about the other thing? The con artist bit?’
‘That’s a manner of speaking. Perfume is nothing more than a promise in a bottle, Ted used to say. It exists to create an illusion.’
My discomfort was growing. I didn’t want to talk to Mel about my father. We had reached an unspoken truce long ago, the old illusionist and me, and chatting about him and his life’s work, even to Mel, was outside the terms of the agreement.
‘I thought smell was the truest of the senses.’
‘Smell may be. But perfume, on the other hand, is meant to disguise and flatter, and lead the senses astray.’
‘I have just realised something. You never wear it, do you?’
‘No,’ I said.
Mel always moved in a cloud of scent. She changed her allegiances but the emphasis was constant. Ted wore cologne. He had created one for himself and he used it liberally. I never thought it suited him. It was too salty and citrusy, too fresh and clean and outdoor, and when I was a child the discrepancy between the man I knew and the way he smelled was always troubling. The scent rose in my head now, like the first warning of a migraine.
‘Why?’
‘I prefer the smell of skin,’ I smiled. I remembered the way Lola and Jack used to smell when they were babies.
‘What’s the real reason?’
‘There’s no other reason,’ I said.
I put down my knife and fork, placing them very precisely together between uneaten half-moons of ravioli.
Mel stared at me for a moment, then she lightly held up her hand. If I didn’t want to talk about my father she wasn’t going to force me to and I appreciated her tact. But in the little silence that followed I understood that the closed topic made an uncomfortable feeling between us. Mel was hurt by my reticence. For the first time, she had noticed that I wasn’t entirely open with her. This meant that she was wondering what else I held back and how well she did know me, and therefore whether our friendship was really as close as she had let herself believe.
I wanted to reach out and take her hand, and tell her not to mind.
I wanted to assure her that I hid nothing except my history, and this no longer mattered to me. But I didn’t do it and the moment passed. The brown-skinned waiter came and took our plates away, asking me if everything had been all right.
‘Fine,’ I murmured. ‘Just a bit too much.’
Mel sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette. The three young women had ordered puddings and were enjoying a chocolate high. The quartet of old friends had already left, hurrying back to relieve their babysitters. The noise in the restaurant was slowly diminishing.
‘How’s your mum, by the way?’ I asked.
She looked at me as if she were going to protest that this blatant change of topic was beneath me, but then she shrugged. ‘She’s being quite difficult.’
This was not new. Mel’s glamorous mother had become elegantly and minutely demanding in her old age. We talked about her for a while, until the atmosphere between us warmed again. We exchanged some news of Caz and Graham, my oldest friends whom Mel had met many times and with whom she was now friendly in her own right. She asked about Penny, my business partner, and Penny’s lover Evelyn, and Evelyn’s baby, Cassie. I gave her the small pieces of information eagerly, trying to make amends.
Then we studied the pudding menu together. Mel spotted it first and her face puckered with delight before she started laughing. She pointed the item out to me.
Pecan, almond and walnut pie (contains nuts).
Mel and I collected menu misspellings and absurdities. Lola maintained that this was very sad and middle-aged, but it was a source of innocent amusement to us and we didn’t care. The addition of this latest one helped us to forget the doubts I had raised by putting a wall round my past.
‘I’m going to put my nut allergy right behind me and have that,’ I said.
‘Split it with me?’
‘Done.’
While we ate our nuts we talked about the Government’s ridiculous plans for the tube, and about our respective jobs, and a film about South America that Mel had been to with Adrian, which I wanted to see. The restored rhythms of the evening were familiar and precious to me, and I regretted that I had caused any disturbance in them. Maybe some time I could talk to Mel about Ted and the way I grew up, and maybe even should do so. But not now, I thought. Not yet.
It was eleven o’clock before we found ourselves out in the street again. A cool wind blew in our faces, striking a chill after the warmth of the restaurant.
Mel turned the collar of her leather jacket up around her ears. ‘Call me later in the week?’
‘I will,’ I promised. I felt full of love for her, and stepped close and quickly hugged her. ‘You’re a good friend.’
I saw the white flash of her smile. And I could smell the warm, musky residue of her perfume. I couldn’t identify it by name, but I thought it was one she often wore.
‘Trust me,’ Mel said. ‘I do.’
She touched my shoulder, then turned and walked fast up the street. Mel always walked quickly. She filled up her life, all the corners of it.
I retraced my steps more slowly to the tube station. I liked travelling on the Underground late at night and watching the miniature dramas of drunks and giggling girls and hollow-eyed Goths and couples on the way to bed together. I never felt threatened. I even liked the smell of Special Brew and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the homely detritus of trampled pages of the Evening Standard and spilled chips. That night there was a ripe-smelling old dosser asleep in one corner, and a posse of inebriated Australian girls who tried to start up an in-compartment game of volleyball using a red balloon. Two gay men with multiple piercings looked on coldly, but the tramp never even stirred.
The walk at the other end through the streets to my house was much quieter. The street lamps shone on parked cars and skips and front gardens. Once, on this route, I saw a dog fox at the end of a cul-de-sac. He stood silently with his noise pointed towards me and his ears delicately pricked. I was surprised by how big he was. After inspecting me he turned and vanished effortlessly into the darkness. Tonight, however, there were only cats and a couple of au pair girls hurrying back from an evening at the bar on the corner of the main road.
I was thinking about Mel as I walked, reviewing the little breach that I had caused and telling myself that it didn’t matter, it was nothing, our friendship was strong enough to weather it. If Mel had a fault it was her possessiveness, her need to feel that she was at the centre of her friends’ lives. Of course she would hate any suggestion that she was shut out.
The houses in my street had steps leading up to the front doors. As I walked under the clenched-fist branches of pollarded lime trees, I had glimpses of basement kitchens barred by area railings. I saw alcove bookshelves, the backs of computers and the occasional submarine blue glimmer of a television, but most of the downstairs windows were already dark. I reached my steps and walked up, my house keys in my hand. The
