We only learnt of our son’s secret online life after he died at 20

I t is the summer of 1989 and a Norwegian couple return from hospital cradling their newborn son. Their names are Robert and Trude Steen, this is their first child and they have named him Mats. The early weeks pass in the delirious, hormone-flooded fug of new parenthood, Robert documenting his son’s wriggles and cries on his camcorder with a new-found paternal pride that has left him dumbfounded. And as the months pass, the camera keeps rolling. Mats grows. He sprouts bright blond Nordic hair. He drags himself to his feet and begins to toddle. His father films him waddling across their living room in a Tom and Jerry T-shirt. He was, Robert remembers, “the most beautiful, perfect child”.

From about the age of two, though, something changes. Robert and Trude cannot put their finger on it at first, but a concern for their child begins to gnaw at them. He struggles to get back to his feet when he falls. Playground obstacles become insurmountable. Robert films Mats as he stumbles and plonks to his bottom. But he just sits on the ground in his dungarees, crying and helpless. “As a parent, you know when something is wrong with your child,” Trude says. They just didn’t know what.

For two years they worry, watching purse-lipped as their son’s physical development slows then stalls. They push and persuade doctors to take their fears seriously. There are tests and examinations and then, finally, they receive the news. “It was 1pm on May 18, 1993,” Robert says. “I remember the hospital office where we were given the message. I remember everything.”

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