Grieving mother Lorraine Ford still reads her daughter a bedtime story and “tucks her in” days after the four-year-old accidentally hanged herself – to pretend she's still alive.

The distraught 26-year-old says continuing old routines is the only way she can keep going after tragic Paige Brown is thought to have died copying a cartoon on New Year's Day.

Miss Ford said quietly: “I do everything we always did. I speak to her just like she's here.

“I tell her, like I used to every day, 'You're always Mummy's princess.' When I give her brother sweets I give them to Paige too.

“I have to believe she is still here because if I didn't I don't know what I'd do.”

Last Tuesday her partner Phil Brown, 33, found his beloved daughter hanging from the headband.

It was tied to a hammock that was holding teddy bears in her bedroom.

Her distraught parents believe she was copying a children's cartoon in which a character swings about using a rope.

Only days before the tragedy, delighted Paige had giggled as she tore open her presents on Christmas Day. The pink headband and a white one were gifts.

Miss Ford, of Hawkinge, Kent, said: “She'd been pestering me for a headband since she was two but I was worried about them and said not until she was older.

“But she was growing her fringe out, her hair kept getting in her eyes, and I thought that at four she was old enough to wear them.

“The headbands and a cheap plastic tiara were her favourite presents – even though we'd bought her some expensive ones.

“We bought the tiara to replace one she had broken – as she loved dressing up as a princess.”

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Exactly a week later, on January 1, her parents were making lunch while Paige played with her brother Kailun, two, in their bedroom.

“Paige came down and told me the headband was in the hammock,” Miss Ford told The Sun.

“I went up and I saw she had tied the band round the hammock. She kept saying she wanted her headband but it was tied so tight I was going to have to cut it.

“I didn't want to do that in front of her because it would break her heart.

“So I told her to take her brother and go downstairs for lunch. Looking back I realise Paige had been using the band to swing on.

“She loved swinging – when her grandad took her to the park she would always rush to the swings first.

“That morning she asked if she could play on the garden swing but I told her no, as it was so cold.

“I think she had tried to make her own swing – I keep wondering if I had let her outside, would she still be here.”

After telling Paige to get her lunch, Miss Ford went to the bathroom. She then headed to the kitchen and saw Kailun – but Paige was not there.

Mr Brown called her and got no reply. He then went to find her – and saw the worst sight of his life.

Holding his head in his hands, he said: “As soon as I got through the bedroom door I saw her just hanging there.

“Never in my worst nightmares can I explain what that was like. I'm just so grateful Lorraine didn't see her – she wouldn't have been able to live with it.

“That image and the one of the police and paramedics working on Paige are stuck in my mind.

“I ripped Paige down and started resuscitating her. Lorraine joined me and was trying to wake Paige up by shouting at her.

“I'm a trained first-aider and I really thought it would work – that any minute she would come back to us.”

Paramedics arrived in an air ambulance and took over. But despite their efforts Paige was pronounced dead when she arrived at hospital.

Mr Brown said: “She'd only been alone for at the most five minutes. It happened so quickly.

“We tortured ourselves in the beginning that she had been struggling and trying to get free.

“So we were very comforted when someone from the coroner's office came to see us and told us she had died almost instantly.

“She had used a kiddies' stool to stand on and had slipped off with her head in the band.”

Mr Brown said one of the hardest things afterwards was telling her half-brother Daniel, eight – his son by a previous relationship.

He said: “He was absolutely heartbroken. Daniel and Paige were very close. He kept asking, 'Why didn't she shout out? Why she didn't cry for help?'”

Meanwhile the grieving dad, who works for a vending company, warned other parents to be on the lookout when it comes to cartoons.

Paige is believed to have died trying to copy a scene from Nickelodeon TV cartoon Go Diego Go – in which he swings by his neck.

Paige's grandmother, who had been watching with her, even told her: “You must never do that.”

Mr Brown said: “It never occurred to me that cartoons could be dangerous. It's one of the reasons we're speaking out – to make people aware.

“I watch them now and see that there are all sorts of hazardous things a child could copy.

“But if you point something out to a child and tell them not to do it, it might make them want to do it even more, or actually put the idea in their head.

“If you see something you think is dangerous, just switch channels.”

He went on: “We thought Paige's bedroom was the safest place in the world but after the accident we found all sorts.

“There were curtain ties she could have strangled herself with and other things. They've all gone because Kailun still sleeps there.”

The couple have decided to give the £600 in Paige's savings account to Kent Ambulance Air Service, who battled to save her.

And they have taken comfort from the words of a priest, after asking how he and Lorraine could carry on.

The priest responded: “You must not think that you're leaving Paige here and moving on without her. You are picking her up and taking her with you.”

Phil said: “That helped, knowing that she will always be with us.”

The couple are now planning Paige's funeral and have chosen a fairy princess ceremony, in which her coffin will be borne on a horse-drawn carriage.

Mourners have been asked to wear something pink – Paige's favourite colour.

Lorraine, clutching a small white toy bear, said: “This is Teddy – it was given to Paige on her first birthday. She wouldn't go to sleep without it.

“It's going to be put in her coffin with her because that's how I'll always think of her, as sleeping. She's not gone, she's just asleep somewhere.”

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