Chapter Twenty-One #2
‘Ruth Hall,’ she said. For a long moment there was silence, then Alison and Steve exchanged glances. It was Alison who spoke.
‘She was only with us for two weeks. And it was years ago. I don’t think we can help you.’
Slowly, Judith withdrew her phone. She held it between her hands.
‘She came to you with her sister,’ Judith said.
Again, that glance between them.
‘Yes,’ said Steve.
‘Miriam and Ruth Hall were once Margaux and Renée Palmer. They came to you after their father killed their mother, then himself.’ Judith delivered the statement like she already knew it to be fact, then held her breath.
‘It was a terrible thing,’ Alison said, nodding. ‘We thought we’d seen and heard the worst of humanity at that stage, and then Miriam and Ruth came to us.’
That was it. The confirmation Judith had been looking for. She felt that burst of adrenaline that always came with a breakthrough in a case.
‘Why only two weeks?’ Judith asked. ‘Was it a temporary placement?’
This time, Steve and Alison didn’t look at each other, but there was a deepening tension. A discomfort with her questions.
‘Why are you asking about Miriam and Ruth?’ Alison said. ‘You must know that Miriam died a long time ago. And we haven’t seen Ruth since . . . since she left us.’
It was difficult to know how to answer that question.
‘I can’t tell you details of the investigation at the moment.’
‘But it’s something to do with my guns,’ Steve said, his eyes on her, his expression heavy and concerned.
Judith nodded. ‘Anything you can tell me would be helpful at this stage.’
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 we were told 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.
‘That’s it,’ Steve said.
‘But it didn’t end there,’ Judith said, her eyes going from Alison to Steve and back again.
‘It did not,’ Alison agreed.
‘That night, when we were sleeping, Ruth went to the garage,’ Steve said. ‘She found my secateurs. The big ones I use to trim back the shrubbery. And she came to our bedroom and she—’
‘She chopped off the tip of Steve’s index finger,’ Alison said, shortly.
‘I woke up to him shouting and blood everywhere and Ruth just standing there, calm as you like. She wasn’t afraid or upset or anything really.
I called an ambulance and I called the service.
I took the secateurs away from Ruth, and by then all the kids were up and Miriam took Ruth away to their room. ’
Steve nodded. ‘The thing is, after that Ruth couldn’t stay with us. We had too many other kids living with us. It wouldn’t have been safe. She wasn’t safe.’
‘So they took her away?’
‘She went to a mental health treatment facility,’ he said.
‘Miriam stayed on with us for a few months, but it was very difficult. Ruth kept running away. She came to the house a few times. She snuck back here at night. It was hard for Miriam. She asked to move, eventually. She said it was so that she could be nearer the place that Ruth was living in, so she could visit more often.’
‘Did you stay in touch?’ Judith asked.
Alison shook her head. ‘You don’t really, unless that’s what the child wants.
And in this case . . . no. It was a clean break.
I did hear from a social worker years later that Ruth got a place at university.
I was delighted to hear it. I thought she must have turned things around.
But if you’re asking all these questions, then maybe not. ’
‘Did the social worker mention which university?’
Alison shook her head.
‘Did you have the guns when Ruth and Miriam lived with you?’ Judith asked.
Steve nodded.
‘And you kept the key in the same place? In your desk drawer?’
Again Steve nodded. ‘But the kids didn’t know about that. We kept that a secret.’
Judith didn’t say anything. From the look in Steve’s eye, she didn’t think she needed to.
‘Can I ask, did Miriam ever come back to visit you? Did she ever bring a boyfriend to meet you?’
‘No,’ Steve said. ‘I don’t think we ever heard from Miriam once she was moved on.’ His eyes met Alison’s in enquiry, and she nodded her agreement.
‘And you never heard anything more about either girl? About where they ended up?’
‘We got a call from a social worker when Miriam died,’ Steve said. ‘We were very sad to hear about it. But other than that mention of a university place, we never did hear a thing about Ruth.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ Alison said, ‘we didn’t ask.’