March 2002

In the afternoon, when her words will no longer organise themselves into any sensible order, the writer laces her walking shoes and steps outside. She takes her story with her, of course. This one isn’t the kind she can ever leave at home. If she tries, it will only slip out through the crack between the door and jamb, track her down and surprise her with its presence at the least opportune moment. So, as she descends the steps from her apartment into the noise and motion of the city, she tucks her story into the breast pocket of her shirt, where it curls up close against her heart.

The writer walks fast, and the story hums. Sometimes she thinks there are instructions encoded in the humming, pitched slightly beyond the range of her consciousness. But, in truth, it’s probably just her own instincts that lead her down this street and into another, around this corner and over that footbridge, across this park, through that tunnel and beneath the branches of this tree. Either way, the path she walks brings her to the museum.

She has been coming here, lately, in the spirit other people go to church. In the foyer, sunshine falls down through the distant glass of the ceiling, warming the top of her head, and the artworks on the walls are full of ideas and emotions so big they make her feel like she, herself, is expanding. As she crosses the foyer towards the double-doors of the main exhibition gallery at a dawdling pace, her gaze travels from the ceiling to the art and back again. Probably, she looks aimless, and that could be why a gallery guide bounces up to her in bright white sneakers that are a glaring contrast to her black T-shirt and jeans.

‘Are you here for the guided tour?’

The writer glances over at the gallery doors and the loose knot of people beside them. She is not here for the tour. But she could be.

‘I . . . am,’ she says.

The gallery guide’s smile is as impersonal as it is friendly and sincere, and it’s evident she has no idea who the writer is, or how she is connected to the exhibition. The writer doesn’t mind. Anonymity suits her just fine.

‘Excellent!’ the guide says. ‘We start in two minutes.’

As the writer approaches the gallery doors, she finds herself within range of the slightly cooler air that drifts out from the darkened space into the foyer, and that’s when she smells it. Just like she did last time. And the time before.

The past.

Is there an actual smell? If so, what is it? Something oceanic?

A trace of Claudie’s subtle, musky perfume? Whatever it is, it winds the writer back to the age of sixteen. She’s on the stairs at the house in Clovelly, walking up to the attic rooms with their dormer windows always needing to be wiped clean of salt-spray. She’s a teenager, awkward in her too-tall body, holding her breath as Claudie wraps a measuring tape lightly around her bust, her waist, her hips.

The writer inhales, trying to catch hold of what she’s smelled. Identify it. Verify it. The story in her pocket stirs. It, too, strain after the airy wisp of history. But it’s gone, nothing more than an olfactory ghost, hurrying past on its way out the museum’s front door and into the traffic…