“Mummy, when will the faerie give me a daddy?” my daughter once asked, her wide eyes filled with more hope than I could bear. We often played make-believe games, drawing pictures and weaving tales together. That day, she pulled a sketch from her box—a little girl talking to a tiny winged figure. Then she found another drawing, this one of the same girl doing her morning exercises, laughing all the while.
“This is me doing stretches, and then I’ll splash my face with water, Mummy!” she exclaimed with delight before drifting off to sleep, content.
That moment made me think how unpredictable life could be. But let me start at the beginning.
Years ago, I enrolled at a teacher’s college alongside my dearest friend, Eleanor. We were inseparable—studying late, dreaming of the future. After graduation, we both became schoolteachers. Eleanor had a gift for illustrating children’s books, her hands as deft as her imagination. Publishers abroad took notice, and one day, she was offered a contract in London. She left—for three long years. We wrote letters, exchanged calls, and missed each other terribly.
When she returned to our quiet market town, she was no longer alone. A little girl, her daughter, was with her. She never spoke of the father. Her own parents had passed by then, so she raised the child alone as best she could, while I did what I could to help. Little Matilda was sunshine itself. In her spare time, Eleanor sketched—often picturing her daughter at different ages: as a schoolgirl, a young woman, grown. I marvelled at how vividly she could capture a future she’d never see.
“How do you know what she’ll look like?” I’d ask.
“We’ll see,” she’d reply with a quiet smile.
But joy never lasts. When Matilda turned two, Eleanor’s heart gave out. Years in London had strained her health, and one day, she was simply gone.
I began the adoption papers at once. My greatest fear was strangers taking Matilda away—that I’d be too late, that she’d vanish into another family. But by heaven’s grace, I wasn’t. From that day, I was her mother. She knew her real mother lived among the stars. We pored over Eleanor’s sketches together, especially at bedtime—those drawings soothed her, as if her mother still whispered to her.
Matilda grew clever, kind, and full of dreams. She was thirteen when I returned home one evening from a birthday supper with friends. A tall man with a heavy accent stood at my door. His English was rough, but his words cut me to the bone.
He was… Matilda’s father. Her true father. A Londoner. He told me Eleanor, in a jealous fit over his sister, had fled without a word of the child she carried. He’d searched, but too late. When he learned of his daughter, he’d begun adoption papers—but I was quicker. He never guessed she’d grown up here, loved, under my roof.
When Matilda overheard, she stood frozen, staring at the stranger’s face, searching for herself in it. Later, over tea, she began to smile. The man left for the inn, and my girl clutched her favourite faerie doll, whispering,
“Thank you, faerie, for giving me a daddy.”
Months passed before all was settled. Matilda left for London to live with her father. He had three children from another marriage, but as the eldest, she soon found her place among them. She attends school now, learns the language, takes dancing lessons. We write, we call, we share our days.
I miss her. Ache for her. Yet I am glad.
Glad that my Eleanor left behind not just a beautiful daughter but the pull of love that drew this girl’s true father home, even after all these years.
And that’s the tale—strange as any faerie story. But like the best of them, it’s about faith, love, and the quiet magic of second chances.
