The A to Z of You and Me

O

Olfactory nerve

I DON’T KNOW what the olfactory memory of my life would be. Vetiver: that’s the scent of you.

I’ve caught it a very few times in the last ten years of working on the checkouts, the scent of vetiver. It’s an immediate hyperlink back to you, to you and me.

No.

Something else.

Mr Miller, holding out the polythene bag before him.

‘In this polythene bag is one of those most incredible, unforgettable smells known to man. It’s astonishing really, it’s possible to store it inside something so simple. Astonishing.’

The whole class in the palm of his hand.

‘Who wants to sample the delights?’

Twenty-four right hands shoot up. Four left hands.

He comes to me.

‘One scientific sniff, if you please.’

He’s acting weird. Why is he acting all weird and sort of — respectful?

I sniff, tentatively.

‘Fuck! Aww, fucking hell!’

Acid explosion in my brain and eyeballs.

I’m back, I’m backwards, up off my stool, and I’ve just said fuck in front of everyone, twice.

Everyone is laughing; Kelvin, close by me, is laughing hysterically.

I snort out my sinuses, get rid, get rid. Eject the stench. Is my nose bleeding? I’m bleeding, surely?

Miller has the bag closed. He observes the spectacle before him.

‘Ammonia. Now, if everyone will stop being so childish please, what we have learned here is that we need to be far more cautious when sampling odours in the laboratory.’

He holds the bag at a distance, wafts the odour towards his nose with a queen-like hand wave.

Vetiver: it’s the scent you’ve brought with you now, into my childhood bedroom at my mum’s house — at my house.

We’ve talked those few times on the phone, but the fact that we haven’t been in each other’s presence since we split up — what, seven weeks ago? — is made absolute and physical by the fact that I can smell your scent.

So there you definitely are, a full-grown woman in a heavy woollen outdoor coat, stylishly tailored for grown-ups who mean business, sitting on a young teenager’s exam revision chair. You look awkward.

I’m sitting on my squashy single bed with its double duvet. There’s nowhere else.

Rolling up the walls around us, the old wallpaper, James Bond-style rockets, carefully rendered. It had never occurred to me how carefully rendered they were. Like someone cared about the engineering. Just for a child’s wallpaper. You wouldn’t get that now. Mum has had no reason to redecorate, so the incongruous match-up remains.

This could be my past looking into my future.

‘So you’ve finished your exams?’ I say.

‘Finally. Don’t ask me how I did, because I don’t want to think about it. I’m heading off back to the Lakes for a month to stay with my mum before I start work.’

‘Oh right? Well, give her my best.’

‘I brought this—’ you say, meekly, holding up the crochet blanket. ‘I don’t really know why. You probably don’t want it.’

‘No, I do. I do.’

I take it from you and hold it, folded in my lap. It too smells of vetiver, and I remember you spritzing it before you went on your last work placement, months ago. You did it so I wouldn’t forget you. Now it means I won’t be able to.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘And I dug out some of my notes,’ you say, ‘and there’s a few leaflets and things that explain the basics. Stage 2 kidney disease: look at these sections here — they’re going to want to keep regular tabs on you, make sure there’s no more loss of kidney function. But the main thing is to keep your heart in good health. Cut out the smoking, get some exercise.’

And I can hear myself, my own voice, blundering and naïve. ‘Yeah? Oh, that’s a load off, I tell you—’

‘It’s serious. Please, please don’t go getting complacent.’

You shift a little in your seat. Maybe I was a shade snappy.

‘Anyway,’ you say, ‘it’s nothing that you can’t fold into your life — and hopefully there won’t be any more deterioration.’

I flip through a couple of the leaflets, and try to take it on board, but I’ll have to leave it till I’m on my own.

‘I brought you this, too. A bit of light reading.’ You hand over a hardback coffee-table book: Piet Oudolf, Planting Design.

It’s so easy for you even now to surprise me with kindness.

You smile happily, pleased I’m pleased. ‘It’s only a library book, but I thought it would give you some good ideas, a few things to mull over while you start getting used to where you’re at these days.’

I set the book down on the blanket on my lap and pat it to show gratitude. I allow myself to look at you, and you smile. ‘Thank you so much for making the effort, is all. I really appreciate it.’ I thumb the edge of the blanket.

‘Happy to help,’ you say. ‘Just because we’ve had our problems doesn’t mean I don’t care.’

‘I’m sorry I leaned on you so much,’ I say.

You look down in your lap. ‘It’s my baggage too. It’s — it’s not something I think I can cope with. That whole — trust area.’

‘I wasn’t straight with you, and I’m so sorry.’

‘Maybe it needed to happen. It was just too much hearing you say that, and seeing you not looking after yourself.’

‘That’s not me. That’s not what I want to be.’

I look at you and try to sustain your gaze, but you look away.

‘I can change, Mia,’ I say.

You look back at me, and some self-centred part of me had been imagining tears in your eyes. But they’re dry.

‘There are times when I want to let it all drop, Ivo. I do miss you, you know. But everything’s so up in the air at the moment. I’m going away, and when I come back there’s the new job — you’re coping with all this change with your health, and — it’s not the right time. It’d be better, don’t you think, if we just stayed friends?’

I look up into your eyes, and I see the kindness. And I realize I’d forgotten to tell myself what I should have been telling myself all along: remember never, ever to hope.

Crushed again.

‘Better to be friends — better than to have nothing at all,’ you say.

No.

Not better.

‘Maybe I’ll give you a call from my mum’s? In a week or two?’

Oh God, is it a good idea to string this on if it’s not going to come to a happy ending? Shouldn’t I just sever all ties now?

All I can think of is the photo Mal texted me shortly before you arrived. He’s found a flat.

But I can’t bring myself to tell you.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say. ‘That’d be nice.’