My Girl (6 page)

THIRTEEN

Paige had only turned her back for a minute and Chloe had vanished. She found her sitting on the floor in the toy section in front of a large purple bear with love hearts for eyes.

‘I’ll buy it for you, darling, but only if you don’t run off again.’

She took Chloe’s hand and led her to the checkout counter. The young retail assistant stifled a yawn and scanned the price tag without even looking at them.

‘Nineteen pounds ninety-nine.’

‘For a bear?’

‘That’s what it says.’

Wise arse.

Paige searched for her purse inside her handbag. When she found it and tried to pull out her debit card, change scattered all over the floor.

‘Chloe, pick them up for me, would you?’

Chloe didn’t move at first, just continued to stare up at Paige, almost as though she was frightened of her.

She doesn’t like it when I drink.

‘Please, Chloe, help Mummy.’

Paige paid for the bear as Chloe slowly picked up the coins. She opened her handbag and told Chloe to put the coins inside. She would sort it all out later when they got home.

With the bear tucked under Chloe’s arm they continued to walk around the store. Paige couldn’t remember why they were there. It hadn’t been for the bear or the shoes.

‘We could get a tie for Daddy,’ Paige said. ‘That might be nice. What colour do you think he would like?’

Chloe didn’t say anything; she was too distracted by her new bear.

‘I think red, although he loves blue,’ she went on.

They were halfway up the escalator when they heard a commotion from below.

‘STOP! STOP HER!’

The words echoed around the department store. Paige looked down the escalator to see all of the other shoppers looking up her. Paige turned around and looked up, trying to see who they were looking at, and saw the shoppers above her peering down at her too.

Me. They’re all looking at me.

Paige stared down again to see the shoppers on the escalator stand aside for a screaming woman who was running up the steps towards her. Not far behind her was a security guard.

‘I haven’t stolen anything,’ Paige said. ‘I paid for the bear, I have the receipt in my bag.’

The woman smacked Paige in the face with a clenched fist, just as they reached the top of the escalator. Paige fell on her back, pulling Chloe down with her.

‘Get off her!’ the woman yelled. ‘Let go of my daughter!’

The woman leaped forward and grabbed Chloe as the security guard snatched Paige by the hood of her coat and yanked her to her feet.

‘Get off Chloe! She’s mine! That’s my girl! That’s my daughter!’

Everyone was staring at her. The woman was taking Chloe away.

‘She’s mine!’ Paige screamed, trying to rush to her daughter, but the guard held her back.

Chloe was hugging the woman who was taking her away, sobbing into her neck.

And then Paige saw the truth: the little girl wasn’t Chloe.

She looked like Chloe: red hair, blue eyes, freckles on milky white skin – but she wasn’t Paige’s daughter.

‘Come with me,’ the guard said. ‘Don’t make this difficult.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Paige said, slurring her words and stumbling as he dragged her back towards the escalator.

‘Sorry for trying to snatch a kid?’

‘I thought she was my daughter.’

‘You can’t be that drunk, love.’

They stepped onto the escalator and took the slow journey down. There was a deafening silence as every shopper stared at Paige and the security guard, their eyes boring into her. She felt hot and disorientated, burning up beneath her coat. Her whole body was quivering. When they reached the ground floor, she vomited. The bloody bile splashed on the floor. Onlookers grimaced.

The guard spoke into his radio, documenting the act.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, bile dripping from her bottom lip. ‘This was a mistake. I was confused.’

‘Save it for the police, lady.’

Suddenly she realised how serious it was. This wasn’t just a misunderstanding – she was about to be in trouble with the police again, but this time it was for taking a child who wasn’t hers.

The guard dragged her through aisles as shoppers looked on. Mothers held their children closer, and men looked at her as though she was deranged.

Eventually, the guard led her through a doorway and into a small office, and then took her through to an even smaller, windowless room with a bench. She sat down and the door slammed shut behind her.

What the hell have I done?

FOURTEEN

‘Stop apologising, Paige. It’s getting really old.’

Maxim was really upset this time, gripping onto the steering wheel as though it were her neck. He had collected her from police custody for the second time. Maxim had rushed to the department store where the police had questioned her in the small office for over two hours. With Maxim’s help, the police didn’t see her as a perverted child-snatcher, but a deranged woman who had thought she’d found her dead daughter in the toy section. Somehow she managed to walk away without cuffs on her wrists.

The skin on her cheeks itched from the old, dried tears. The bombardment of questions had sobered her, and the adrenaline finally began to dissipate; all she wanted to do now was go to sleep and never wake up.

‘What were you
thinking
?’

‘I wasn’t. I thought… I thought the girl was… For some reason I believed Chloe wasn’t…’ She stopped talking to fight back the oncoming tears.

‘I can’t keep getting you out of these situations. You’re going to end up in prison, Paige!’

‘I know. I’m going to change, I promise.’

‘When? You’ve been doing this for the last ten years.’

‘Now – I promise.’

‘You have to, before you wind up dead. You’re running yourself into an early grave, Paige, and I can’t witness it anymore.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Maxim sighed as he pulled up to the kerb outside Paige’s house. They both sat in silence.

‘I love you so much, Paige, but I can’t keep doing this with you. I can’t sleep at night for worrying that you’re lying dead somewhere, or you’re too drunk to remember that you left the stove on, or you’ve overdosed on those damn tablets you take. The way I’m heading, I’ll be having a heart attack just like Dad had.’

Guilt stabbed at her chest like a knife.

‘I’m going to change, Maxim, I promise. I’m going to go to sleep when I get in – and when I wake up, I’m going to be a new woman.’

He pulled her into him and hugged her tight. His facial hair scratched her forehead.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘Love you, too,’ she replied, feeling uncomfortable inside a man’s arms.

‘I think you should stay with me. You can’t be trusted to live on your own.’

‘I’m fine Maxim, please. I need to do this on my own.’

She shut the car door and headed inside.

The moment she got inside, she poured herself a glass of wine to calm her nerves and swallowed down two pills. She drained the glass and headed upstairs. She was going to go to sleep and wake up to a new day, a fresh start, a better Paige.

***

Paige woke up to the smell of smoke, but it wasn’t the smoke she was used to. This smoke was dark and thick, and scratched her throat as though she had swallowed razor blades. An alarm wailed from downstairs.

She sat up and tried to heave the smoke from her lungs, but coughing only seemed to make it worse. The room was dark and clouded with the toxic black smoke; every time she coughed it up, she drew more in, as though she were drowning in it. She crawled out of bed, staggered through the black fog to the window and threw it open, revealing the night sky and the lights turning on in the windows of the houses across the street. She breathed in the clean air as smoke billowed out around her. She coughed so hard that she retched, spewing bile down to the ground below.

Neighbours began to emerge from their houses in dressing gowns and slippers, and congregated outside the burning house. Panic swept through them. Voices shouted up to her. Children were crying.

The floor beneath her bare feet was hot – so hot she could barely stand on it. She looked back into the room, trying to see if there were flames, but the smoke stung her eyes like sharp needles. She snapped her head back as her eyes began to stream.

I have to jump.

Her head felt heavy as the carbon dioxide began to fill her body.

If I don’t jump I’ll burn alive.

The faint sound of sirens called in the distance, but they wouldn’t arrive in time to save her. If she wanted to live, she had to jump.

She lifted one shaking leg over the windowsill, and then the other, and stared down at the ground that seemed so far away.

‘I can’t do it!’ she cried out to the onlookers.

A woman screamed. People watched from behind twitching curtains. People were yelling out to her. The smoke was getting thicker and her head was getting lighter.

The next thing she knew she was falling. Her body slammed to the ground with such a jolt that she heard a bone snap. She looked up at the window, at the black smoke gushing out and rising into the sky.

Neighbours rushed around her, just as everything went dark.

FIFTEEN

Her home burned to the ground, and all of her belongings and memories went up in smoke, yet her first thought had been:
all of my pills are gone. Sleeping with Dr Abdullah has been for nothing.

Sitting on Maxim’s sofa with a mug of tea in one hand and a cast fixed to the other, Paige tried to digest the fact that everything of Chloe’s, of Ryan’s, of hers, was now crumbling ash or charred black.

It had been her fault. The firefighters suspected that the fire had started from a cigarette. She couldn’t even remember smoking when she got home.

The doctor said that nearly dying in the fire had saved her life. If she hadn’t been admitted to hospital, she may not have discovered she had alcoholic hepatitis until it was too late. The blood in her urine and vomit, the back pain, the confusion – they were all side effects of her failing liver. She had been slowly killing herself for the last ten years. Deep down, she had known that all along.

She had been so sure that she wasn’t to blame for cutting Ryan from the photos or dumping his belongings, but mistaking a young girl for her dead daughter had been her undoing – she couldn’t blame that on someone else.
Did someone take the gun? Or had it never existed in the first place? Just how sick am I?

The occurrences weren’t happening
to
her, they were
because
of her, and she had been lucky to leave with her life. Her only injuries were a broken wrist, bruised ribs, a sprained ankle, and a mild concussion.

Paige was taking chlordiazepoxide to ease her withdrawal symptoms as she stopped drinking alcohol, and smaller doses of the diazepam and codeine that her body had come to depend on. She hadn’t been given a choice; the decision had been made for her: no more alcohol or drugs.

Maxim didn’t drink much, but that didn’t stop Paige from searching his house. There were two places she hadn’t checked yet: a bedroom upstairs and the cupboard under the stairs. Both were locked. She decided to hunt for the keys the moment he left the house on another errand.

She was glad to be out of the hospital. It wasn’t just the needles and clinical smell she was glad to be free of, but the frenzied media presence that plagued the hospital like a swarm of wasps.

A two-year-old boy had been left outside the hospital, severely ill with pneumonia and close to death. A photo of him had been leaked to the press, prompting reporters and camera crews – who were longing to unearth the secret of the mystery boy without a family – to build a base outside the building. The hospital was on lockdown, with policemen surrounding the paediatric ward and badgering every visitor who attempted to enter the walls of the hospital. Paige hadn’t noticed at first, she was too spaced out from the medication, but during her second night, she heard the commotion outside, saw the flashes of cameras at the windows, and overheard the nurses whispering about the boy while at their station. When Paige had left the hospital to meet Maxim in the car park, she saw the boy’s green, helpless eyes staring out from every newspaper stand, and thought to herself,
at least my life isn’t that bad
.

When the front door opened, Paige expected to see Maxim, but instead, she saw her father, his face filled with worry. He approached her without a word and held her tight.

‘I’m safe, Dad.’

‘For how long?’

‘I’m changing. I promise. I haven’t had a drink in nearly four days and I’m slowly coming off the pills.’

He pulled away from her and then looked into her eyes, cupping her face in his hands.

‘You have no idea how much I love you, do you?’

Tears filled his eyes, begging to fall. Paige had only seen her father cry once, and that was at her mother’s funeral.

He shook his head, as though angry at the tears, and sat next to her on the sofa.

‘I got you cigarettes, in case Maxim is too proud to buy them.’

He took the packet out of his jacket pocket and put it on her lap.

‘Wow, a dig at Maxim. I never thought I’d see the day.’

‘He’s a vicar. Vicars can’t be seen buying twenty superkings.’

They smiled knowingly at each other.

‘I bought you some bits. I wasn’t sure what you might need.’ He handed her the plastic bag. Inside were underwear and a bra, a toothbrush and toothpaste, sanitary towels and a hairbrush. A cheap pair of flat pumps rested at the bottom. A couple of blouses and supermarket-brand jeans were folded in together. She could see from the labels that they weren’t her size.

‘Thank you, Dad.’

‘If you need anything else, let me know and I’ll pop out and get it.’

‘Dad, I haven’t said this enough, so I’m going to keep saying it until you’re sick of hearing it: I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through. I’ve been so selfish, only thinking of my own pain when I was causing other people grief.’

Her dad took her hand and squeezed it tight.

‘Just get better, that’s all I want. No apologies needed – I’ll be happy with a peaceful night’s sleep.’

‘You’ll get it. Especially now I’m staying here with Maxim. He can keep an eye on me and stop me from relapsing.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me?’

‘Dad, you have a liquor cabinet. I’d prise open any lock you put on it and drink the place dry. At least here there isn’t any temptation. Besides, you don’t have any room for me.’

‘I just worry that… being here with Maxim…’

‘You’re worried that I’m living in the house that overlooks the graves of my husband and daughter.’

He hesitated, scanning her face, and nodded.

‘If anything, I feel better knowing that they are so close. I’ve lost everything they had, we had. Now, all I have are memories and their graves. I want to be close to them.’

‘I understand. But if you change your mind…’

The front door opened and Maxim entered. His cheeks were red from the chilly autumn air, and orange and red leaves followed him into the house.

‘Dad,’ he said. ‘How’re you?’

‘Fine, son. Just checking in on the patient.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll nurse her back to health.’

He took the shopping bags into the kitchen and out of sight.

Her dad leaned in, holding her hand again, and gave it a squeeze.

‘Remember,’ he said, quietly. ‘You can always come and stay with me.’

Maxim entered the room. ‘Anyone for tea?’

‘I’m going to go,’ their father said, as he stood up. ‘I’ll come round in a few days.’

‘Yeah?’ Maxim replied.

‘Yeah. Maybe we could have dinner.’

‘That’d be nice,’ Paige said.

‘I guess so,’ Maxim said. ‘Paige, I was hoping you’d come with me to the church today.’

Oh great.

‘I’d love to.’

‘Brilliant. You’d best get ready.’ He turned to their father. ‘Good seeing you, Dad.’ Maxim walked him to the door.

 Their father gave Paige a wave before he left the house.

‘I don’t have anything to wear to the service. I only have this.’ She looked down at the tracksuit that Maxim had lent her. ‘Dad bought me some clothes, but they aren’t my size either.’

‘We probably don’t have time to go shopping, but I have a long coat you could wear. What’s in the bags?’

‘The stuff that Dad brought over. The shoes and tights will work.’

‘You can wear them with the coat until we go shopping.’

She smiled politely, as he wandered upstairs to get the coat. She suddenly felt like she was a child again, being offered to be taken places, sheltered, as though she were incapable of following her own lead. She didn’t have a home of her own, a car, money, or belongings. Perhaps she needed to be guided until she could be trusted.

‘Here,’ Maxim said, coming down with the black coat.

Paige got up and took the coat from him, checking it over.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve probably got time to freshen up. Forty-five minutes, all right? I can meet you over at the church.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m really glad to have you here, Pudge.’ He seemed genuinely happy, and his green eyes had a brightness in them that she hadn’t seen in a while. He must have been lonely, too. ‘It’s like we’re kids again.’

***

The bathroom was freezing. Even under the hot water, the cold air bit at her wet skin. She kept the showerhead low and her plaster cast high, away from the spray. The old windows allowed a cold draft to seep into the small house; the panes shivered in their frames.

Paige got out of the shower, and dried herself down as her teeth chattered. She quickly wrapped herself in Maxim’s dressing gown, which had been hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and wrapped her wet hair in a towel.

Back in the bedroom she had been told to call her own, she tried on the clothes her father had bought for her. They looked awful. She looked down at the black coat, the pair of tights, the baggy knickers, and the basic black pumps that waited for her on the bed. Paige regretted agreeing to go to the church. She would freeze.

After she had brushed her hair to let it air-dry into natural waves, she put on the underwear and tights that her father had picked out for her and tried on the coat, which was cut low and revealed too much of her chest. She sneaked into Maxim’s bedroom to look for a scarf to cover her cleavage.

His room was basic and bland: a double bed with a black metal frame, a cross nailed on the wall above it, two bedside tables – one used, one not; a Bible rested on the pine chest of drawers next to the small wardrobe. She looked in the drawers and found a bright red scarf. She wrapped it around her neck and returned to her room.

‘It’ll have to do,’ she told her reflection, and slipped her feet into the small pumps that crammed her toes together. Maxim’s scarf itched against her skin, but she preferred to wear it than flash her breasts at his congregation.

She stepped out into the beautiful autumnal day. Yellow, orange, and red leaves fell from the trees surrounding the house, littering the green lawn and the pathway leading to the church. The beauty didn’t escape her and, despite having lost everything, she smiled as she breathed in the fresh air and felt her cheeks flush red.

Walking down the path to the church, she wondered if this was exactly what she needed: an escape from everything she knew. Here, she was away from the house and all of the memories that had been trapped inside it and had kept her in the past. She was away from the sofa she used to drink on, and the bath where Ryan had ended his life, and where Chloe’s room had only been a wall away. Staying in Maxim’s house meant she had fewer reminders of her past.

Before entering the church, she walked through the graveyard, listening to the gravel crunch underfoot, trying to ignore the pain in her ankle.

She stood before their graves: Chloe and Ryan, side by side. She might be alone, but they weren’t. There may be only a part of Chloe beneath the earth, but it was enough. At least a part of her was at rest, next to her father. Paige looked at Ryan’s crushed gravestone, and began to pick up the rubble. She found pieces of his name etched into bits of the broken stone, and managed to line up the rocks with the letters to read his name.

‘Ryan… I forgive you.’

She walked towards the church feeling lighter, with a sense of clarity she hadn’t felt in years. She was free from alcohol, free from pills, feeling less grief than she had felt in a long, long time. The pain was still there, as it always would be, but for the first time, she felt like might survive it.

***

Paige stood next to Maxim at the door to the church as he greeted his congregation. He smiled and shook hands, while she handed out the hymn booklets. There weren’t many people – only ten or so, all over the age of forty. Paige stood awkwardly and smiled at the strangers while sweating from the thick, itchy scarf around her neck. She longed to take it off, but was afraid of revealing the bare skin beneath.

Just then, Dr Abdullah walked towards them, his arm linked with that of a woman of his own age and ethnicity. Paige dropped the hymnbooks. Dr Abdullah’s eyes met Paige’s: they were both terrified; the woman and Maxim looked between them in confusion.

‘Are you all right?’ Maxim asked.

‘I’m fine, just clumsy.’

She bent at her knees to pick them up, and saw the doctor’s companion do the same, She gave Paige a kind smile.

Don’t smile at me. You should hate me.

‘Thanks,’ she said, as she noticed the ring on the woman’s finger.

‘No problem,’ Mrs Abdullah said, keeping two books for her and the doctor. He refused to look at Paige, as though another glance would give them away.

Paige straightened her hair and adjusted the hem of the coat, suddenly feeling exposed.

‘Do you know the doctor?’ Maxim asked when they were alone again.

‘He’s my GP.’

‘Do you always react that way when you see people you know?’

‘No, not always.’

When everyone was seated, Maxim made his way to the pulpit and began the service. Paige sat on the back pew and allowed herself to take off the scarf before she began to drip with sweat, wondering how long it would take until the service was over and she could get away from the doctor. His wife was beautiful, with long dark hair, hazel eyes, youthful skin – and a warm smile that Paige felt unworthy of. They were sitting five rows in front of her, and every so often the doctor would glance back to check she was still there. Paige could see the cut on his head had scabbed over and was surrounded by a purple bruise.

Dressed in just the coat and tights, Paige couldn’t help but feel like a whore again, especially under the doctor’s glare. Only an hour before she had been walking towards the church feeling uplifted, free from her previous burdens, but being near the doctor brought back shame. She felt judged and dirty. She longed to get back into the cold shower and scrub her skin until she felt clean again.

While Maxim delivered his sermon, he frequently looked at Paige with a smile.

 
At least my presence makes him happy,
she thought, crossing her legs and pulling down the hem of the coat again. The doctor glanced at her.

I need to get out of here. I need a drink. I need something.