My Girl Read Online Free

laundry was ironed and folded neatly in the washing basket. There was a sticky note from Greta on the fridge.
    Try not to let it get so bad again, Paige.
    Paige screwed up the note and threw it in the bin.
    She sat down at the breakfast table with a fork and ate one of Maxim’s meals, cold. After half a portion, she put the dish in the fridge and poured herself a large wine. It looked as though she had stocked up on Pinot before she went driving around town and crashing into headstones. She popped six pills into her palm and swallowed them down in one go.
    Paige went back into the living room with her glass and considered sleeping on the sofa again. Ryan’s scent still lingered on the bed sheets. His unfinished book was still on the bedside table, his reading glasses resting on top. His clothes still hung on his side of the wardrobe.
    She headed upstairs and caught a glimpse of the bath she had found him in. Blood was running down the bath panel and creeping between the tiles on the floor.
    It’s not real. It’s all in your mind.
    She snatched her eyes away and stopped outside Chloe’s door. She found herself turning the handle and stepped inside.
    The smell of her filled Paige’s nostrils and warmed her heart. She quickly closed the door behind her, to stop the scent from escaping. The bed was still made. The curtains were open. Photos were stuck all over the walls like a collage: friends, family, a poster of some hunky actor that Paige could never name. Paige sat on the bed and drained her glass. It hurt remembering Chloe, being surrounded by her. Ten years had passed since Chloe had been taken from her – snatched from the roadside as she walked home from school – but to Paige, it felt like yesterday.
    ‘Who killed you, Chloe?’ she said into the room. ‘What happened to you?’
    Tears stung at her eyes. She inhaled her daughter’s sweet scent until she sobbed.
    ‘I miss you every minute of every day. I feel like a part of me died with you. I want to move on, to try and be happy, but I can’t. I can’t be happy without you.’
    She lay down on the bed, clutched her daughter’s pillow to her chest, and cried herself to sleep.

FIVE
    Paige was beckoned from her slumber by the sound of Chloe’s voice.
    It can’t be her. I must still be dreaming.
    Chloe was laughing, a young child’s laugh. She was calling for her father.
    They’re dead. This is a dream. I’ll wake up soon.
    And then she heard her own voice. She almost didn’t recognise it – it sounded so happy, so free.
    Paige sat up and looked around Chloe’s bedroom in search of her, in search of Ryan. The small television was on, with a young Chloe on the screen, ghostly behind the dust. Paige hadn’t watched their home videos in a long time. Seeing her daughter’s beaming smile and shimmering red hair, and hearing her voice and her laugh, it was all too much, like a knife to her heart.
    The video footage was from their trip to Majorca in the summer of 1997. Paige had been holding the camera, and her younger, happier voice could be heard commentating on the scene. Chloe wore a pink one-piece, and her red hair was soaked and plastered to her head and neck; she would have been about eight years old then. Ryan was noticeably younger, slimmer, happier. His nose was burnt and red, and his shoulders were peeling. They were taking it in turns to dive into the pool under the blazing hot sun while Paige scored the dives out of ten. She let Chloe win most times.
     Tears ran down Paige’s cheeks as she watched the footage, but she couldn’t seem to draw her eyes away.
    Stop watching it. You’re only hurting yourself.
    She hugged Chloe’s pillow to her chest as though it were Chloe in her arms.
    Paige watched the footage right to the end. Only when the tape turned itself off, bringing her back to the present, did she wonder how it had come to play in the first place.
    I didn’t put the tape on. I came up here and fell asleep on the bed. I didn’t hunt