He was looking through a number of old family photos when he spotted the girl.
Then, sifting back through, he found her time and time again. She was a pretty thing, around six or seven, about his own age back then. He remembered her as a regular playmate. As he stared at the pictures, memories came flooding back. He remembered now, how his parents had told him that she was his imaginary playmate. They had been tolerant and understanding about it at the time, saying that it was quite a normal thing for young kids to do and that it was something he would grow out of. It all seemed such a long time ago now. His father had passed away early but his mother still lived in the old house. The same house and garden that he was looking at now.
He found the whole thing very confusing. Looking at the girl in the pictures, he remembered her perfectly well. She was a regular visitor and they really hit it off. He wondered why his parents had told him she didn’t exist. No reasonable explanation came to mind and he would certainly ask his mother about it during his next visit. In the meantime, he found all those photos with her in them and placed them safely in an envelope.
It was soon after this discovery that he visited his mother and told her about it. He was looking forward to getting to the bottom of it. She listened patiently with a smile and asked to see what he had brought. He open the envelope and spread the photos out in a line across the dining table while she put her reading glasses on. He sat staring at them once again.
And there she was, gone…