When you’ve been happily married for twenty-four years, you don’t expect to find yourself lying in bed alone just before midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Polly didn’t even know where her husband was. She hadn’t seen him for over a week. It had been so strange having Christmas without him, and now this.
She pulled the duvet up over her head and then straight back down again. It was no good, she couldn’t sleep through it.
Polly’s life is seemingly wonderful. Her children are both away at uni, her yoga classes are popular and her perfume blog has taken off. Her mother, a glamorous ex-model, is happily settled in an upmarket retirement village. The only problem is her disappearing husband who, out of the blue, has announced (via a letter) that he needs some space and is going away travelling for six months. There is to be no contact, no questions, no explanations.
As Polly struggles to make sens of this unsettling, monumental change, it is a trio of new friends who proves to be most helpful: Shirlee, a loudmouthed student at her yoga classes, who seems to have taken over Polly’s kitchen, and thinks nothing of being woken in the middle of the night for first aid help; Guy, a new, mysterious perfumer, who is fascinated by Polly’s work and wants to impress her; and Edward, a friend from university who unexpectedly reappears in her life. As she muddles through the increasing uncertainty of her husband’s absence, these friends help Polly make sense of it, and build a new life.
The Scent of You is a tale of romance, self-discovery and friendship against the mystery and upset of an absentee husband, peppered with the scents of the main character’s world. As well as her perfume blog, entries from which pepper the book, the scents of her different experiences are entwined so evocatively into the action that the reader can smell them, and becomes a little more aware of the smells of the real world, too.
Issues of ageing, secrets and psychological illness are explored in a story which is heart warming and absorbing.
The Scent of You, by Maggie Alderson
Harper Collines, 2017
ISBN 9781460751213