The last few times we had seen each other, Ted reminisced about the war and about the make-do years that followed it when he was first married to my mother. He talked a lot about the glory days of the Fifties too, when he was discovering that he could follow his nose into a career that allowed him to meet rich women and powerful men. He spoke of the old days with a longing for his lost kingdoms, although oddly enough he never romanticised his gift itself. (He was always matter-of-fact about the mystery of creating perfumes. ‘It’s chemistry, memory and money,’ he used to say. ‘And mostly money.’)

I thought now that maybe I could reach out to him by talking about the past, even though it was such a quagmire. I tried harder, flipping through the scenes in my mind’s eye, searching for some neutral time that I could offer up. ‘Do you remember that day when you took me in to the Phebus labs? I must have been six or seven, I should think.’

‘Old Man Phebus,’ Ted said quietly.

I can’t remember why Ted took me to work with him on that particular morning. Maybe my mother was ill, or had to go somewhere where she couldn’t take me. Outside school hours she and I were usually at home, occupied with our quiet routines that were put aside as soon as Ted came in. We were happy enough on our own together, Faye and I, yet even when I was very young I understood that hers was a make-do contentment. It was only when Ted was there that I saw her smile properly. For people in shops, occasional encounters with neighbours, even for me, there was a tucked-in version bleached by melancholy. Because I didn’t know anything different I thought that was how it was for all families. Fathers went out and eventually came back, redolent of the outside world, and mothers and children waited like patient shells to close themselves round this life-giving kernel.