One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway Read Free

of receptions and official functions. She had hoped their life together would improve when they became a proper family.
    In London she grew increasingly unhappy. It seemed to her that he only wanted an immaculately groomed wife and a dust-freehome. Those were the things that interested him. Not her. Nor their son.
    She felt he was forcing himself on her. He felt she was distant and not there for him. He said she was using him, and had been thinking only of her own interests when she married him.
    By the spring, Wenche had fallen into a deep depression. She would not acknowledge it, however, thinking it was her surroundings that weremaking her unhappy. She could not bear her husband, nor her existence. Her head was a mess, her life meaningless.
    One day she started packing.
    When she had been packing for three days, she told her husband she wanted to take the children home. Jens was dismayed and asked her to stay. But it seemed simpler to go.
    So she went. Left Jens, left Hyde Park, the Thames, the grey weather, the au pair,the domestic help, the life of privilege. She had lasted six months as an embassy wife.
    Back in Oslo, she filed for divorce. Now she was alone again, this time with two children.
    Wenche had nobody else. She had no relationship with her own family, which consisted of her mother and two older brothers. She had no contact with the father of her daughter. He was Swedish and had only seen his daughteronce, when she was a few months old; he had left as quickly as he arrived.
    ‘How could you give up your posh life and beautiful home in London?’ one of her few girlfriends asked.
    Well, it wasn’t London that was the problem, she now said. It had all been pretty perfect, in fact, just with the wrong man. Stubborn, temperamental and demanding were words she used to refer to her ex-husband. Cold,unaffectionate – that was how he described her.
    The marriage was past salvaging. Through a lawyer they came to an agreement. She would have Anders and he would pay child support. Under the agreement, she could live in his flat in Fritzners gate for two years.
    Three years would pass before Anders saw his father again.
    *   *   *
    Wenche’s life had been all about loss.
    It had been all about beingalone.
    The coastal town of Kragerø, 1945. As peace came, the builder’s wife got pregnant. As the birth approached, she started getting flu-like symptoms and was confined to bed by paralysis in her arms and legs. Anne Marie Behring was diagnosed with polio, a much-feared illness with no known cure. Wenche was cut out of her belly in 1946. By then, the mother was almost completely immobile fromthe waist down and one of her arms partially paralysed. Wenche was sent to an orphanage as soon as she was born and spent the first five years of her life there. Then one day the fair-haired girl was brought home. The orphanage was closing down.
    She was left to her own devices. Her father, Ole Kristian Behring, was often out at work and her mother locked herself away and scarcely went out amongpeople. No one was to laugh at her deformity.
    When Wenche was eight her father died. Home grew darker still, and her mother ever more demanding. It had been ‘wicked’ of Wenche to give her mother ‘this illness’.
    The little girl had two elder brothers. One left home when their father died, the other was aggressive and quick-tempered. He took out his feelings on his sister. He cuffed her so oftenthat the skin behind her ears was raw and he thrashed her legs with stinging nettles. Skinny little Wenche would often squeeze behind the stove when her brother was after her. His hands could not reach her there.
    Conceal and keep silent. Everything at home was tainted with shame.
    When her brother was in a bad mood she would stay out all evening, only going home when it got dark. She wanderedround Kragerø alone, she wet herself, she smelled, she knew she would be in for a hiding when she got home.
    When she was twelve, she considered