‘I’ll just close this—’ She kicks twice, thrice at the rubber doorstop, lets the door drop shut.
‘Here we go,’ she says, helping me off with my jacket. ‘I hope you’re not shy like all the English, are you?’
‘Um, no I don’t think so.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. English people always seem to be so shy.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, it’s very rude. Women come into our saunas in their swimming costumes. It’s very unhygienic.’ She sounds like she’s telling me off, but she’s still smiling sweetly. They are difficult signals to interpret. ‘A body’s a body. Why should you be ashamed of it?’
I get settled on the table and try to give off an air of non-shyness.
‘Now, I’m warming the oil up in my hands here, so it’s not too much of a shock to the system. Are you OK for me to start massaging you now?’
‘Sure.’
She lays on her hands assertively, smearing my chest with oil. She must be used to it, of course, but I’m not. I’m not quite prepared for the feeling. The contact. I close my eyes. Just her hand-shapes impressed on my chest, this way and that, this and that, working up and around my chest. I can feel a surge of electrical tingles, my nerve-endings recalling when I was last touched like this. Ten full years since. Sensations so long locked I’ve forgotten they ever occurred. Far down in the sightless, silent deep, my muscles have retained lost knowledge. Physical, unthought, unforgettable memories.
‘And if that’s the way you think about your body,’ Karen is saying, ‘then it says to me there is something wrong in the mind. My mother, when she was very frail, we used to take showers together, and I would help her wash, in the same way she helped me wash when I was a baby. What could be more natural than that?’
I start coughing, and she leans away, but leaves her oily hands in place on my chest.
‘Sorry,’ I rattle.
‘No, no, not at all. That’s why we’re here.’
She starts up again when I have settled down, goes more gently, working her fingertips firmly in to the top and middle of my chest.
‘Is that pressure OK?’
‘Yeh—’ I gurgle, and have to clear my throat. ‘Yes, that’s fine, thanks.’ Super-conscious now of my wheezing. Not coughing, at least.
Back to relaxing. Exhale, carefully. Forget the improvised audio, the magnolia walls, the failed double-glazing, its condensation skulking around the lower left corner. Concentrate on her touch. Think of the feel of her hands. Steady rhythms swash, swash, on my chest. Yes, yes.
‘So, how long have you been resident here?’
‘I don’t know — I forget. My third week, I think?’
‘It’s hard to keep track, isn’t it? Have you been happy with your care?’
‘They’ve been brilliant.’
‘Yes, everybody says that. They’re very good here.’
‘I love Sheila.’
‘Very smart woman,’ she says, almost confidentially. ‘Really knows her stuff.’
There they are, the tips of your hair brushing my neck and cheek, your flat palms pressed to my chest, fingers clutching searchingly around my jawbone and earlobe, cupping my cranium, fingertips drawing up tight and scratching into my hair. Tracing your fingertips around my back until you find the place just below my ribs — the unbearable place — just–
No.
The table creaks rhythmically beneath me.
I open my eyes, see Karen’s face working intently, concentrating on the job. She catches me looking, briefly smiles.
‘OK?’
I do a smile, though I doubt it reaches my eyes. Close them again.
Positive thinking. Think something else. Anything, anywhere else.
But you’re everywhere. The memories of you, the shape of you.
All the parts of my body seem to come together and remember you. I’ve got your textures at my fingertips, your scent in my airways, the balance of your weight in my arms and my back. In every part of my body there’s a space for you, and all I need is for you to come back again and fill it.
The electronic beep of the alarmed door strikes suddenly out in the corridor — my muscles suddenly tense, and my heart instantly starts thudding twice as fast. Karen’s hands tense and pause briefly, before working on through the noise.
‘Oh, it’s only the door alarm,’ she calls through the noise. ‘They must be testing it.’
The alarm stops abruptly after a few seconds, leaving a door-slam to slowly subside, and allow the soothing music back through.
I have to relax.
‘Can you think of any body parts that begin with O?’ I say.
‘Oh,’ she says, stopping her work for a brief moment, with a knowing little smile. ‘I see, are you playing Sheila’s little game?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yes, she likes to get people to play that one. Gets people to open up a bit.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, although it doesn’t sound quite nice to have it put like that.
‘Let me have a think. O … I know what I’d do for O. Because I’m a qualified aromatherapist, I’d have lots to say about the olfactory nerve. Yes, that’s definitely what I’d do.’
I break out once again into gurgly coughing, and hold my hand up in apology. ‘What’s the olfactory nerve?’
‘It’s what enables you to process scent. It’s an amazing thing, very mysterious. I’ve got reams and reams of research showing how your olfactory senses are some of the most effective in tapping into the brain. They’re starting to utilize it with coma patients to lift them out through these associations.’
O
Olfactory nerve
I DON’T KNOW what the olfactory memory of my life would be. Vetiver: that’s the scent of you.
I’ve caught it a very few times in the last ten years of working on the checkouts, the scent of vetiver. It’s an immediate hyperlink back to you, to you and me.
No.
Something else.
Mr Miller, holding out the polythene bag before him.
‘In this polythene bag is one of those most incredible, unforgettable smells known to man. It’s astonishing really, it’s possible to store it inside something so simple. Astonishing.’
The whole class in the palm of his hand.
‘Who wants to sample the delights?’
Twenty-four right hands shoot up. Four left hands.
He comes to me.
‘One scientific sniff, if you please.’
He’s acting weird. Why is he acting all weird and sort of — respectful?
I sniff, tentatively.
‘Fuck! Aww, fucking hell!’
Acid explosion in my brain and eyeballs.
I’m back, I’m backwards, up off my stool, and I’ve just said fuck in front of everyone, twice.
Everyone is laughing; Kelvin, close by me, is laughing hysterically.
I snort out my sinuses, get rid, get rid. Eject the stench. Is my nose bleeding? I’m bleeding, surely?
Miller has the bag closed. He observes the spectacle before him.
‘Ammonia. Now, if everyone will stop being so childish please, what we have learned here is that we need to be far more cautious when sampling odours in the laboratory.’
He holds the bag at a distance, wafts the odour towards his nose with a queen-like hand wave.
Vetiver: it’s the scent you’ve brought with you now, into my childhood bedroom at my mum’s house — at my house.
We’ve talked those few times on the phone, but the fact that we haven’t been in each other’s presence since we split up — what, seven weeks ago? — is made absolute and physical by the fact that I can smell your scent.
So there you definitely are, a full-grown woman in a heavy woollen outdoor coat, stylishly tailored for grown-ups who mean business, sitting on a young teenager’s exam revision chair. You look awkward.