Alison sighed. ‘Well, Miriam and Ruth came to us four or five days after the tragedy. They’d been in hospital before that, recovering.’
‘I understood that they weren’t injured.’
Alison’s eyes widened. ‘They spent half the night in the water, and then sat with their poor dead mother for god knows how long before they were found. If you don’t consider that injured, then I don’t know what would qualify.’
‘In the water?’
‘Their wretched father was looking for them. Up and down the beach in the dark, calling out their names. Miriam—Margaux, that is—knew what was up. Charlie Palmer was going to kill the lot of them. He knew that Anita had been to the police. When he went to get his gun, Anita fled with the girls, down the cliff path to the beach. I don’t know why she didn’t go to the road. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight, or maybe she couldn’t get to it. But Miriam told me that when they reached the beach, Anita turned back. She told the girls to run, and she turned back. To try to stop him, maybe. Though I think she knew that there’d be no stopping him. I think she went back to slow him down, to give her girls a chance. Miriam told me that she held on to Ruth’s hand and they ran up the end of the beach, to the rock pools. When she heard the gunshot, Miriam took her sister into the water. They ducked under a rocky outcrop, and they hid there for hours, listening to their father screaming their names.’
‘My god,’ Judith said. She could see it. Hear it. The darkness, the sound of the waves, the little girls, trying to stay hidden.
Alison nodded. She reached out and took Steve’s hand. His right hand. Again Judith noticed that scar, the way his right index finger was shorter than it should have been. Alison ran her thumb over the injury.
‘Eventually, Palmer stopped shouting and went away. Of course, he went home and shot himself, but the girls weren’t to know that. They must have been so afraid to come out, but it was so cold, if they’d stayed in the water much longer they would have died of exposure. As it was, Miriam had to drag Ruth out, half-carry her across the sand. And then what was their reward for all that bravery?’
‘They found their mother’s body,’ Judith said.
‘They did.’
There was silence for a long moment. In the distance, Judith could hear a dog barking, the sound of a lawnmower starting up. She could smell lavender.
‘They were good girls,’ Steve said, his voice a little husky.
Alison gave him a sideways look. ‘Well,’ she said.
Judith waited.
‘It was a little more complicated than that,’ Alison said.
Again, Judith waited. Alison was a talker. All she needed was space.
‘Miriam was a quiet, gentle girl. She was quite afraid, you could see that straight away. She was too eager to please. Nervous of offending. Keen to learn all the rules so she could make sure not to break them. The kind of kid who wants more rules, rather than fewer, because rules made her feel safer.’
‘And Ruth?’
Alison seemed to struggle for words, and Steve stepped in.
‘Ruth was a bit damaged,’ he said. ‘It’s to be expected, given what she’d been through. We were warned. We can’t say we weren’t warned.’
Alison made a scoffing sound. Steve glanced at her before continuing.
‘Well, maybe not warned, exactly. But weweretold that Ruth might have a bit of trouble bonding. We thought that was to be expected.’
‘It wasn’t new to us either,’ Alison said. ‘We’d had kids with troubled backgrounds before. We thought we’d seen it all.’
‘What happened?’ Judith asked.
The Giffords seemed to reach a silent agreement. Alison was the one to tell the story.
‘It happened two weeks after the girls arrived. There was some kind of altercation between one of the other girls and Miriam. We never did find out what happened, exactly, except that there was an exchange of words, nothing physical. But Ruth went for the other girl, biting and scratching, all of that. Steve was there, and he pulled her off.’
‘It was Bella, I think. There was an argument between Miriam and Bella. I was pretty sure that Bella had been the one to start it. Like Alison said, Miriam was the farthest thing from a troublemaker. But Ruth, she was just vicious and she wouldn’t tolerate anyone hurting her sister. I felt for her, you know? It had only been a month since her mother died, since... everything. But she had to know she couldn’t hit or bite the other kids.’
‘What did you do?’ Judith asked quietly. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud. The noise of the lawnmower seemed to grow more distant.
‘I pulled her off,’ Steve said. ‘I set her down a couple of metres away from the other girls. I told Ruth she couldn’t carry on like that. I told her that she’d hurt Bella. I shook my finger at her.’
‘That’s it?’ Judith asked.