The Girl on Paper by Guillaume Musso Read Free Book Online Page B

stock of the damage. The wind had rushed in through the bay window, which had been left wide open, knocking over a crystal vase which had smashed on the floor. The torrential rain had started a small flood in my living room.
    Damn it!
    I hurried over to shut the window and then went to the kitchen to dig out a box of matches. It was only when I went back into the living room that I suddenly became aware that someone else was in the room with me.
    I turned round.
    *
    The slim, graceful outline of a woman stood out against the bluish light from outside.
    I jumped with fright, then peered closer into the darkness. As far as I could tell, the young woman was naked, covering her modesty with her hands.
    Well, this is all I need!
    ‘Who are you?’ I asked, moving closer to see her more clearly.
    ‘Oh! Don’t worry about that,’ she replied, grabbing hold of a tartan rug to wrap around herself.
    ‘What do you mean, “Don’t worry about that”? What on earth’s going on? Can I just point out that you’re in my house?’
    ‘Maybe so, but that’s no reason to—’
    ‘Who are you?’ I asked for the second time.
    ‘I would have thought you’d recognise me.’
    I was having difficulty making her out in the darkness, but in any case I didn’t recognise the voice, and I was in no mood for guessing games. I struck a match to light an old Chinese hurricane lamp that I had found in a flea market in Pasadena.
    The soft light illuminated the face of my intruder. A young woman of around twenty-five stared back at me with an expression that was half alarmed and half defiant. Water streamed from her honey-coloured hair.
    ‘I don’t see how I’m supposed to recognise you; we’ve never met.’
    She let out a mocking laugh, but I refused to play her game.
    ‘Right, that’s enough, miss! Tell me what you’re doing here!’
    ‘It’s me, Billie!’ she said, as if this were perfectly obvious, pulling the rug around her shoulders.
    I saw that she was shivering and that her teeth were chattering. It was hardly surprising: she was soaked to the bone and the room was freezing cold.
    ‘I don’t know anyone called Billie,’ I replied, turning to the large walnut cupboard which held all kinds of junk.
    I slid open the door and rummaged around in a sports bag until I found a beach towel patterned with Hawaiian palm trees.
    ‘Take this,’ I said, throwing the towel across the room to her.
    She caught it and dried her face and hair, still fixing me with that defiant stare.
    ‘Billie Donelly,’ she said, watching me carefully for my reaction.
    I stood motionless for a few moments, not really understanding what she was saying to me. Billie Donelly was one of the secondary characters in my novels. She was appealing but something of a lost soul. She worked as a nurse in a hospital in Boston. I knew that a lot of my female readers identified with her ‘girl next door’ personality, and her string of failed relationships.
    Taken aback, I stepped toward her and shone the light at her. Like Billie she was slim, energetic but sensual-looking, with a perfect heart-shaped face and slightly angular features, scattered with a few discreet freckles.
    But who was this girl? An obsessive fan? A reader who identified a little too much with my character? An attention-seeking admirer?
    ‘So you don’t believe me then?’ she asked, sitting herself down on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and picking up an apple from the fruit bowl, which she began to devour greedily.
    I put my lamp down on the wooden counter. Even though my head was still throbbing, I was trying to remain calm. Intruders breaking and entering into celebrity homes had become commonplace in Los Angeles. I had heard that one morning Stephen King had found a man armed with a knife in his bathroom; that an aspiring screenwriter had broken into Spielberg’s house just to get the director to read his script; and that one of Madonna’s more unbalanced fans had threatened to