The Perfume Collector

‘I don’t know.’

‘Bloody fool!’ Mallory exhaled. It was easier to talk about his failings than hers; they were, after all, so glaring. ‘Men are so stupid, you just want to strangle them.’

Grace said nothing.

‘What was he thinking of?’ She was building up momentum now. ‘Or was he thinking at all? I doubt it. How could he do this to you?’

Grace turned the lighter over and over again in her pocket, feeling the reassuring weight of it in her hand. ‘It’s not entirely his fault, I suppose,’ she said quietly.

‘Not his fault?’ Mallory turned to look at her. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

Grace paused, shifted uneasily. ‘There are other factors, Mal. Things you don’t know about.’

‘What factors? You can’t possibly be defending him.’

‘I’m not. Not really.’

‘It sounds like you are.’

‘It’s just … well, the thing is …’ Grace stopped. She longed to confide in someone. And sitting here, side by side with Mallory in the car, felt safe; she wouldn’t have to look directly at her … she could just say it. ‘Our marriage has been difficult for some time.’

Mallory looked at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

Grace avoided her gaze. ‘The truth is, I’m something of a disappointment to Roger.’

‘A disappointment?’ Mallory felt her temper soar. ‘He’s the one who’s a disappointment! Why, there was a time when you could do no wrong – he used to worship you!’

Mallory’s use of the past tense stung Grace’s ears – used to.

She took another drag for courage. ‘I became pregnant, Mal. When we were first married.’

‘What? You never told me.’

‘I didn’t tell anyone. The truth is, I got pregnant before the wedding.’

‘Oh.’ She blinked at Grace in surprise, as if seeing her for the first time. She didn’t seem the type – so controlled and naïve.

‘And then I lost it,’ Grace added numbly.

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me? I could’ve helped you.’

‘Because it was over before it had really begun. Four months in, I woke up in terrible pain. There was blood … everywhere. It was a dreadful night.’

‘I’m so sorry, darling. But you know,’ Mallory added gently, ‘that’s not uncommon with the first try. Sometimes it takes a few goes before you last full term.’

‘Yes, but there won’t be any more tries,’ Grace said quietly. ‘There was an infection; it scarred me. I can’t have children.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘But have you been to see a doctor?’ Mallory pressed.

‘I’ve been to see three.’

There was silence.

Grace rolled down the window; she wanted fresh air on her face.

‘Sometime afterwards,’ she went on, ‘Roger took me out to dinner. He booked the same restaurant he proposed in. All the regular staff were there, shaking his hand, welcoming us back. Alfonse, the maître d’, took us to our favourite table, the one where Roger had got down on one knee two years earlier. Do you remember that?’

Mallory nodded. ‘He gave you a diamond ring the likes of which I have yet to see again.’

‘Yes. Well, we sat down, ordered champagne cocktails and rib roast. It had been a long time since we’d been out together, just the two of us. We raised our glasses to toast one another and Roger looked at me and shook his head. He had this strange, empty expression on his face. “You’ll never be the same, will you?” he said. “You’ll never be the same lovely girl I married.” I didn’t understand. I thought he was making some bad joke. But he wasn’t. He took a drink and said, “So, now what are we going to do?”’

Mallory looked across at her, stunned.

‘I suppose in his mind, that was the end. He hasn’t been with me, you know, slept with me, since.’

‘But what happened wasn’t your fault, Grace!’

Grace wiped a tear away with her gloved fingertip. ‘It doesn’t make any difference, Mal. I’m broken, defective. I can’t give him what he wants. Now he regrets that he married me at all.’

It began to rain, a fine misty shower, sending rivulets snaking down the windows as they wove through the London morning traffic.

Mallory turned on the windscreen wipers.

She was out of her depth. Any difficulties in her marriage had been swiftly negotiated with extra cocktails and placating trips to the jewellers.

But from the very beginning, everything about Grace and Roger’s romance had been extreme; the vivid Technicolor version of everyone else’s black-and-white lives. From their first meeting at the Grosvenor Square Ball, Roger had been almost frighteningly in love with her. Grace was new to London, unaffected and artlessly charming. His attentions were obsessive, extending to lavish gifts and very public displays of adoration. There was the surprise birthday party he’d thrown her at Scott’s, after only a few months of knowing her, complete with a pearl necklace and fifty of his closest friends. Mallory remembered being slightly jealous; wondering why Geoffrey couldn’t make more of an effort.

And Grace had been dazzled. By the time their engagement was announced, it was already a foregone conclusion.

It struck her as strange that such violent affections could be reduced to utter indifference.

Mallory tried to kept her voice light and calm, as if she were talking to a child or an invalid. ‘Perhaps it’s just a stage. Maybe he simply needs to adjust. Get used to the idea.’

‘I think he has adjusted, Mal. And he’s apparently doing very well without me.’

Grace’s confidences appeared to have cost her; she leaned her head against the window.

‘I have dreams …’ she said after a while. ‘Nightmares. I’m running in a wood, looking for something or someone. But no matter how fast I run, I cannot find it. Sometimes I think it’s just ahead of me, and then it disappears again. Then I start to fall, into some black, hideous abyss and I wake up. I used to have them all the time when I was a child. And now I only have them when something’s wrong, terribly wrong.’ She looked across at Mallory. ‘I had that dream again the night of the party.’

‘Grace—’

‘It’s hopeless, Mal.’ Grace sighed, cutting her off before she could continue. She wasn’t in the mood to be placated. ‘I used to think it would get better, that over time he would see me again the way he used to. But the opposite is true. It’s only become worse.’ She stared blankly out of the window, at the grey fog settling in thick filmy layers across Hyde Park. ‘I suppose it was only a matter of time before something happened.’

Mallory didn’t know what to say. She thought about the leaflet for the Secretarial College in Oxford. How Grace had been searching for a purpose; a way to be useful. And then she recalled, to her shame, how she’d dismissed the idea out of hand.