The Mayfair shop was called Scentsation. I visited it probably only two or three times in the months that Ted owned it, but my memories of the place are vivid. The shop itself was a narrow corridor, no more than a few feet wide, but it was lined with mirrors set between dark, polished mahogany panels. The counter was mirrored too, and the floor was black marble tiles that were polished to a savage glitter. From the high ceiling hung a gilt chandelier dripping with crystal icicles and blazing with candle-shaped lamps. The little gold points of light were reflected and reflected again in the mirrors, so that the confined space became a magic box of illusion. You couldn’t tell, without reaching out a hand to touch the cool glass, where reality ended and reflection began. To me, after the bus and tube journey down from our house in Hendon and the plunge on foot through the brick-red and grey canyons south of Oxford Street, it was an exotic and intimidating place. I was conscious enough of my school uniform with its cerise and chrome-yellow striped tie, skimpy navy-blue skirt and white polyester blouse, without the multiplied images of it and me offered by the mirrors. Everywhere I looked, there was a different unwelcome perspective of a lumpy schoolgirl with knotted hair and clothes that proclaimed her to be no one of any significance.

Then there was the scented air. The mirrored and panelled walls contained a faint breath of fresh flowers and warm aromatics, which conjured up worlds of glamour and privilege. In this perfumed and hushed atmosphere Ted worked with a sales assistant called Valerie. Valerie had a posh English voice, but when she spoke her name she gave it the French pronunciation, Valérie. She wore a little charcoal-grey suit with a boxy jacket and a tight skirt and pointy-toed shoes. Her hair was done up in a chignon finished with a black velvet bow. When she moved along behind her counter her fragrance, which was also the shop’s, drifted a little more strongly in her wake – just like the harem ladies’.

On mirrored shelves under the counter and on glass strips against the mirrored walls, boxes and bottles of Ted’s readymade fragrances were set out in precise rows or tidy pyramids. There was white-and-green packaging with white ribbon bows and the name of the shop was printed on them in elaborately curled lettering.