An English book collector was riffling through a children’s novel he’d picked up from a thrift shop when he stumbled upon a happy surprise: notes his wife had written 50 years ago as a child.

A collector of around 50 novels by the late Enid Blyton, a bestselling children’s author who penned an estimated 800 books over four decades,  Steve Mills told the BBC he was “completely gobsmacked” by the discovery. He was going through some new additions when he found the writings from his wife, Karen, in a copy of The Naughtiest Girl Again, which had been donated by her mother in the 1970s.

It somehow ended up in a thrift store in Rayleigh, a town in the U.K. that’s more than 160 miles away from where she grew up in Staffordshire. Steve, who has loved Blyton’s books since he was a child, told SWNS, “We’ve taken it as one of the universe’s strange coincidences.”

“I had a load of books that I bought and it wasn’t until a couple of months went by that I was rearranging the books,” he continued. “I decided to look through them properly, opened one up, and recognized the number on the front cover.”

It turned out to be his wife’s old address. “I jokingly showed it to her and she turned the next page. There was her name, address, phone number, and drawings,” Steve recalled. “Her parents are in their 80s and they were delighted when we told them.”

Karen was also overjoyed to find her old notes, which she had penned alongside “stick-figure” drawings of her family. “She was equally shocked,” Steve told the BBC. “It was actually quite a cute thing to look at.”

But that wasn’t all: Steve later found more books in his collection that also contained his wife’s annotations. “Lo and behold, there was a second and third book belonging to my wife,” The other books all had Karen’s musings scrawled inside. Steve also discovered a note that reads, “I have got 12 of Enid Blytons books,” her missing punctuation evidence of her, and is determined to track down the remaining nine.

This serendipitous story has earned rave reviews from the public: Steve posted about the notes on an Enid Blyton Fan Group on Facebook, and has so far received 1,300 likes. “It’s touched on people’s heartstrings and there’s a lot of people out there who would love to find things from their childhood,” he said. “It was a simpler life and that’s why I like them so much.”

‘coincidences happen, but i’ve come to believe they are actually quite rare.

something is at work, okay? somewhere in the universe, (or behind it),  

a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.’

-stephen king

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Source credits: BBC, Faye Mayerb SWNS