that clip they showed. Same dress. Same hair. So we know she was alive. And they never showed that bit again. Which is weird, right? We agree on that? And we agree that the bomb was a diversion? And the children on the island were the real target?’

‘We don’t know that for certain.’

‘Actually yes, we do.’ She picked up her phone, unlocked it, handed it to me.

PRESS RELEASE

All media

From the desk of Commander John Andersen

12 p.m., 23 June

‘What is this, Vee?’

‘Read it.’

At first you will call us child-murderers.

The actions we will take today are horrible, unthinkable to any civilized person. Yet the ‘children’ we eliminate on this peaceful island would soon enough have on their hands the blood of our white brothers and sisters. And so we are compelled to act.

We must learn the lesson our enemies learned long ago: that the child is never simply the child. Children are soldiers. They are transmitters of ideology. We underestimate them at our peril.

Their parents and their parents’ parents have opened our borders and left us at the mercy of an ideology that would enslave our women and emasculate our men. And thus we target this new generation of traitors. Thus shall we dismantle tomorrow’s treacherous elite, for they are lost to the ways of God and of our people.

I felt bile rising in my throat.

Our civilization must survive. The unthinkable must be thought. Children are both our greatest threat, and our most underused resource. Great men must step forward to prevent indoctrination, and when it is too late, when the child is too far gone, great men must eliminate that child as we crush the tiny flies that infest the fruit in our kitchens.

My brother and I face a stark choice – Killer or victim: which is it to be? The question is horrific to us in its cruelty, yet we ask it with love in our hearts and an easy spirit, for the answer is clear. And so it is that today we fire the first shots in a war for the emancipation of our people.

This is our gift to the nation, and to the entire European race.

Commanders John and Paul Andersen

Tactical Brigades of the Knights Templar

I looked up. Vee was watching me intently.

‘Brilliant, right?’ she said.

‘Brilliant?’

‘Everybody here trusts the police. These guys are first on the scene. I mean, you see the cleverness, don’t you, Dad? It’s using people’s naivety against them. And literally no one is discussing that.’

‘How did you find this?’

‘Not BBC or CNN or NRK, that’s for sure.’

‘Cal. A word?’ Elsa’s voice from the doorway, flat and affectless. How long had she been standing, arms around Franklin, watching us?

‘Sure.’ I got up. Vee looked at me. ‘Dad, they killed ninety people. And not one of the mainstream channels is telling us why. It’s like someone deleted Licia.’

I stood, staring at my daughter. Did she really believe there was some sort of cover-up?

‘Now would be good, Cal.’ Elsa’s voice again.

‘Coming,’ I said.

I turned towards Vee.

The intensity of her stare. ‘So go,’ she said.

Elsa waited in the middle of the kitchen floor, arms still folded around our son, who began kicking excitedly as I approached.

‘The police window for finding Licia alive is closing,’ she said, ‘and you’re trading conspiracy theories with Vee?’

‘That’s not—’

‘They should be camped out here, asking us everything we know. And you should be as worried as I am.’ Every line in Elsa’s face was etched a little deeper today.

‘I want to be sure Vee’s OK,’ I said.

‘All right, then, sorry.’ She stepped forwards and we embraced. Franklin kicked enthusiastically in Elsa’s arms. ‘I keep calling the police,’ she said quietly. ‘Because the first twenty-four hours are meant to be … I mean, they say that if you don’t … Fuck, Cal, it’s been what? Sixteen hours? How exact is the twenty-four-hour thing?’

I really had no idea.

Franklin was lying on his cushion in front of the TV, staring up at his fingers, entranced. Vee was on the sofa.

Ninety-one were now confirmed dead, the majority of them children.

‘A tragedy.’ A man’s voice, warm and deep, yet full of melody. ‘And an outrage that they should attach our name to their racialist agenda.’

Vee put down the remote.

The man wore a grey shirt with a neat grey collar. He was forty, I guessed. His hair was wild and black and had not been combed. The gold bands on the shoulder of his shirt looked almost military; the vertical creases were ironed straight.

A voice from off-screen. ‘Do you distance yourself from the actions of these men?’

‘We try to further God’s work. What these men have done is very far from that, no?’

I heard Elsa swear under her breath.

A caption on screen:

Father Bror

Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight

A concerned smile was playing at the corners of Father Bror’s mouth. There was something familiar about the kindness that radiated from him. I remembered the coffee he had passed into my hands as we waited for news of Licia.

‘That man,’ I said. ‘He was on the shore by the slipway …’

‘No, Cal,’ said Elsa. ‘No, that isn’t possible.’

‘Elsa, I swear. He handed me a coffee. Told me all would be well.’

‘Father Bror …’

‘It’s Bror,’ he was saying. ‘No need for the Father.’

‘Mr Bror, your organization describes itself as “furthering the chivalric aims of the crusader knight”. As do the Andersen brothers.’

The man Bror smiled a patient smile. ‘The Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight practises the chivalric virtues,’ he said. ‘The so-called Tactical Brigades of the Knights Templar copy and paste our texts. We farm vegetables. They murder children. We seek enlightenment. They spread dark lies. You see the difference, perhaps?’

‘But, Mr Bror—’

‘Bror means brother,’ he said. ‘So it really is just Bror.’

‘In their press release the Andersen brothers link prominently to this film.’

A blocky internet video filled the screen. Bror as a younger man, in jeans and a fisherman’s jumper. ‘These little flies,’ he was saying. ‘On our fruit. Began to enter Norway in the 1970s. And at first the cold winters killed them. Now though they have learned to adapt and they are everywhere.’

In the studio Bror gathered himself. ‘As I have explained on countless occasions, I am talking, in that clip, purely about fruit flies. This is not a veiled reference to something else, no matter how others may wish to exploit it.’

‘Yet you have described yourself as sceptical towards immigration …’

‘And I think perhaps you are confusing scepticism, which is part of our religious praxis, with acts of violence, which do not form any part of our praxis. The peaceful Muslim is our brother, our sister, our friend. No? And this video is not a racist dog whistle, no matter what you in the media might wish.’

Elsa’s fingers played across her lower lip. Her wolf eyes glowed.

‘So you are not,’ the presenter was saying, ‘an anti-Islamic organization? And you condemn the actions of the Andersens?’

‘Would you hold me responsible for the misuse others make of our good name?’

The interviewer was not letting go. ‘But you, like they, are immigration sceptics.’

‘And now you too are twisting our words. We teach scepticism in all things; it is the bedrock of our praxis. We insist that our recruits question every orthodoxy. Especially political orthodoxies. We demand that they speak with radical honesty about their innermost feelings. We are no more against immigration than we are against life itself. About which our recruits also have many sceptical questions.’

Elsa was staring at the screen, as if entranced. Vee was watching her mother intently.

‘Mum,’ said Vee. ‘Mum, how do you know that guy?’

Elsa’s hand curled around Vee’s. ‘Wow, Vee. You are good.’

‘You got this secretive smile.’

They looked at each other, Elsa’s eyes shining. ‘He was a friend once.’

No, I thought. No, he’s more to you than that. Because the way my wife was looking at the man on screen, you would swear she knew him well.

‘He seems OK,’ said Vee.

‘Yes,’ Elsa said. ‘He is OK.’

Vee made to say something more. Elsa’s phone rang. She got up off the sofa.

‘But Mum,’ said Vee.

Elsa picked up her phone. ‘Just a minute.’ She answered the call, listened, nodded. ‘Finally.’ She turned to me. ‘Police. Can we meet them in an hour?’

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