The Scent of You

by Maggie Alderson

  Polly couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘I’ve told you already, Shirlee,’ she said, ‘I’m not getting into any of that stuff. I just want to move on with my new life as smoothly as I can. You know what Maxine told me: he’s very ill and it affects his judgment in ways I can hardly imagine. And I’ve got enough to deal with – supporting the kids through it, for one thing – without stirring up any extra aggro. I’m just trying to let him go with a loving spirit.’

  ‘I’d let him go with a punch in the guts,’ said Shirlee. ‘You’re a much better person than I am.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Polly. ‘You’re a very good person for helping me do this, because if you weren’t here I’d probably be sobbing over every sock.’

  ‘Try this one,’ said Shirlee, lobbing a rolled-up pair of thick winter socks at Polly’s head. She caught them, then turned and chucked them into the waste-paper bin, where they landed with a satisfying thud.

  ‘Goal!’ she said, and they both laughed.

  ‘Did that feel a little bit good?’ said Shirlee.

  Polly nodded, but at the same time she remembered buying that particular pair of socks. She knew every pair personally; she’d washed and dried and put them all away so many times when David had still lived here and things had been normal – or at least when she’d thought they were normal. She felt the energy drain out of her as she glanced back at the wardrobe with all his jackets and shoes still to do.

  ‘You know what, Shirlee?’ she said. ‘You’re right. I don’t think I can be bothered to pack up any more of his crap. Why don’t we just put it all in his study and he can have it taken away when he gets all his books?’

  ‘Plan!’ said Shirlee. ‘Why don’t we just dump it all on the floor in there?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t need to pack it for him. I’m not going to be deliberately antagonistic, but there is a limit.’

  She grabbed all David’s jackets from the wardrobe, carried them through to his study and dropped them on the floor. It felt good. Shirlee was right behind her with a pile of jumpers.

  ‘Howzat?’ she said, throwing them down on top of the jackets. ‘What’s next?’

  Very quickly they cleared everything out of the wardrobes and drawers and threw it all into the study. Polly closed the door on the mountain of belongings, making a mental note not to glance through the hole she’d kicked in it, so she wouldn’t accidentally see any of it again until he took it all away. And the next time she spoke to her solicitor, she was going to ask her to fix an official date for that to happen. She’d had enough of not knowing what was going on in her own life. From now on it was going to run according to a schedule that she set.

  ‘So we’ve done that,’ said Shirlee, following Polly down the stairs and into the kitchen. ‘Is there anything else we can do to make you feel less edgy in the house? Or shall we go out and do something? I don’t think you should spend too much time sitting around here on your own.’

  ‘I never sit around,’ said Polly. ‘There’s always stuff to do for the blog, and—’

  ‘OK, I know you don’t watch daytime TV, but what I’m saying is, I think that right now, you shouldn’t be home alone too much.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Polly. ‘Digger needs a walk. We could take him up to the Heath together if you like, and have a nice long ramble.’

  From the moment they set out from the house Polly wished she’d thought of any other excursion. Every step they took towards the gate onto the Heath reminded her of doing the same walk with Chum and Artemis; she could see his smile and hear his laugh.

  It churned her up, but not so much with longing for him as guilt. She still hadn’t spoken to him since that awkward meeting outside Maxine’s office. She’d replied to the text he’d sent her the next morning, apologising if she’d been abrupt, but saying she’d had a big shock and lot to deal with subsequently, and just needed some time to process it all.

  He’d replied immediately, wishing her well and saying that he was always there if she needed him. He hadn’t been in touch since, which was four days now.

  Polly was grateful he was giving her some space, because she couldn’t help feeling strangely disconnected from him. The whole episode from the moment they’d met again in the dining room at Rockham Park – how long ago had it been? three months? – had taken on a detached, dreamlike quality, like something that had happened to someone else.

  He kept popping into her head so clearly, triggered by the memory of doing that walk on the Heath with him, yet at the same time, none of it seemed real. Apart from those two occasions at Rockham Park, when she’d had her family, Shirlee or Guy with her, he’d always occupied a separate space outside her real life, and somehow she couldn’t reconcile the two.

  And, she increasingly realised, she didn’t want to. It was the otherness of her time with Chum that had been so appealing. An escape.

  All that horsey stuff and the stately home were very beguiling, but they didn’t really have anything to do with her. The two of them were from such different worlds. They’d been thrown together at university and then again via Rockham Park, and there was certainly a powerful physical attraction between them, but beyond that, what did they really have in common? Dogs?

  Once she and Shirlee got onto the Heath, she deliberately took a different path from the one she’d taken with Chum that day, and immediately felt better for it. With all she had to process about David, she just couldn’t manage thinking about Chum as well.

  The track she’d chosen went steadily uphill, and after about ten minutes of the climb, Shirlee had grown uncharacteristically quiet. When they came to a bench, with views looking out across the landscape, Shirlee sat down on it and Polly assumed she was puffed out.

  ‘Are you OK?’ asked Polly, sitting next to her and turning to look at her friend.

  ‘Not really,’ said Shirlee.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Polly, feeling alarmed. Had the hill been too much for her?

  ‘The thing is, Poll,’ she said, spreading her left arm along the top of the bench and looking intently at her, ‘we’re in this beautiful big open space, but I can hardly breathe.’

  ‘I’m sorry it was such a steep path . . .’ Polly started.

  Shirlee raised her hand and shook her head.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the path,’ she said. ‘What’s suffocating me is the great big elephant that’s here on the Heath with us. He’s filling the whole damn space and I can’t stand it any longer. I’m calling out on the elephant.’

  ‘An elephant?’ said Polly, not getting it. Was Shirlee hallucinating?

  ‘Not a real elephant, you idiot,’ she said, slapping Polly on the top of her arm with the back of her hand. ‘It’s the elephant in the room . . . you know, the thing we’re not talking about?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Polly, getting the point. ‘That elephant.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shirlee, ‘the elephant called Edward.’

  Polly’s head snapped round to stare at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  Shirlee laughed, rolling her eyes.

  ‘What do I mean? What I mean is, what the hell are you doing here with me? Why aren’t you with him, Mr Yum Chum? You’re free now, your husband has released you with his nasty insults. I’ve been thinking about what he said to you and it was so unbelievably mean I think he did it on purpose, so you’d properly let go. Because if you’re set free, so is he – and that seems to be what he needs to survive. So take the gift he’s given you, Polly. God knows you’ve earned it.’

  Polly felt a flash of anger – how many hours had it taken for Shirlee to start meddling in her life again? – but just as fast, she was overtaken by confusion.

  ‘I can’t just go running off to him,’ she spluttered.

  ‘Why not?’

  Polly paused for a moment, conflicting thoughts racing into her head.

  ‘I’m not one those ping-pong-ball women. I don’t ricoc
het straight from one man to another. It would be . . . unseemly.’

  ‘Oh, apologies, Miss Brontë, I’d forgotten it was 1847.’

  ‘Well, maybe I need some time to get used to the fact that I’m getting a divorce? It’s quite a big adjustment to make,’ said Polly, starting to feel got at.

  ‘Haven’t you already had several months to do that?’ said Shirlee. ‘And if you needed some decompression between guys – how come you cosied up with Edward the way you did, before you knew you were really off the hook with hubby?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Polly, her head dropping forward. She felt completely deflated. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I shouldn’t have done it.’

  She turned and looked at Shirlee, tears smarting in her eyes.

  ‘I think I used him,’ she said.

  Shirlee looked at her very sadly, then shuffled along the bench and put her arm round her.

  ‘Come here to your Aunt Shirlee,’ she said. ‘And stop beating yourself up. He was clearly very happy to be used, if that was what you were doing, but when we were at the lunch at your mom’s place, from where I was sitting – and you know that’s always as close to the action as possible – you were looking pretty loved up yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Polly, standing up quickly. She couldn’t let herself wallow around in this conjecture. ‘I just got caught up in it all. I was in a very messed-up place in my life and I did things I never would have done normally.’

  She called for Digger. She wanted to get going. She’d had enough D & Ms for the day. For a lifetime.

  ‘That’s because what you thought was “normal”,’ said Shirlee, making quote marks with her fingers, ‘was that you were a married woman with a husband at home. You behaved differently with Chum because you weren’t that person any more, because even if it wasn’t official then, David had gone. And you know what, Poll? I think he’d actually left long before that. From what you’ve told me, even though he was still physically in the house, it sounds like he checked out emotionally a long time ago. He kept that flat on all that time.’

  ‘Well, I really don’t want to think about all that right now,’ said Polly, beginning to feel exasperated. ‘I’ve got enough on just coping with today.’

  ‘OK,’ said Shirlee, getting to her feet. ‘But bear in mind, please, you had a very sweet thing going with Edward, and while it might seem too soon, I’d hate to see you regretting that in the future – and Poll, he’s just such a lovely guy.’

  Polly put her hands up in surrender.

  ‘I do know that,’ she said, ‘it’s why I’m feeling so bad about all this, but I can’t take it on now. So I have to ask you to promise me one thing, Shirlee.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You must promise that you won’t stage one of your interventions to try to get Ch . . . Edward and me together. Don’t turn up with him at the house or anything like that. In fact, promise you won’t contact him again. It was really wrong that you ever did.’

  ‘Sorry, Mama,’ said Shirlee in a baby voice.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Polly. ‘I won’t let him be hurt. I’ve done enough damage already. Do you promise?’

  ‘I do solemnly swear,’ said Shirlee, with her right hand on her heart and her left hand up, ‘that I won’t intervene to try to stop my beloved friend Polly from throwing away her chance of happiness with a smokin’ hot straight-up guy who was clearly put on this earth to complete her. OK?’

  ‘And you won’t keep bringing him up in conversation? Especially when other people are around? Or talk to other people – for example, people called Guy – about what might have happened, or not?’

  ‘I do swear, by the almighty Goddess . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Katz,’ said Polly, ‘I accept your oaths, now let’s finish this walk and not talk about anything to do with men for the rest of it. OK?’

  Monday, 18 April

  Polly was taking Lori on a tour of her perfume-blogging life. They’d done a couple of PR open days in the morning, been to a lunchtime launch, and now she’d drafted Lori in as an assistant at one of her own events in the afternoon.

  ‘Is this a normal day for you now?’ asked Lori, as they watched the well-dressed and expensively coiffed women – and a few just as smartly groomed men – filling up the tables of ten in a function room at the Berkeley Hotel.

  ‘Not every day,’ said Polly. ‘But this is what my blog life can be like.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Lori. ‘And to think I used to tease you about smelling everything. Remember that time we took the kids to the Botanic Gardens and you were trying to analyse the smell of the fruit bats and one of them crapped on your head?’

  ‘Not something I’ll forget easily,’ said Polly, laughing. ‘I had to wash my hair five times to get that stink out.’

  She pulled the end of her hair up and sniffed it. ‘I think I can still smell it, now you’ve reminded me,’ she said. ‘Fermented rotten fruit.’

  The theme of the talk was one of Polly’s most popular – ‘The Scent of the 1950s’ – and Lori had got into the spirit, buying a vintage little black dress and a cocktail hat specially, and doing a great job of handing out the blotters and keeping the bottles of scent circulating round the room.

  ‘This actual bottle of Diorissimo was given to my mother by Christian Dior himself, in 1956,’ said Polly, holding it up before handing it to Lori to show to the audience. ‘She modelled extensively for him and they were good friends. This jacket I’m wearing is one of her Dior couture pieces from that era. I just can’t quite do it up – I don’t have her eighteen-inch waist.’

  There was a bit of hubbub when she said this – which she was used to, she’d done this event so many times now, although this was the first time at a five-star hotel for a handsome fee.

  Glancing round the luxurious space, she remembered the scruffy rooms over pubs where she’d done her early presentations, back when the idea of a perfume history event was a novelty in itself. She’d come a long way – and so had her audiences. She’d noticed some very serious handbags come in.

  ‘Mum was the model for one of René Gruau’s famous illustrations for the Diorissimo advertising campaign,’ she continued, tapping her laptop so the wonderful painting of Daphne in black opera gloves, her hair growing into roses, was projected onto the wall. ‘And this is her modelling in one of the fashion shows, in a photograph that appeared on the cover of Time magazine . . .’

  Judging by the enthusiastic question-and-answer session, followed by a long queue of women wanting personal perfume advice, and the smile on the hotel PR’s face, the event was a success.

  ‘Bloody oath, Poll,’ said Lori, ‘you’re a superstar.’

  One of the last women in the queue held back a bit until the others had finished asking questions, then she walked up and handed Polly her business card. Polly glanced down at it and saw the words ‘Literary Agent’.

  ‘Call me,’ said the woman. ‘I’ll take you for lunch. You could do a great book and I can see you doing television as well.’

  Polly was too amazed to answer.

  ‘That would be great,’ said Lori, beaming at the woman. ‘She’ll call you. I’ll make sure she does.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Polly, finding her voice again. ‘I will. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for coming today.’

  The woman smiled and left, and Lori gave Polly a hug.

  ‘Result!’ she said. ‘The audience loved you and your talk was fascinating – I had no idea perfume was so interesting. There’s so much more to it than smells.’

  Polly laughed and recited the list from one of her other events, ‘The Perfume University’: ‘history, chemistry, art, sociology, popular culture, economics, neuroscience, business, psychology, botany, marketing, fashion, and not forgetting sex, before you get anywhere near your nose. That’s what I love about it.’

  ‘Well, it’s given you a new life,’ said Lori, ‘and now you’re going to do a book. You can send a copy to Dreary Dave
.’

  Polly smiled but it gave her a pang. It had been wonderful to finally be able to tell Lori what had happened with David – someone who really knew him, who had known them together when they were still a happy family unit – but she wished she could be a little more tactful about him.

  ‘It’s not his fault, Lori,’ she said, as they packed up. ‘He’s got a horrible medical condition.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lori, ‘it’s a bastard, but you’ve got to admit, Polly, he’s always had his tricky side.’

  ‘It seems likely he’s always been fighting these intrusive thoughts,’ said Polly. ‘It does explain a lot of things I had to tell myself were his “little ways”.’

  Lori nodded. ‘Reckon you’re right about that,’ she said. ‘Rich has thought for years there was something a little bit crook about David. He says that’s why he’s always been passed over for the big jobs. No one could put their finger on it, but there was something not quite right about him.’

  Polly said nothing. She was remembering all the times David had said Rich was ‘very ambitious’ – and hadn’t meant it as a compliment – but she wasn’t going to say that to Lori. Ugh, she was glad to be out of all that academic position-jockeying. She’d seen it with her father and then again with David. It could be vicious.

  This was clearly what David had meant when he’d asked her – well, told her – not to let the university know that he was away from home for any other reason than a research trip. She understood that now. He hadn’t wanted any of his rivals to know he was vulnerable.

  So he’d been more worried about saving his professional reputation than how his absence would affect her and the kids. Thinking about that, Polly felt betrayed all over again. It might be caused by an illness but that didn’t stop it from hurting.

  ‘So what’s next?’ said Lori, after they’d said goodbye to the hotel PR and were heading out to the lobby.

  ‘I’ve got just the thing,’ said Polly, linking her arm through her best friend’s as they walked out onto the street.