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

jumping off the cliffs. The cliffs, so steep and tempting.
    But she did not jump. She always went home.
    The house was dilapidated and had no running water. She was the one who kept things in order, washed and tidied, emptied and cleaned the chamber potkept under the bed that she shared with her mother. Even so, ‘You’re fit for nothing!’ shouted her mother. ‘This is all your fault!’
    She would rather have functioning legs than a daughter.
    Wenche did not measure up, did not fit in, wasn’t good enough. She was never allowed to invite anyone home and did not make friends with any of the other girls, who were quick to taunt and exclude her. Thefamily lived such an isolated life that its members were seen as gloomy, even creepy. People kept their distance, though many of the neighbours felt sorry for the little girl who worked so hard.
    Wenche would lie in bed at night twisting her head from side to side to shut out the sounds of the house. The worst of these were the thuds as her mother moved about. She used two stools to drag herselfacross the floor. She raised them one by one, leaning her body on them in turn as she went, bringing each of them down on the floorboards with a thump.
    Wenche lay there hoping her mother would one day come to love her.
    But her mother merely became ever more demanding and dependent. Her brother ever more brutal. When Wenche was well into her teens, she happened to hear from a neighbour that hewas actually a half-brother – born outside wedlock, his father unknown – a great disgrace in Kragerø at the time. This secret had been kept from her, as had the fact that her other brother was her father’s son from an earlier marriage.
    Her mother began to complain of hearing voices in her head. And when a man moved in, Wenche’s mother accused her daughter of trying to steal him. But she stillexpected Wenche to stay at home and look after her for the rest of her life.
    When Wenche was seventeen she packed a case and left for Oslo. It was 1963. She had no qualifications and did not know anybody, but she eventually got a position as a cleaner at a hospital, and later at Tuborg brewery in Copenhagen and then as an au pair in Strasbourg. After five years on the run, from her mother andbrother, and from Kragerø, she trained as an auxiliary nurse in Porsgrunn, an hour’s travel from her hometown, and got a job at the hospital in neighbouring Skien. Once there, she discovered to her surprise that people liked her. She found herself respected and valued at work.
    She was quick, clever and considerate, her colleagues thought, even quite funny.
    When she was twenty-six she got pregnant.The baby’s Swedish father asked her to have an abortion. She insisted on keeping the child and gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth, in 1973.
    Many years were to pass before Wenche made a short visit to her home town. By then, her mother was seriously ill. According to her case notes, she increasingly suffered paranoid delusions attended by persecution mania and hallucinations. Wenche’s motherdid not leave her sickbed again and died alone in a nursing home in Kragerø. Her daughter did not attend the funeral.
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    The art of concealing anything painful or ugly had become second nature to Wenche, and would stay with her for the rest of her life. Dulling the ache beneath a polished surface.
    Every time she moved, Wenche chose to live in one of the nicer districts of Oslo, evenif she could not afford it, even if as an auxiliary nurse she did not ‘fit in’. Her attractive appearance was her own glossy façade. She was always smartly dressed and freshly coiffed when she was out and about, favouring high-heeled shoes and fitted dresses and suits from the capital’s more exclusive clothes shops.
    When she got home from London her life started to unravel. She was now in hermid-thirties and living in Jens’s flat in Fritzners gate, but did not know many people. She had no one to help her and was initially