Bano hugged her.
‘But you and Dad will have to tighten your belts and try to save a bit, okay?’ her mother said. ‘And you girls mustn’t have such long showers!’
Bano stayed in bed on her laptop, looking at sites that told her about New York, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park and all the cool streets in the Village. Her mother wanted to show her some pictures she had taken of her relatives in Sweden.
‘Look how lovely your cousins are. Almost as pretty as you, Bano!’ said her mother, pointing. ‘And those are their boyfriends.’
Bano’s sad expression returned.
‘Everybody’s got boyfriends except me,’ she complained. ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend, and now I’m eighteen!’
‘There’s a time for everything Bano, I’m sure you’ll find one, of course you will, a beautiful girl like you! And you meet so many people, after all.’
‘Yes, but never a boyfriend.’
‘Well you’ve got your last year in upper secondary now, and then you’ll go to university and you’re bound to meet somebody there. And what about that nice boy in your class I asked about before?’
‘Ugh, don’t bring him up again.’
Bano rested her head on her father’s pillow. Her delight at the holiday plans seemed to have evaporated, leaving only the sadness, and she turned to her mother.
‘Just think, I might never have a boyfriend in my whole life!’
‘Stop talking nonsense Bano!’
‘Mum, just think if I die single…’
That same Wednesday, the tenant at Vålstua farm had driven the Volkswagen Crafter, laden with explosives, to Oslo. He was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, having slept so little in recent nights.
Calm and steady, so he would not be stopped and checked. Calm and steady, so the bomb would be safe.
It had taken a total of nine hours to dry the last batches of picric acid and DDNP in the oven. He had thought he could do it much faster, now he was even further behind schedule.
He had also tested the fuse. The most effective method, he had read, was to insert it in a narrow surgical tube. The fuse he wanted to test as part of his final preparations was seventy-five centimetres long. That meant it would take seventy-five seconds before the explosives detonated. The fuse burnt to the end in two seconds. ‘Damn, I’m glad I checked this beforehand,’ he wrote. Two seconds would not have given him enough time to escape the explosion. No tube round the fuse, then.
Once in central Oslo, he parked the van at the Olsen’s Widow garden centre. He had made a logo for a water-treatment company and put it on the front so people would not wonder about, and possibly report, the bad smell coming from the vehicle. Then he invited his mother out to dinner, and took an early night in the fart room.
On Thursday morning he dressed in a fawn blazer and dark trousers before taking the train back to Rena. There he rang a taxi company for a cab to take him back to the farm.
‘Is that the place where there was a hash plantation?’ asked the driver manning the phone that morning.
Breivik confirmed this, and in the car he asked the local man if the case was all cleared up now.
‘Yes, the police won’t be turning up there again,’ the Rena resident replied.
This driver had been to the farm many years earlier, when it was under previous ownership; there had been cows in the fields and the place was kept in good order. As he set down the well-dressed visitor from the city, he was taken aback to see how dilapidated and overgrown the farm had become.
‘Well, welcome to our valley,’ he said, and drove off.
I Love You
‘I’m very much against it, Bano,’ said Bayan.
‘But I’ve GOT to see what it’s like! Last year we were in Kurdistan, remember. Everybody says it’s so cool!’
Bano had felt a bit better when she woke up on Thursday morning. Even though she had scarcely any voice, and certainly was not entirely well, she insisted on going out to the island.
‘But you’re sick, you ought to stay at home. And tomorrow Ali and Dad will be home, so you won’t have to be bored with only me for company. If Ali loses his match today they might even be back this evening! Then we can all be nice and cosy here together, and you can get properly well.’
‘Mum, I’ve never been to Utøya before, I’ve got to go!’
Then Lara rang. ‘Jonas Gahr Støre’s coming to speak, it’ll be really exciting! Foreign affairs! There’s going to be a Middle East debate on Israel and Palestine. You’ve got to come!’
‘Sounds great!’ exclaimed Bano. With half an eye on her mother she added, ‘I’m better now. I’ll come today.’
Her mother gave her an anxious look. But Bano had made up her mind.
‘Sibay, Daya, sibay Gro det! Tomorrow, Mum, Gro’s coming tomorrow! Just think, getting to hear Gro speak!’
Bano fetched the bag that Lara had packed for her. She was on her way out the door when her mother came up to her with the photos of their relations in Sweden. ‘Take them to Utøya so Lara can see them too.’
‘But Daya, we’ll be back on Sunday,’ laughed Bano. ‘Lara can see them when she gets home. What if I lose them, or they get wet? I’ve got to go now. I have to catch the eleven o’clock boat. Xoshim dawei, Daya! I love you, Mum!’
‘I love you, Bano,’ answered her mother and gave her a kiss.
When Bano had signed up for the summer camp she had volunteered to be part of the working group. That meant you got free food and your fee was waived. It did not occur to her now to ask if she could opt out as she was not really well. She registered on the jetty before she went on board the MS Thorbjørn.
The sun was finally peeping through. Bano was wearing some thin trousers and a sleeveless blouse. When she arrived on the island the coordinator told her to go down to the outdoor stage and put up some tents ready for the Datarock concert that evening.
‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed when she was instructed to hold up the tent poles. Luckily she spotted Lara passing by.
‘Lara!’
Her younger sister came over. ‘Lara, can you hold these?’ she asked. ‘I forgot to shave under my arms, okay!’
So Lara was roped into the working party as well.
Once the tents were up, the sun vanished behind the tallest trees. It started to turn chilly. The grassy areas were still wet from the previous day’s rain and the mosquitoes were out in force. The sisters went to the tent to get mosquito spray.
‘Shit!’ cried Bano. ‘I’ve lost the key!’
‘You locked the tent?’ asked Lara incredulously.
‘Well yes, when I was at the Hove festival loads of stuff got stolen from the tents.’
‘But this is an AUF camp! Nobody would steal here,’ said Lara.
Bano went off to look for something to open the big padlock with. Eventually she found a saw but it was really blunt, so she went back to the tool shed and asked the caretaker to see if he had any other suitable tools. She pointed to a chainsaw.
‘You’re planning to get into your tent with a chainsaw?’ laughed the caretaker. In the end he found a file that she could use to open the lock.
‘Bano, Bano!’ It was just as Lara had been thinking as she lay alone in the tent the day before: there was always so much going on when Bano was around.
Lara wasn’t in the party spirit. She just wanted to go to bed after the Datarock concert, while Bano and three other girls from the Akershus contingent were keen to do karaoke. One of them, sixteen-year-old Margrethe Bøyum Kløven, was the bass player in the girl band Blondies & Brownies, which had won the Junior Melodi Grand Prix song competition the year before, and she could really sing. You know you love me, I know you care, just shout whenever, and I’ll be there… Now they were practising ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber in the tent, so they could perform as a quartet in the karaoke.