The one who had no smell

Her gloves were wet. She peeled them off delicately, one after the
other, as she stood on the stairs, a thin ribbon of clear water
trickling down from the fronds of her hair into her coat.
She ribbed her palms together, patched red and white, and uncomfortably
sticky. The gave her gloves to him to hold, putting them down on top of
the pile of books he was already carrying. The ragged fingertips
tickled his nose.
'They smell good,' he said, 'they smell of you.'
A little wrinkle appeared in her forehead as she winced inwardly at the
sickly clique...nevertheless, she seemed to consider this for a
while.
Finally, she took one of the gloves - the right one - and pressed it to
her face.
'I can't smell anything,' she concluded finally.
'Naturally. That's because they're your gloves.'
'I don't see why that follows.'
'Everyone knows you can't smell your own smell.'
'But you can smell other people. Why can't you smell yourself?' she
asked herself, as she made her way home across the grounds, the soles
of plimsolls making slapping noises on the wet concrete.
Isn't it funny, she thought. The one scent missing from her personal
olfactory universe was the very one that she would most have liked to
pin down - to define. To analyse. To keep safely stoppered away in a
little glass jar, carefully labelled for future reference.
She started, as she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to ask
him exactly what the gloves smelt like.
She thought of calling him - now - as soon as she got home - just to
ask him. And what would it be? Fusty? Sweet? Fresh? The smell, perhaps,
that you get asfter you've been out all night in a gale?
In fact, the more she thought about it, as she put her bags down on the
hall table, the more it irritated her.
It must be here.
She plucked at her coat involuntarily, dislodging tiny crystals of
rain. It must be here. It had been with her since she was born,
following her around wherever she went, closer than a shadow, hugging
and envelpoing her like a shroud. It lingered between the filaments of
her hair, the space under her nails. It seeped into her clothes. And
yet, it was invisible. Untouchable. Always there, in the corner of her
eye - or should that have been the corner of her nose? - but always
disappearing the instant she turned to look.
'Does a nose have a corner, as such?' she wondered, as she clicked the
little white button and waited for the familiar, distant roar of the
kettle. She was the first one home today, and these moments of solitude
were moments she treasured.
.........and her scent would be with her, even when her soul had left
her body, until the scent of rot finally overpowered it - by then too
far away for anyone to notice or care. Unless, perhaps, they discovered
a forgotten pair of socks - or an old glove - while clearing out a
drawer. Then eventually, even that would be gone.
Yes, that was death, she decided, as she settled down on the dirty
sofa, the hot tea scalding her cupped hands. The final and ultimate
loss of scent.
The others would be arriving home soon, smelling of wherever they had
been that day. And, underneath that, the single, personal note -
unalterable, in the nature of music - that sent the essence of
themselves spinning into the warm little room. Familiar to her as an
old pair of gloves.
And yet, the most intriguing person in the room, the most frustrating
and deceptive person, was the one person whose essence she would never
be able to discover. The one person who always managed, time and time
again, to elude her - was the one person -

who she could not smell......