Their words always surprised me. First, because I had never felt ‘Pommy’, and I had no concept of home beyond the old house where I lived, which was less than five minutes’ walk from school. And second, because this rudimentary introduction to nationalism happened to coincide with a very important moment in my life, my reinvention as a French orphan. Having spent many Tuesday evenings in the old brick library in the middle of town researching perfume in encyclopedias and advertisements in glossy fashion magazines, I decided that I no longer wished to be anything but French. I adopted a new name, Madeline, based on the books of that title, and in the privacy of my room began speaking fluent French, an entire language built upon the ten or twenty words I remembered from a phrase book on my mother’s bookshelf. In order to be French I had to sound French, and I based my accent on two characters from television shows I regularly watched: Corporal LeBeau from Hogan’s Heroes and Lisa Douglas, the character played by Eva Gabor on Green Acres.

Being French suited me. At school it became a shield that protected me from all the attacks I had become accustomed to. Now, when classmates demanded, ‘Say “fast”’ I no longer had to attempt the awkward sounding ‘farst’ but could respond with a shrug of my Gallic shoulders and the elegantly superior ‘Je ne comprends pas’. This infuriated the bullies but at least it meant they now thought I was simply stupid and weird. This was easier for me to deal with than having to negotiate questions of identity related to being a contemptible ‘Pom’. In effect I had traversed the black and white territory of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and found myself in the no man’s land of crazy and unknowable, a grey area outside easy classification.

At home, being French allowed me time alone to experiment with perfume. As long as I continued to do my chores and homework, my new identity was initially accepted with little comment. In fact, my mother went so far as to weave phrases into our conversation, greeting me with ‘Bonjour! Comment allez-vous?’ when I returned from school or asking ‘Quelle heure est-il?’ when she began thinking about dinner.

With my pocket money I bought a jar of coconut oil from the local chemist and began a series of experimentations making ‘le parfum’. The first of these, named Le Bouquet, I made by adding carnation petals and lavender heads to coconut oil and heating it gently before straining it into an almost empty bottle of almond essence. The resulting blend smelt of almonds so I wrapped it up for my mother because I knew I wouldn’t wear it. I was a little more careful with my second scent. For this one I made a paste of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon taken from the food cupboard and mixed it with orange juice before adding it to the melted coconut oil. I called it L’Hiver and gave it to my mother as a way of easing my conscience over the almond perfume. One day, not long afterwards, I discovered the small perfume jar was empty and when I pressed my mother she admitted to having added it to a fruit cake she had baked for a morning tea.