‘Yes,’ I said. It wasn’t much of a link to their grandfather’s history and I was making it for them rather late in the day, but it was better than nothing. And so they semi-obligingly joined the crowd of tourists to be shown round the old copper stills with their preening swans’ necks, and the baskets of paper rose petals, and gazed at fake jasmine flowers pressed into white paste that was supposed to be animal fat, once used to absorb the intense floral scent from the blooms.

‘Ugh,’ Lola said faintly.

At the end of the tour we came to a mocked-up perfumers’ organ in a mocked-up lab. There was even a waxwork perfumer in a white coat, sitting at the centre of his bank of bottles and holding a fan of paper scent dippers to his nose. He didn’t look like Ted – he was wearing pince-nez and a luxuriant moustache but I could see my father just the same. There he was with his hair brushed and brilliantined back from his forehead, his cravat, the paisley one, and I smelled the citrus lie of his cologne.

That’s my girl, eh? Why don’t you pop up to see Mrs Maloney?

I don’t want to. I want to be with you. I’m afraid that if I don’t watch you you’ll die, or go away and leave me again.

‘Mum?’ It was Lola at my elbow.

The museum’s folksy re-creation of Ted’s trade was nothing like Restall & Jackson, or Phebus Fragrances, yet it conjured him up so strongly. This was the closest I had felt to his physical being since the night before he died, and the memory and the simultaneous knowledge of his absence brought with them a wave of grief so sudden and so painful that I almost stumbled.

‘Mum, what’s the matter? Are you feeling all right?’

‘Yes. I was thinking about Grandad.’

‘Come on outside and let’s sit down.’

I was blinded by the sunlight in the museum’s little courtyard. Jack and Lola took an arm apiece and guided me to a chair. I wanted to hug them close against my heart; I was thinking it was too late for Ted, and me and I must never let it begin to be too late for the three of us.

Lola brought me a plastic bottle of mineral water and I took a sip. Jack sat on the kerb at my feet and stared at my knees, rather than take the risk of looking up into my face. I stroked the stiff wedges of his hair and for once he didn’t pull away. There were geraniums in tubs flanking the door we had just emerged from and a scatter of crimson dead petals like flakes of blood on the paving stones.

‘I’m fine,’ I said.