For a while, knowing about Carúpano made me even more obsessed with you. It was so moving and impressive that you’d moved on from a tragedy of such magnitude and built a good life for yourself, a life in which you managed to offer support to others who suffered trauma. I put two and two together and realized that you paid a weekly visit to Trine Rickards’ parents, presumably out of the kindness of your heart. It wasn’t hard to understand the conflicting emotions around those visits, and why you clearly sometimes couldn’t face going. I assumed that you’d be haunted by impressions and memories of that terrible night all those years ago, the images that came so easily and convincingly to my own mind when I thought about it.

What I didn’t know back then was that I’d conjured up memories you yourself don’t have. Cognitive impairment, said Dagsavisen, but what did it mean?

I’m getting ahead of myself. I was overwhelmed by sympathy for you and your plight; I couldn’t stop thinking about what your mother said. That your hair fell out, that you couldn’t have children, that you had basically hauled yourself out of the flames and soared into the sky like a phoenix, like a hero: those were her exact words. I also thought about the other survivor, charismatic and beautiful Elisabeth Eliassen, clearly the ringleader out of the three of you, and wondered what her life might be like now. She turned out badly, your mother said, and when I thought back to that conversation, her choice of words made me angry, because it was exactly the kind of thing my mother might have said about me. She turned out badly, meaning – she turned out different to me.

I became curious about this woman who, like you, had survived unimaginable trauma but ‘turned out badly’. I made a mental note to find her.

50

Elisabeth, June

The group has fallen silent without Elisabeth noticing. She’s been lost in thought, staring at the strange imagery of the painting in front of her. She realizes that Arne, Villa Vinternatt’s visual arts therapist, has stopped in front of her and has clearly asked a question.

‘What?’ she whispers.

‘Do you want to share something about your painting with the group?’

‘Um.’

Arne watches her carefully. His face is kind and open, but when he turns to study her newest picture, done during the morning’s two-hour session in watercolor, his eyes change expression and he frowns.

‘What do you think this picture is trying to tell you?’ he asks.

‘Umm.’ She stands up, takes a couple of steps back and stands shoulder to shoulder with Arne, considering her work. She glances around the room, at her fellow residents craning their heads to get a clear view, and catches Joel’s eye. He raises an eyebrow slowly and gives her a little encouraging smile.