‘Don’t worry, you can learn the difference if you try hard enough,’ Mr Phebus said. ‘I managed it. I spent many years of hard work, memorising thousands of notes, which is what we call the different basic scents and that is only the very beginning of what a perfumer must know. He must have other skills too, and most of all he must have imagination that lifts him from being a mere technician into an artist of fragrance.

‘I am an artist, in my small way, but only of the fourth or maybe third degree. But your father here’ – he paused for effect, with his eyebrows pointing at me – ‘he is, at once, a natural. He smells a note only once and he remembers it. And he knows, because the artistry is in his heart and in his mind, he knows what he will add and what he will withhold to coax from these bottles, these not romantic little jars, the dreams of women.’

Women and their dreams, again. I was torn between pride in my father and a new discomfort that rubbed at the margins of my understanding. I didn’t like the feeling of insecurity that came with it.

‘Of course, he still has very much to learn. Many years of practice.’

Ted laughed out loud delightedly. ‘Better get on with it, then.’ He was always enthusiastic in those days. He rubbed his hands and smacked his lips, full of raw appetite for life. I didn’t recognise his hunger then for what it was, but I already knew that my mother entirely lacked what Ted possessed. I loved her, of course, and I took for granted her devotion to me, but she wasn’t thrilling in the way my father was. She was always there and I never noticed her constancy until she wasn’t any longer. One morning she was at home and that same afternoon she was never coming back. That’s how sudden her death was from the brain haemorrhage. Afterwards, when I thought about her, I would remember her quietness and restraint. She used to brush my hair and tie ribbons in it, looking down or away instead of into our joint reflections in the mirror of her kidney-shaped dressing table. She wore plain jerseys and calf-length colourless skirts that hid her pretty legs. It was as if even before she left us altogether she occupied only the corners of her own life. Whereas Ted joyfully overflowed out of his, and ran in a hot current through hers and mine as well.

Mr Phebus said, ‘Let’s have Black Opal three and four, then.’