Moving house is always a tiresome business—everyone knows that.
Emma and her husband, James, had finally bought a larger flat and were preparing to move right after New Year’s. They had already begun packing belongings into large boxes, sorting through what to keep and what to throw away.
Then came the wardrobe with its top shelf. Before leaving for work, James had pulled down a box of Christmas ornaments, taking everything out and stacking it neatly. Now it was Emma’s turn to sort through the pile.
Attics and high shelves were where you stored things you didn’t need daily but couldn’t quite bear to part with—just in case they might be useful someday.
Emma had taken two weeks off work for this very purpose—to sort, decide, and ultimately choose what would make the journey to their new home. It wasn’t easy. What about her old school notebooks, diaries, certificates of merit? When her parents were alive, they had kept them all safe, and now they’d become her inheritance.
She sat beside the pile, methodically sifting through each relic. Some went straight into the black bin bag. Others were set aside. Then her fingers brushed against a small wooden box, covered in seashells and pebbles, wrapped in a cotton pouch.
A gift from her beloved grandfather. He had brought it back from a seaside trip when she was ten. This little box had been her secret treasure chest, holding tiny keepsakes—each one precious for the memories they held.
*Would Lucy have something like this?* Emma wondered about her daughter, then decided probably not. Kids these days were too practical, too unsentimental. At ten, they already had their futures mapped out—what university they’d attend, what career they’d pursue.
Back in her day, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. She’d gone to an ordinary school, studied food technology, and ended up working at the local biscuit factory. James had been luckier—he’d wanted to be an architect, and that was exactly what he became. Graduated, returned to his hometown, and now he was a leading expert in his field.
Lucy was the same—determined, though at eleven, she still hadn’t settled on a career.
Emma hesitated before opening the box. What childhood ghosts would she find inside?
Finally, she lifted the lid.
Nothing especially valuable—a cheap necklace with a broken clasp from a souvenir shop, a grandmother’s brooch missing a few stones, a large mother-of-pearl button she couldn’t even remember where it came from, a tube of lipstick in a gold case (a gift from a school friend, though her mother had never allowed her to wear it).
Then—her fingers closed around something soft. A dark blue velvet bow tie, exquisitely made.
The memory hit her like a wave.
A New Year’s dance, boys from another school invited for the occasion—something about their hall being under renovation, or perhaps the headmaster’s bright idea. They’d performed a concert, then came the dancing. Her first ever dance.
She must have been eleven or twelve. And for the first time in her life, she’d *fancied* someone. Too strong a word, perhaps—but he had stood on stage reciting poetry that seemed impossibly grown-up to her.
That boy—dark blue suit, this very bow tie. The way he spoke, so intense, so earnest.
She had prayed he’d ask her to dance. She had stood in the corner in her pretty white dress with the satin bow at the back, her hair loose for once instead of in plaits. Eleven? Twelve? She couldn’t recall.
But the feeling—the first quiet rush of longing—had stayed with her all these years.
He never asked her.
In fact, he left early.
She and a friend had followed the boys to the cloakroom. He had shrugged off his jacket, tugged the bow tie loose, pulled his cap low over his brow, and vanished. The girls watched from a distance. When they turned back, Emma spotted the bow tie on the floor—dropped, perhaps, as he fumbled it into his pocket.
She snatched it up and ran outside, hoping to return it—but she only caught a glimpse of him sliding into a car before the door shut and he was gone. His parents, probably.
They never spoke. She didn’t even know his name.
Decades had passed. Yet this little box had kept that tiny, seemingly insignificant moment alive.
She returned the treasures to the box and placed it on the windowsill—no longer something to hide away.
This was part of her childhood. Let it stay. Maybe one day she’d tell Lucy about it. What would she say? *Mum, childhood’s over. These things don’t matter anymore. Life’s about the present, the future—not the past.*
But she was wrong.
When Lucy came home from school, she spotted the box immediately, rummaged through it, and gasped.
“Is this your *archive*? Where did you get all this?”
She pulled out the brooch, then the bow tie. Over dinner, Emma shared the story—even the boy.
“Did you ever try to find him?” Lucy asked.
“Social media, really?” Emma laughed. “I didn’t even know his *name* or what school he was from.”
That evening, James came home from work, helped with the packing after supper. Then Lucy announced:
“Dad! Mum fancied a boy at school. She still keeps a souvenir from him!”
“Lucy!” Emma flushed, but James only smiled.
“Not nice to share someone else’s secrets. Didn’t you know?”
“And Gran’s brooch is in here too!” Lucy marched to the box and pulled out the dark blue bow tie.
“Some boy lost it,” she explained. “Mum *fancied* him, so she kept it.”
James’s eyes narrowed. He reached out, took the bow tie, staring at it intently.
“Where exactly did you find this?” he asked finally.
“Lucy told you—a boy lost it, I picked it up, never got to return it.”
Recognition flickered across his face.
That New Year’s dance—the one he’d left early. The bow tie—his father’s, bought abroad on a business trip—had gone missing. He’d returned to the school, asked if anyone had found it. Nothing.
“So *you* were that boy?” Emma whispered.
Destiny, it seemed, had been smiling at them all along.
That evening, they talked for hours—about school, university. She had stayed local; he had gone away. They’d met again, years later, at another New Year’s party—a club, this time.
One dance—that was all it took.
“The second I saw you, I knew,” he said. “*This* is the girl I’ve been waiting for.”
“I remember our first dance,” she admitted. “I thought—if he walks me home, it’s fate. And you *did*.”
Lucy, listening, wrapped her arms around them both.
“It’s not just *your* fate,” she said. “If you two hadn’t met, I wouldn’t *exist*. So… here I am.”
Clever kids these days.
Laughing, they finally turned to decorating the Christmas tree waiting on the balcony.
As for the bow tie?
James took it. He promised to wear it for their New Year’s dinner.
