It had been twelve years since I’d last looked into Joel’s open, wise face. We’d kissed and said goodbye again, for hadn’t we been saying goodbye for weeks? In twelve hours the plane landed at Heathrow and I’d taken the train to my new home and a new job. We wrote, regularly to begin with, but the letters stuttered into infrequency as time passed. Joel’s parish responsibilities had increased, while my own life also took on a crazed busyness as I embraced the challenge of ministering to six congregations.

Mrs Efans, a member at Bethania in the village, had been the post woman for forty years. ‘Un o San Francisco heddiw Mr Llwyd,’ she’d say, handing me letters posted in the city that had been my home. Gwenda, as I was later invited to call her, had taken to knocking my door to hand-deliver in the first weeks after I’d arrived. In her eyes, such regular contact with the new minister back from America gave her status in our isolated, closed community. She had noticed that I wore my shirts open at the chest, showing all my hair, that my coffee mugs declared jokey slogans and that I listened to rock music.

I spilled my coffee on reading that Joel was dead. His most recent letter, in July last year, had told of a move to Boston. A letter full of excitement and hope in new beginnings… new movies to look out for and recent productions at the San Francisco Opera. Nothing to suggest a slowing down. Not a hint of ill health. No tell-tale signs of being one of the thousands of worried well. The letter from Cheryl was unexpected and, once opened, unwelcome. She’d seen him in November, Kaposi’s Sarcoma disfiguring his gentle face and the first signs of dementia cracking his intelligent, sometimes highbrow conversation. He’d died a few days before Easter. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hold Joel within that same strong tenderness we’d shared for nearly four years, to look into his face again and say, ‘I love you.’ A coffee stain edged further into the whiteness of the tablecloth.