COVER

A compelling and poignant search for identity through perfume.

Granny Seren told me I had a natural talent for perfume making, and I believed her because she seemed to know what she was talking about and she never lied. It was Seren who introduced me to the idea of a signature scent.

As a university lecturer, Siân didn’t need a signature scent to know who she was. But, prompted by her job loss following restructuring of the humanities division – and the effect this has on her identity – she begins to construct a perfume of herself. Note by perfume note, referencing scent memories and recent events, she rebuilds herself, Scented.

DEDICATION

For my former lecturers in the American studies, art history, English and history departments at Canterbury University, thank you.

And for Frances, my perfume mentor and friend.

The first perfume I ever made was for my granny Seren. It was called Gumnuts and I created it by placing a handful of gumnuts collected from the eucalyptus tree at the edge of her section into a jam jar half filled with water. The fragrance smelt of water but over time the liquid darkened and took on a dank note, slightly bitter, medicinal. I would smell it whenever I visited my grandmother and together we would dab the juice onto our pulse points – our wrists, necks, behind our ears – and inhale.

Granny Seren told me I had a natural talent for perfume making, and I believed her because she seemed to know what she was talking about and she never lied. It was Seren who introduced me to the idea of a signature scent. Some ladies, she said, only ever wear one perfume.

‘One perfume at a time, you mean?’

‘No, they always wear it, it’s part of them. It’s called a signature scent. When they walk into a room you know they’re there because you can recognise them by their scent. You smell them first and that makes you turn around, and then you see them standing on the other side of the room and you think,

“Oh yes, it is you. I thought so.” The perfume makes them visible, you see.’

I wasn’t sure I understood. ‘So, without that one perfume they wouldn’t know who they were?’

‘That’s right. They’d be incomplete.’

‘So if we both wore Gumnuts every day, for the rest of our lives, we would be whole, with no missing pieces?’

‘Yes, but it wouldn’t be your signature. It would be our signature. So, you’d have to think up a new perfume, just for you and no one else.’

‘And then I’d be whole and know who I was?’

Seren nodded. ‘Yes, my love. That’s right.’