Suddenly she could not stop screaming.
She howled, she yelled, louder than everyone around her. All the strength she had left was channelled into sound.
She gasped for breath, and collapsed in exhaustion.
Then she got a place in a boat.
‘Don’t look towards the island,’ said the boat driver. ‘Look straight ahead, don’t turn round!’
Some looked anyway, and screamed.
All along the shore lay young people, some halfway out of the water, others on the rocks. In some places, the rock was stained red. Bloody clothes lay abandoned. There were so many clothes, so many shoes. Left by those who swam for it.
‘I will never play Call of Duty again,’ said a boy in Lara’s boat.
They landed at Utvika Camping. On the beach, people met them with blankets and quilts.
They know what has happened out there! Lara was abruptly returned to the real world. It had actually happened!
She asked everybody she saw if they had seen Bano. ‘Yes, she’s alive,’ one boy said. ‘I think somebody said they’d spoken to her.’ Another person thought they had seen her in a tent.
There were anguished cries, tears and panic. Some were in shock, moving mechanically, their gaze empty. Some had to be lifted ashore, and lay apathetically where they were put down. Others were terrified of everyone; their eyes said, ‘Are you going to try to kill me, too?’
Up on the road, a line of cars stood ready, volunteers who drove the youngsters to the assembly point and then came back for more. But Lara did not want to leave until Bano was safely ashore. She knew her sister could not have arrived yet, because Bano would have waited for her if she had got here first.
Finally, three of Lara’s friends made her come in a car with them. ‘Everyone’s supposed to assemble at Sundvolden Hotel,’ they said. ‘Bano’s probably there.’
The car radio was on, and there was a report that the perpetrator was Norwegian.
In the car, somebody lent Lara a phone. She rang her father.
‘We’re on our way to fetch you,’ he cried.
When news started to come through of the shooting on Utøya, all the neighbours had gathered at the Rashids’. They, too, tried ringing the numbers on the TV screen, but failed to get though. One of the neighbours had found out that a centre for next of kin had been set up at the Thon Hotel in Sandvika. Now they were in a taxi on their way there, because Mustafa was under too much nervous strain to drive himself. He and Bayan picked up Ali from the little field near by, where the fourteen-year-old had been playing football with some friends. They could look after him, the friends’ parents said, but no, Ali wanted to come along to fetch his sisters.
‘How are you?’ Lara’s father asked her.
Lara went quiet. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Dad… I don’t know where Bano is.’
‘Aren’t you with her?’
Lara wept.
They agreed that the first to hear anything from Bano would ring the other.
Ali was sitting in the back seat with Bayan. He tried to reassure his mother. ‘You know how smart Bano is. She’s the best at finding good places to hide. That’s why nobody’s found her yet!’
Their taxi driver was from Morocco and had a copy of the Qur’an in the dashboard. Bayan read the holy scripture and asked God to look after their elder daughter, their firstborn.
Mustafa sat in the front, muttering to himself.
God, there is no god but He, Living and Everlasting. Neither slumber overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs what is in the heavens and what is on earth.
It was the same prayer, Ayat al-Kursi, that he had prayed in the boat on the Khabur river between Iraq and Syria, the prayer he had turned to as he lay sleepless during the civil war.
He knows their present affairs and their past. And they do not grasp of His knowledge except what He wills. His throne encompasses the heavens and the earth; Preserving them is no burden to him. He is the Exalted, the Majestic.
It was a long time since he had needed that prayer.
In Sandvika they had a long wait before they were informed that everyone from Utøya had been sent to Sundvolden Hotel by the Tyrifjord. Bano did not ring. Bayan wept and groaned. ‘My child, my child!’ she sobbed.
One of the other mothers took care of her. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said the slender woman, putting her arm round her. Her name was Kirsten and she also had a child on the island, she said. His name was Håvard, and he was the leader of the Oslo AUF. They had not heard anything from their son for some hours now, either. He had sent them the last message just after six, from his hiding place by the pumping station. Kirsten offered them a lift in their family’s car to Sundvolden. But with Ali they were too many, so they took a taxi.
It was starting to get dark as they set off on the long circuit of the Tyrifjord.
‘Everything will be fine,’ Bayan said to Ali as they got into another back seat. ‘We’ll soon have both the girls with us.’
The taxi turned out of Sandvika, and Bayan looked at her son and smiled. ‘You’ll see, Bano will ring soon and say: “I’m fine!”’
At Sundvolden Hotel, Lara could not share in the scenes of joy as people were reunited. She went out into the rain in her already sodden clothes. She had no more tears left, no more screams.
She waited in the car park outside for the buses and cars bringing young people from Utøya. She scrutinised the vehicles, her eyes surveying windows and doors and fixing on every figure to climb out in front of her, then moving on.
There was a pale, red-headed boy with freckles standing at a slight distance. He was soaked through. Torje had stayed hidden in the hole in the rock at the waterline for a long time. When a boat came to rescue youngsters from the water, he swam towards it. He was almost there when shots began to whistle overhead. The boat beat a rapid retreat. Torje was left alone in the water. He swam back to the island and went ashore. He was too cold to swim out again to the hiding place. On several occasions, Torje was close to the gunman, but he always managed to get away or hide.
The fourteen-year-old rang his parents once the bus had brought him from the jetty. They were on their way. They had waited three hours at Sollihøgda and then they had decided to drive almost all the way round the Tyrifjord. They had rung, rung off, and rung again. Torje and Viljar grew younger and younger in their mother’s mind as they drove. By the time they came into Sundvolden, she was seeing them as two tiny tots.
Torje was waiting for Viljar and Johannes. His big brother and his best friend.
Then someone told him no more buses would be coming.
‘When Bano Rashid arrives, can you tell her this is our room number?’
Lara was exhausted with waiting, and since there were no more buses coming she’d gone in and asked for a room. They gave her a key. ‘Bano’s got long dark hair and, well, she looks like me. She’s my older sister.’
She dragged herself over to the lift.
She’s alive, thought Lara as she got up to the room. She had borrowed a computer at reception and had put a heart on Bano’s Facebook page.
She must be alive, because if she were dead, I would feel it. And I don’t feel as if she’s dead, she said to herself.
In a room in the same wing of the hotel, Margrethe looked at the king-size bed.
This posh room! How she hated this posh room! It was all wrong.
‘We’ll get in the car and come for you,’ her parents in Stavanger had said when she finally rang home to tell them she was alive.