**A Love That Endured**
A new family arrived in the village just as the local school was rebuilt. The old headmaster had retired, and the new one, Richard Thompson, moved in with his wife—a maths teacher—and their daughter, Daisy, fifteen years old.
Daisy was nothing like the village girls. While they ran wild, she was always neat—her thick braid tightly woven, her shoes spotless. Even in autumn mud, she’d find a puddle to wash them in before stepping into school.
“Look at Daisy, prancing about in puddles,” the village girls jeered, though soon enough, they too began scrubbing their shoes.
Because they noticed—the lads fancied tidy Daisy.
Among them was Jack, a broad-shouldered farmer’s lad, sixteen and already out of school. He’d been working the fields since he was fourteen, stacking hay so well the women marvelled.
Jack had always been fond of the girls, and they of him. By sixteen, he’d had his share of sweethearts in the hayloft. But the moment he saw Daisy walking to the village shop with her mother, something shifted.
“What’s this then?” he muttered to his ginger-haired mate, Alfie.
“That’s the new headmaster’s daughter,” Alfie said.
And just like that, Jack was lost. He stopped his wandering ways, as if he’d never so much as glanced at a girl before. He’d clench his fists watching her from afar, but the village knew—Jack was smitten.
Winter came, freezing the river solid. The village lads skated on cheap metal blades strapped to their boots, but Daisy? She glided out in proper figure skates, spinning and weaving patterns on the ice like a fairy.
Jack, returning from work, heard screams.
“Daisy’s fallen in!”
Near the opposite bank, a spring kept the ice thin. Without thinking, Jack bolted across, shedding his coat as he neared the hole where Daisy thrashed. He crawled, tossing his belt to her like a lifeline, dragging her out and carrying her home, shivering and drenched.
Word spread fast. That evening, Daisy’s mother came to Jack’s cottage.
“Thank you,” she said, pressing a wrapped gift into his hands. “Daisy wants to see you. She’s feverish.”
Jack went. Daisy, tucked in bed, reached for him with clammy fingers.
“You saved me,” she whispered.
He visited her every evening after work. They talked—well, she did, and he listened, enchanted. By sixteen, she let him kiss her. At eighteen, he left for the army.
“Wait for me,” he made her promise.
But war is cruel. Jack was sent to the front, wounded, and returned with one leg gone. He refused to go home—wouldn’t let Daisy see him broken. He vanished, settled in a nearby town, married a kind woman named Vera out of duty, not love. He had a daughter, Emily, but his heart stayed Daisy’s.
Years passed. Both aged. Daisy married a farmer, bore three children, her beauty softened by time. Jack visited the village occasionally, drank hard after seeing her, then returned to his quiet life.
Then Vera died. Loneliness settled heavy on Jack’s shoulders.
“Come live with us,” Emily offered.
But a restlessness took him. One day, he declared: “I’m going back to the village.”
Emily drove him. The place had faded—weeds, crumbling cottages, his old home half-collapsed under a fallen oak.
Daisy, grey now, leaning on a stick, shuffled over.
“You’ll stay with me,” she said.
That evening, over tea, Jack hesitated, then spoke.
“Daisy… I came back to stay. To die here, beside my parents. Maybe… maybe with you?”
Emily protested, but Daisy only nodded.
“For a week,” she agreed.
Jack stayed. They talked for days. On the fifth morning, Daisy found him still in bed, gone in his sleep.
She closed his eyes herself, weeping.
They buried him beside his parents, in the village where his first and only love still lived.
*Some loves never fade, no matter the years.*
