Most people remembered through scents. A spicy sweet perfume layered with talc. Stale cigarettes and beer crusted carpets. A dog’s sea salted fur drying in the sunlight.
But her anosmia meant that her memories were odourless. Instead they were shaped by clothes. Her kilt took her back to school, the safety pin nostalgically uncomfortable. Her Doc Marten boots transported her to her eighteenth birthday party, worn with a light strappy dress to her mother’s loud eye roll. The pearl necklace took her to her mother’s dressing table.
When the time came, those pearls were the only thing she asked for.
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