Rebecca Raisin - The Little Perfume Shop Off The Champs-Élysées

Paris suddenly felt like a long way from Whispering Lakes …

‘I’m going to meet a friend before dinner,’ Clementine said, giving me a bawdy wink that helped ascertain the friend was of the male persuasion. ‘Back soon!’ She air kissed me and left, swinging her hips like a diva.

My phone buzzed and Jen’s name flashed. ‘ Bonjour , Mademoiselle ,’ I said, adopting a woefully bad French accent to mask the fact I didn’t quite know how to act with my sister any more. Such a foreign feeling, and one I hoped would fade.

‘Look at you, all Frenchified already!’ she said. I’d never been away from Jen before and now we were on entirely different continents. ‘So fill me in. How was the journey? Is Paris as beautiful as they say?’

Falling back on the bed, I launched into story mode as if nothing had changed and I wasn’t disappointed in her. I told her every little thing except the part about stepping into oncoming traffic and the gorgeous stranger I’d locked eyes with for the briefest moment. No need for her to worry about me in the big bad world.

‘So no hot men? The pilot, the driver, the Leclére staff? I bet they’re all gorgeous in that broody French way?’

I tutted, ‘I’m not here for love, Jen. As you well know.’ And it was a bit of a sore point considering …

She huffed. ‘Surely there’s time for a little romance in the city of love?’

‘City of light ,’ I corrected. She knew how important this competition was and what I’d given up to do it. Namely my own dead-end job and financial security. If I didn’t win, I’d return home to unemployment, and I had no intention of letting that happen. Especially now.

‘ But French men are hot, like throw-caution-to-the-wind hot, right?’ Jen’s latest project was pushing me to find a soulmate. But only because she’d fallen in love, mind you. Suddenly she was all, oh look at that guy, he’s got marriage material written all over him , or knock me down that guy looks like he’d make adorable babies, why don’t you ask for his number? Like I was some kind of desperado, champing at the bit to get married when I clearly was not.

The dreamy romantic in her was new, and I wished she’d get over it already. Sure, I wanted the fairytale too, love, marriage, babies, but first I needed my career to take off. Love would have to wait. Besides, I was so overwhelmingly bad at dating. My previous relationships had all fizzled out because when I got lost making perfume all else faded to black, and that wasn’t conducive to a healthy relationship. Turning up to a dinner date a day late one too many times had put paid to any chance of love; besides, no one had made my heart sing. Depressing, really, since my thirties were creeping up.

Whoever I met had to be as important to me as perfumery, and when you come from a town as small as I did, it wasn’t hard to find yourself single. The dating pool was more of a puddle really.

Perfumery was the key to a decent future. Security. As much as I loved my folks, I didn’t want to end up like them, unemployed drifters with no ambition, relying on us to care for them.

‘Well?’ she said again. ‘You’ve met someone, haven’t you?’

‘What? No. I’ve been here for all of five minutes!’ I said exasperated. ‘Look, I’m sure there’s plenty of princes among the frogs, but who cares? That’s the last thing I’ll be worrying about.’ With the proverbial rug pulled from under me, I had to plow ahead and chase a different future or else I’d end up back home, a failure, my five-year plan now just words on parchment. Things seemed more precarious than ever before. Sure, I’d still go to New York, but it wouldn’t be until I had the funds, and so many obstacles stood in my way.

‘It would seriously be a waste to go all the way to Paris and not kiss a Parisian …’ she said dreamily, caught up in the romance of Paris, and not thinking sensibly.

‘And lose the competition and come home and beg for my job back? The job where I sell perfume, not make it? Nope. Not going to happen! New York is calling …’ The past was the past, and there was nothing I could do to change it, but still, that feeling of abandonment lingered just under the surface and bubbled up and out.

We lapsed into silence, which was becoming a new habit. This strange shift in our lives provoked these sorts of awkward moments and I was at a loss how to fix them or what to say. Normally we’d be chatting at a hundred miles an hour, never running out of steam.

Eventually with a half sigh she murmured, ‘Nan would be so proud of you, Del, living in the perfume capital of the world, chasing those dreams.’

O ur dreams had become only my dreams . How could she give it all up for a guy?

I put a hand to my heart, feeling the same ache as I always did when I thought of my nan. ‘As crazy as it sounds,’ I said, ‘sometimes I think Nan orchestrated this adventure.’

I’d loved perfume since I was a child when my nan had discovered that I had the ‘nose’ for it – a highly tuned ability for olfactory compositions. Since then Nan and I had been conspirators and I still missed her so much it hurt. She’d been more than my nan, she’d been my best friend, conspirator and stand-in mom when my own was braying at the sky, or off on one of her adventures, her responsibilities scattered like the fuzz of a dandelion flower on the wind.

Jen spoke softly. ‘If anyone could pull strings from the afterlife it would be Nan, but this was all you, Del. This is your chance to learn from the masters, and I hope you’ll forget all about me and everyone in Whispering Lakes, and focus on perfumery.’

She spoke as though she was giving me permission to let her go. We’d always shared everything, and I didn’t see why things should change, even if she was head over heels in love. But the days of mirroring each other, and finishing each other’s sentences were clearly over.

They were all on my mind though; my beatnik parents, Pop with his melancholy eyes. And Jen who’d broken my heart the way only sisters can do.

‘As if I’d forget about you, Jen. Jeez.’

I didn’t quite know where I fit in the world without my twin. In the past, any decisions were made with both of us in mind. A sort of seasickness crept up on me. I felt untethered and adrift without her, knowing I had to go forward on my own and wondering if life would be the same, if I’d ever truly be happy again, alone.

‘Del, live in the moment, soak up as much as you can. This will be the making of you. Make some new friends. Be brave, fearless, and flirt!’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said, wishing the worry would float on past.

With laughter in her voice she said, ‘You’re saluting, aren’t you?’

I dropped my hand. ‘Maybe.’

‘What are the other contestants like?’

I told her all about Clementine, the OTT Parisian, and about Kathryn, the soft-spoken Londoner. ‘Sebastien will be there tonight, so I’ll finally get to meet the enigma himself. We’re all having dinner with the Leclére team. A sort of welcoming party, I guess. And I can finally see who I’m up against.’

She picked up my nervousness in the nuances of my voice. ‘They might have had proper perfumery training, Del,’ she began in a pep talk tone. ‘But they didn’t learn from Nan! Textbooks and chemistry teachers can’t compare to Nan’s lessons at the perfumery organ. No one can compete with that. No one .’