into the woods towards the old ruined church. Storm trotted along behind Ben, keenly sniffing out the scents in the undergrowth.
They reached the ruin. Too much time had passed since his last visit to the place, and it was overgrown with wild-flowers now that summer was approaching its height. Ben pulled back a hanging curtain of ivy and led Ruth through the crumbling archway. He sat down on a mossy stone, and she settled in the long grass at his feet as Storm went scouting around the walls.
He couldn’t stop himself from staring at her. He was scared to blink in case she disappeared.
‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, half-smiling. ‘Us being here like this.’
He nodded in agreement. ‘Very weird. Can you talk about what happened to you?’ he asked cautiously. After years of the worst speculation, it was a terrifying question to ask.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard about what’s done to the children the slavers take.’
‘I’ve seen the things that are done to them.’ He didn’t even want to think about it.
‘It didn’t happen to me,’ she said. ‘Nobody raped me. Nobody drugged me. Really. I’m OK.’
He breathed out a long, long sigh. Like letting out twenty-three years’ worth of pent-up pain. He said nothing for a few moments. Took a pack of Gauloises and his Zippo out of his pocket and offered her one.
‘I don’t smoke cigarettes,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me. You prefer the other stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘It settles my nerves. I don’t smoke it a lot though.’
Storm was scratching at the mossy earth at the foot of the wall, on the trail of a scent. Suddenly he stopped, stiffened, as if listening out for some imperceptible sound far beyond the range of human hearing. His shaggy hackles rose, and a long, low growl rumbled from his throat.
‘Go and lie down,’ Ben commanded softly. The dog glanced at him, then obeyed.
Ben lit a cigarette, clanged his lighter shut and dropped it back into the breast pocket of his denim shirt. ‘Do you remember the day you disappeared?’ he asked Ruth.
‘It was a long time ago. It’s like a dream.’
‘Start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything.’
She leaned back against the rough stone wall. ‘I remember being with them. The kidnappers. I remember being inside a car, or a truck. It’s not so clear any more. They took me across the desert, and we met up with these other men. Like a rendezvous, in a tent pitched out there in the sand seas, the middle of nowhere. There was money on the table. I think they were meeting up to sell me on, you know? But then they started arguing. A fight broke out. One of them had a sword.’ She chuckled. ‘It was probably just a knife, but I remember thinking how huge it looked. He took it out, and another man shot him. They were so busy fighting, nobody saw me slip away. I ran and ran. I was scrambling up and down all these dunes that went on forever. I remember how hot the sand was. It burned my hands and feet. But I kept going, because I was so scared they were going to catch me. But then I remember hearing this strange noise behind me, like a roaring. I turned and saw what looked like a giant wave coming towards me.’
‘A sandstorm,’ Ben said.
She nodded. ‘I just ran like hell. The roaring got louder and louder. Then I saw this old van, buried up to its wheels in the sand. God knows how long it had been left abandoned there, but it saved me. I managed to climb in the back before the storm hit. That’s all I remember for a long time.’
Ruth paused. ‘I woke up lying in a soft bed of blankets and skins. I was in a Bedouin tent. Faces looking down at me, of the people who’d found me after the storm. I was ill for weeks, from dehydration and shock. They tended me, nursed me and fed me, and then I just stayed with them.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘They were kind, wonderful people. They called me “Little Moon” in their language.’
‘Because of the scar?’
She pulled back her sleeve and ran her finger along the white crescent shape on her skin. ‘My little moon.’
‘How long did you stay with them?’
‘Three years, more or less. I don’t really know. We moved around, setting up camp here and there. They sold camels, skins, beads. Never in one place for long.’
He shook his head in amazement. ‘And all that time, we were searching frantically for you.’
‘I often thought about you. All of you, but especially you, Ben. I cried myself to sleep every night for the first year. But, you know, time passes.’
‘And children adapt,’ he said.
‘And so that’s how it was for me. My new life, my new family. But I guess that they knew they couldn’t keep me forever. A little white girl growing up among the desert people, someone would have noticed sooner or later. And someone did.’
‘The Steiners,’ he said.
‘I remember when I first met them. We’d travelled near an oasis to fill up with water. I was playing in the bushes with some of the other kids when this huge bus came along. The kids all ran over to it. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I ran over as well. At first we all thought it was a tourist bus, but then when we got up close, we realised it was just these two people and their driver. All tourists seemed like rich folks to us, but this was just incredible. They were giving out toys and money to the kids, and we were all going wild. I was so excited, I didn’t notice that my head garb had slipped down. That was when Silvia saw my hair, and my blue eyes. I remember her watching me, pointing me out to him.’
‘Maximilian.’
She pulled a face. ‘Prick. Then, anyway, next thing I knew, there was this whole discussion going on, and everyone was crying and saying I had to go. After that, everything changed for me. For the second time, I was taken from everything I’d known, my friends, my new family. Suddenly I’m on a plane to Europe, and then a helicopter and this amazing fairytale house, and I’m wearing these new clothes. It was winter there, and so cold. A whole different world. From a poor Bedouin urchin to this little twelve-year-old rich kid.’
‘So then Steiner adopted you,’ Ben said. ‘And he named you Luna, taken from your Bedouin name. Except that he must have cut a few corners and greased a few palms to make the adoption possible.’
‘Oh, he’s very good at that.’
‘So what should I call you? Are you Luna, or Ruth?’
‘Everyone’s always known me as Luna. I hardly remember what it’s like to be Ruth any more.’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘But maybe I need to start learning to be her again. I’d like you to call me Ruth.’
At that moment, the dog got to his feet, his lip curling back to show his fangs. Another long, low growl. He was intently focused on something behind the trees.
‘Quiet,’ Ben called over to him. Storm let out a little whimper and lay back down.
‘What’s bothering him?’ she said, peering over towards the trees.
‘There’s probably a boar in there or something.’ There were more important things on Ben’s mind than whatever was preoccupying the dog. ‘Why did you think I was dead?’
‘I was brought up believing it. That’s what Maximilian told me. He said there’d been this whole investigation. That he’d used every bit of his influence to find my family, and that what had come out was that my parents and my brother had been killed. I was only a kid. What was I supposed to think? At the time, I just accepted the reality I was presented with.’
Ben narrowed his eyes. ‘Killed how?’
‘An air crash, in India. A small tourist plane smashed into a mountain. He showed me the press cuttings. I saw it clearly. It was all there. Alistair Hope, his wife Kathleen and their son Benedict. He couldn’t have got that wrong, could he?’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t think there was any mistake.’ Rage was building inside him. Steiner’s wealth gave him the power to fake just about anything he wanted. But to deliberately fabricate a lie of this magnitude – why would he do such a thing?
‘I don’t understand,’ she muttered. ‘When I was seventeen I wanted to find out more about what had happened. Maybe I didn’t totally trust Maximilian, I don’t know. I hired a private investigator from Bern to trace information about you all. He came back to me with exactly the same stuff Maximilian had.’
Ben said nothing.
Realisation crossed her face like a passing shadow. ‘The bastard got to him. Paid him off. Shit. I should have
