The perfect place to find Jules’s birthday gift, he decides, is in Chase and Munroe’s. He drifts through the departments, waiting for something to speak to him. Inspiration, he has learned, is a quiet voice; the voice of his gut or his heart, not the voice of his mind. So he drifts and he fingers, he wanders and he feels, and maybe it’s here, and maybe it isn’t. He lingers at the pens, just for their beauty, but Jules doesn’t write any more. Even her lists, she makes on her laptop or her phone. Flora was punished once, he remembers, for submitting a piece of school homework handwritten. She had made a toy theatre, decorated it beautifully, and accompanied it with boiled-down scripts, carefully inked in a cursive hand… and just as he thinks this, he smells – yes, it is – Devotion. Like she’s there with him, sharing the memory.

Flora, he says in his head, is that you? Are you there? And the scent rallies stronger as if to say, Yes, Dad, it’s me. He looks about. There is no one there. Truly no one; not one human neck that might sport such a scent. He supposes there must be a perfume department – there usually is – but when he locates it, there are just two assistants, quietly chatting. Yet the scent, the scent is still with him, drawing him down to the counter where Jules’s scent of the moment – Eau d’Ouverture – dominates the display. No sign, that he can see, of Devotion. This for Jules? he asks in his head, and his gut whispers, Yes. His gut, or his daughter, it’s hard to be sure.

Even outside, on the street, the sense of her lingers. He feels like she’s on his right shoulder. Leaning on him, the way she did the last couple of years of her life, once or twice, when they went out for lunch, and wandered out tipsy, bantering, making some joke out of words or the locals. He feels her so strongly there are tears in his eyes, not of sadness, but joy. She is with him, with him! I love you, he says in his head, and he hears, I love you, you bugger.

That night, he rehearses in silence, measures the moment, detects not now. Keeps to light conversation. But as they’re undressing, he says to Jules, She was with me today. Flora.

Jules carries on like he’s told her that Argos is having a sale.

What do you mean? she says, putting her tights in the laundry.

I was thinking about her, and smelt her scent, Devotion.

Someone else was wearing it, then. Undoing her blouse.

There was no one about.

Where were you?

In Chase and Munroe’s.

What were you doing in Chase and Munroe’s?

It’s a secret.

Ah, birthday, she says, and smiles. Not so much a secret.