Last year I wrote several columns about things people had lost, things they had found, and about St Anthony to whom the faithful pray if they need help finding a misplaced item.
That subject cropped up again recently when I was on a ramble with my friend Jane and she told me a couple of remarkable stories that I felt I had to share.
Jane and her neighbour Aisling get on with each other very well, attend each other’s parties, exchange birthday gifts and such like. They also swap items of clothing, if they find they are not wearing something but think the other might like it. One such item was a jacket that Aisling gave to Jane several years ago. Although Jane liked the jacket and placed it in her wardrobe, it stayed there unworn for a long time. Finally, a few weeks ago while planning for a night out, Jane remembered the jacket and thought it would go very well with what she wanted to wear. She dug it out and tried it on to see if it suited. Instinctively she put her hands in the pockets and to her surprise, found there was something left inside one of them.
Pulling it out, she discovered it was a pair of beautiful diamond earrings. Astounded, she immediately took them round to show Aisling. Her neighbour was also astounded – and delighted. She revealed that they were the pair of very expensive earrings she had worn on her wedding day and which had been lost for at least 10 years.
Aisling and her family used to live in Singapore, and while there, they employed a cleaner. She explained to Jane that after a while, they began to suspect the cleaner of pilfering things. They had no evidence to prove it, but to be on the safe side Aisling began to hide her most precious pieces of jewellery in the pockets of the clothes hanging in her wardrobe. The problem was, over time she forgot what she had put where, and by the time they moved back to England a few years later, she had completely forgotten that she had hidden her wedding earrings in a jacket pocket. For more than 10 years, she had lived in the belief that her treasured earrings had been taken by the cleaner and that she would never see them again (to be fair, the cleaner had almost certainly stolen other items, so it was not an unreasonable assumption to make). To get them back after so long was an absolute and unexpected joy.
A similar story involved Jane’s husband Stefan. Jane’s and my own children went to the same primary school which held regular fairs and jumble sales. These occasions were good excuses to declutter our wardrobes and pass on any unwanted toys and bric-a-brac.
One year as one such fair was approaching, Jane had a good declutter and filled up the car with jumble, putting a pile of unwanted coats on the back seat before dropping them off at school.
A few days later, her husband was preparing to leave for a business meeting, and asked if she had seen his smart jacket.
“Where did you last have it?’ asked Jane
“I left it on the back seat of the car.”
You can imagine Stefan’s choice response when he discovered that his expensive tailored jacket had been sold for a song at the school fair. Jane had unknowingly scooped it up with the other coats on the back seat and handed it over with the rest of the jumble. They both assumed Stefan would never see his jacket again, and Jane was banished to the dog house.
But the story does not end there. Later that week, tempers having cooled, the couple were out for a walk when they noticed a stranger walking towards them. He was wearing a very familiar item of clothing.
Stefan, being a lot braver than I would have been, stopped the man and asked about the fine jacket he was wearing. The man confirmed he had picked it up from the local school fair for 50p.
With a bit of astute negotiating, and offers of giving the man back the 50p, Stefan and his jacket were happily reunited.
Do you have any stories of unexpected reunions?
This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 28th Feb and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 26th Feb 2025
The Countryman's Daughter 