Pulse

response is more one of curiosity than alarm. For the rest of the holiday he monitors the ways in which his nose lets him down. Benzene fumes when filling up the car – nothing. A double espresso in a village bar – nothing. Flowers cascading over a crumbly wall – nothing. The half-inch of wine a hovering waiter has poured into his glass – nothing. Soap, shampoo – nothing. Deodorant – nothing. That was the oddest thing of all, Dad told me: to be putting on deodorant and not be able to smell something you were putting on to stop something else you also couldn’t smell.
    They agreed there wasn’t much point in doing anything until they got home. Mum expected she’d have to badger Dad to call the health centre. The two of them shared a reluctance to bother the doctor unless it was serious. But eachthought something that happened to the other was more serious than if it was happening to them. Hence the necessity to badger. Eventually, one might simply ring up and book an appointment in the other’s name.
    This time, my father did it for himself. I asked what had decided him. He paused. ‘Well, if you want to know, son, it was when I realised I couldn’t smell your mum.’
    ‘You mean, her perfume?’
    ‘No, not her perfume. Her skin. Her … self.’
    There was a fond, absent look in his eye as he said it. I didn’t find this at all embarrassing. He was just a man at ease with what he felt about his wife. There are some parents who make a display of marital emotion in front of their children: look at us, see how young we still are, how dashing, aren’t we just the picture? My parents weren’t like this at all. And I envied them the more for it, that they didn’t need to show off.
    When you run in our group, there’s the leader, Jake, who sets the pace and also makes sure no one falls too far behind. At the front are the heavy guys who keep their heads down, check their watches and heart monitors, and talk, if at all, about hydration levels and how many calories they’ve done. At the back are those who aren’t fit enough to run and talk at the same time. And in between are the rest of us, who like both the exercise and the chat. But there’s a rule: no one’s allowed to monopolise anyone else, not even if they’re going out together. So one Friday evening, I checked my stride to fall in with Janice, our newest recruit. Her running gear had clearly not been bought at the local shop where the rest of us go; it was looser cut, and silkier, and had needless bits of piping on it.
    ‘So what brings you to our town?’
    ‘Been here two years, actually.’
    ‘So what brought you to our town?’
    She ran a few yards. ‘Boyfriend.’ Ah. Then a few moreyards. ‘Ex-boyfriend.’ Ah, better – maybe she’s running him off. But I didn’t like to probe. Anyway, there’s another rule in the group: keep it light when you’re running. No British foreign policy, and no big emotional stuff either. Sometimes it makes us sound like a bunch of hairdressers, but it’s a useful rule.
    ‘Only a couple more k.’
    ‘So be it.’
    ‘Fancy a drink afterwards?’
    She looked across and up at me. ‘So be it,’ she repeated with a grin.
    She was easy to talk to, mainly because I did all the listening. And more of the looking too. She was slim, neat, black-haired, well manicured, with a slightly off-centre tweak to her nose that I found instantly sexy. She was in motion a lot, gesturing, flicking at her hair, looking away, looking back; I found this exhilarating. She told me she worked in London as PA to the section head of a women’s magazine I’d just about heard of.
    ‘Do you get lots of free samples?’
    She stopped and looked at me; I didn’t know her well enough to tell if she was really put out or just pretending. ‘I can’t believe that’s the first question you ask me about my job.’
    It had seemed reasonable enough to me. ‘OK,’ I replied, ‘Let’s pretend I’ve already asked you fourteen acceptable questions about your job. Question 15: do you get lots of free samples?’
    She laughed. ‘Do you always do things in the wrong order?’
    ‘Only if it makes someone laugh,’ I replied.
    My parents were plump, and good advertisements for plumpness. They took little exercise, and their response to having a big lunch was to lie down and sleep it off. They treatedmy fitness programme as a youthful eccentricity: the only time they reacted as if I was fifteen rather than thirty. In their view,