Later, when Jack was in his room, I took the three volumes of Ted’s notes down from the shelf and browsed through the pages once again, looking for Audrey’s name. I couldn’t see it. There were plenty of other names, and the formulae that had promised desirability and passion and dreams to so many women. The clouds of fragrance seemed to rise out of the pages, nudging and beckoning me.

SEVEN

The days of early summer gently trickled away, like dry sand through my fingers.

Jack went to school in the mornings, following protests that had by now become routine. Sometimes he came home much later than usual, telling me that the biology teacher had invited him to the first meetings of the school’s new ornithology club. Remembering the brawling tide of children that had washed past me when I went to visit Mr Rainbird, I asked in surprise how many members the Bird Society had so far attracted. Jack scowled. ‘Not many.’ But no further information was forthcoming and I didn’t press him. If things were even approximately working, I didn’t want to start asking why or how.

I went to work every day, did whatever needed to be done there, saw Cassie if I was lucky and came home again. Colin’s cookery book took handsome shape; I had persuaded the freelance calligrapher who sometimes worked for us to rewrite ‘A Good BIG Dinner’ and the rest of the headings in flowing script, as a favour in return for some work I had given her when she was broke. Leo and Andy did the paste-up between them and the folded sheets were made ready for stitching.

I didn’t see Mel. She was busy at work and her limited free time, I guessed, was spent with Jasper. Caz and Graham were house-hunting. In the quiet evenings, when Jack had retreated from the supper table, I started at the beginning of Ted’s first calf-bound volume of notes and began reading my way through them.

There were pages and pages of lists. The long chemical names, which I probably couldn’t have deciphered anyway, were often confusingly abbreviated in Ted’s pencil scribble. Only the old familiar perfume words leaped out at me – lilac, chypre, amber – as I frowned over the jottings and tried to imagine what he was imagining as he smelled and scrawled and worked his way towards a new fragrance. Here and there I found snatches of description that were oddly lyrical among the dry formulae. I began to understand the process, if not the inspiration behind it.

A commission might have come from one of the cosmetics houses, or Ted might have been working on an in-house project for ET&P, or he could have been privately creating a perfume for the latest Janice or Linda. Each time he had to give substance to an idea, and the way he began was by painting a word-picture for himself. Not of the potential customer or actual auntie, but of an abstract image. A sultry whisper in a crowded room, the flash of a peacock’s tail, a meadow dreaming under the full moon were all examples from his notes.