They sit under an umbrella at the poolside table, drinking white wine and sharing a goat’s cheese salad. After lunch is over, Emma takes off her shoes and settles by the side of the pool with her feet dangling in the water. Philippe has been telling her about his daughter, Juliette, who now runs their family business. It is obvious he is enormously proud of her. As he speaks, she wonders if Philippe could be persuaded to join them all for her lunch under the apple trees in her garden. The picture forms once more in her mind: all the people who have helped her, gathered together in one place.
He stands up and passes her a fresh glass of wine. ‘Do you have children, Emma?’
‘No, my husband Will and I couldn’t have children.’ She is staring at the water, as she continues. ‘My husband died just over a year ago. It’s been hard. I found out, seven months after he died, that he’d had an affair…’ She doesn’t know why she adds this last part. Maybe the effect of the heat and the wine? Maybe because Phillippe is a stranger, and she’s far from home? She wonders if by saying it out loud, it somehow lessens the power it has over her.
Philippe looks thoughtfully at her for a moment. ‘Stay there,’ he says, before disappearing towards the house. He reappears five minutes later carrying coffee cups balanced on top of the wooden box of phials Emma saw on his desk earlier.
‘Did you know,’ he says, as he unloads the coffee, ‘that our sense of smell is the only sense that has a direct connection to the two areas of the brain most strongly associated with memory and emotion, the hippocampus and amygdala? That is why, when we come across familiar smells, we are transported back to the place we smelt them and how we felt.’
She nods, thinking of how the metallic scent of rain takes her back to that December day in the garden, seven months after Will died.
‘Come up here,’ Philippe beckons, putting the box aside and handing a towel to Emma. ‘We are going to use fragrances as a way to consider the painful memories you carry. It is something my daughter and I have done together occasionally.’ For a moment, a cloud passes over his face. ‘There was a time when we did not speak for almost a year.’
He waits until Emma is settled and has her coffee in front of her, then asks, ‘Is there a fragrance you particularly associate with your husband?’
Emma immediately answers, ‘Sandalwood,’ and he draws a phial from the box and hands it to her.
She opens the stopper and a spicy aroma drifts into the warm air. A memory threads its way towards her, as if summoned by the scent. She looks at Philippe trying to articulate her feelings. ‘The first time I sat down beside him…’ She passes a hand over her eyes. ‘It was an old-fashioned smell for someone of our age and I remember thinking that was sweet, unexpected. But it was also unnerving.’
‘How long were you together?’ Philippe asks.
‘We would have been married ten years last month.’
‘I’m not going to ask you about his infidelity Emma– that would not be fair. But have you been able to forgive him?’
Emma so wants to say she has, but she shakes her head.
‘It takes time,’ Philippe says. It was a statement of fact. ‘It took my wife two years and two weeks to forgive me.’
She looks sharply at Philippe.
‘It took my daughter longer,’ he adds.
Emma lets out a long breath.
‘Were you unhappy with your wife?’ She has to ask.
‘No.’
Emma stares at him helplessly. ‘Then,why?’
It is a long time before Philippe answers. ‘Some people have affairs as a matter of course. Some believe they have connected with someone new in a profound way– that may or may not be true, of course. I had an affair for fun. Therein lies the depth of my vanity and my stupidity.’ Philippe holds her eye for a second then frowns and turns away.
Emma watches the hibiscus flowers twirling slowly in the shimmering water at the side of the pool. ‘Will wasn’t the sort of man who had affairs. And I thought we wereconnected … but I wonder now if we had lost sight of each other.’ She glances back at Philippe. ‘He wasn’t a vain man, but when he turned forty, maybe he felt something had changed. I don’t think I got it, because he was very fit for his age. But maybe that was it– “for his age”.’
She has been over this so many times in her mind since talking to Betty. Had Will been restless? Slightly distracted? Had he known at some subliminal level that there was something wrong, that the body he had always been able to rely upon was going to let him down? It is a knot she cannot undo.
‘Loss and betrayal are a powerful combination to overcome.’ Philippe turns back to her. ‘Tell me Emma, can you think of a time when you have been really happy, on your own– without Will?’
She smiles crookedly at Philippe. ‘Do I have to?’
‘You know you do.’
Emma tears herself away from Will and the scent of sandalwood and searches for a memory. Her eyes start to gleam with a smile, before she is even aware of it.
‘Tell me,’ Philippe prompts, immediately noticing the change.
‘I am in the Flower Cabin– that’s the flower shop I work in. The people there with me are all helping search for The Florist on theTitanic.’ She can picture Les sitting on an upturned dustbin, Betty beside him, Tamas leaning on the counter. ‘I’m telling them about my research.’
