Daisy with script quote design

Her name was Winifred Hale and she came to the Pavilion ballroom at Shoreham every Saturday for three summers, always in the same blue frock, always with a daisy pinned at the shoulder that she'd picked on the cliff path that morning. The men asked her to dance and she said yes to all of them and to none of them. What she wanted was a map. Her brother had gone off to find a sea route to somewhere the atlas only guessed at, and he sent postcards with writing so small you needed a glass to read them. On the back of the last one he'd written, not all those who wander are lost, and underneath, in a hurry, come home when the petals fall.

So she did what sensible girls did in those days. She stopped dancing and started walking. She followed the coast road to Newhaven, then the ferry, then a train that smelled of coal and oranges. Every daisy she passed she pressed between the pages of his postcard album, one for every town, and by autumn the book was thick as a Bible.

Here's the bit people get wrong. She never found him. She found a lighthouse keeper in Lisbon who had a sister in Hastings, and that sister knew the Pavilion, and a letter was waiting for Winifred at the very cloakroom where she'd started, tucked under her old ticket. Inside was one daisy, dried flat, and a single line: the petals fell on the boat, love, but I kept the stalk.

Dance on, Teddy. The band's striking up and I've still got a waltz to tell you.