future stretches out endlessly before you—waiting tables in the dining room of the Red Dragon Hotel and chopping vegetables in the kitchen of the old people’s home. One day, she offered to give an elderly resident a manicure as a birthday treat and as the other ladies gathered around to watch and then admire the result, they asked if they could have one, too, and offered to pay. Soon she was doing manicures at the residence every Saturday. Word got around, and before long she was booking appointments. Within six months, she had opened her own nail salon on a little side street and was living in the small rented flat above it.
She had kept her Canadian accent and over time the villagers had come to regard her affectionately as one of them, even if she did talk a bit funny. Now, in her early fifties, and older than Emma had been when they met, her hair was still an eye-catching, vibrant red that she wore tucked behind her ears. Her figure was not quite as trim as it used to be, but the comfortable casual clothes that had become her signature style hid those extra few pounds that inevitably find their way onto middle-aged waistlines. She liked tan or black trousers, worn with a neatly pressed white blouse and V-neck jumper or cardigan, always in soft colours like beige, white, pale pink, or ice blue, which, she had read in a fashion magazine, complement an over-forty face.
Settled and mostly content, she thought her life had turned out reasonably well.
The rector, who had called at Emma’s request to finalize the arrangements for her funeral, had found her body in a small upstairs bedroom of Jonquil Cottage. On the bedside table, under an old-fashioned glass paperweight in which delicate purple flowers hung suspended for all time, he had found the meticulous notes she had made in preparation for their meeting.
“That was so like her,” Rev. Thomas Evans said to his wife, Bronwyn, later that morning in the rectory’s sunny kitchen, as he gently placed the two handwritten pages on the table. “She always thought of everything right down to the smallest detail and kept everything in her life so tidy and well organized. We could all learn a lesson from her.”
He smiled affectionately at his wife, slipped off his jacket, and hung it casually on the back of a chair.
A short, slightly overweight man in his early fifties, Rev. Evans had managed to hang on to some of the good looks left over from his youth, although his jawline had slackened noticeably, and his bushy sideburns were definitely dated. His wife was a practical, down-to-earth woman with fading blond hair streaked with grey worn in the serviceable pageboy style that she’d had since she was a girl. Her comfortable clothes with their too-long skirts hung loosely on her small frame, and if her parishioners thought her wardrobe as outdated as her husband’s whiskers, she took no notice. With her warm, compassionate nature and unfailing knack of saying the right thing, she was well suited to her role as the rector’s wife—one she had filled for almost thirty years. She’d grown up in the village and considered herself fortunate to have spent many happy years of married life in the comfortable stone rectory that adjoined St. Elen’s churchyard.
In the matter of Emma’s funeral, as in most things, she agreed with her husband.
“I’m glad we know the music Emma chose,” she said, gesturing in the general direction of the documents on the table. “She loved music so much, and having just the right hymns would have been so important to her. We’ll make sure she gets the service she wanted.” And, she thought as she paused to admire Emma’s old-fashioned penmanship, perhaps we can add an extra special touch of our own, as a fitting tribute to the quiet Englishwoman who gave us so much over the years.
The small Welsh market town of Llanelen, nestled in the heart of the Conwy Valley, had welcomed Emma many years earlier, and for decades she had taught generations of children in the village school. While the children were actually in her classroom—fidgeting or gazing wistfully out the window at the lush green hills that encircled the town—they thought she was strict, humourless, and much too English; but when they got out into the world, running a sheep farming operation in the valley, working in offices as far away as Cardiff, forging successful careers in prestigious professions