There was a scent Lancome used to make: Rouge Now Or Never. I remember smelling it one day walking through a shop and having to go around sniffing the different bottles until I worked out which one it was. It smells, to me, of my first job in the city, or dark evenings walking through twinkling London winter lights, of dark blue and silver glitter, of all the promise of young adulthood. The slim red bottle was like a science fiction artefact, the kind of glass key you could slip into a mysterious gate you never noticed before at the end of your road and disappear into… somewhere. Ahh, I’d love to find another bottle of it, but I think it’s gone forever.

Headshot Naomi Alderman