LATE SHIFT AT THE MUSEUM OF SMELLS by Chris Cottom (1st place, Flash, Feb24)

I’m working afternoons on our enquiries desk.

‘Old leather walking boots?’ asks a raincoated lady who reminds me of Gran. ‘Freshly buffed with beeswax dubbin?’

I’m gagging for a cup of tea. ‘Sorry, madam. The museum’s banned bee-based treatments.’

Across our cavernous hall, kids are staggering out of our ‘Monarch Immersion Experience’ clutching their heads. Our historic odours unit has recreated the execution of Charles I. It’s a blend of blue blood and horseshit that’s nasally indistinguishable from the real thing. Danielle, my girlfriend, did her placement with the chemosensory boffins on scents of seventeenth century sawdust. She only graduated in June and now she’s decoding Cheyenne odorant identity at a burial site in Montana. Yet I’m the one with the MSc in Olfactory Engineering.

The lady checks her notebook. ‘A Volkswagen Polo Estate that’s known an elderly Labrador?’

‘Hmm … no Polos I’m afraid. We’ve got a Mini whose owner once had a cat.’

‘A belted tweed overcoat? Like the one he refused to have dry cleaned.’

‘We’ve got a scratch ’n’ sniff RAF flying jacket on the second floor. Lanolin with a top note of aviation fuel.’

‘I only–’

‘Actually,’ I say. ‘Let me check it’s on display.’

‘I only need one–’

‘Ah, it’s at our sister site in Madrid, being analysed for aroma accuracy.’

I’d watched Danielle pack. ‘You won’t need that jumper,’ I said. ‘It’ll be hot.’

She zipped up her backpack. ‘Didn’t I tell you? There’s a chance I’ll get extended.’

The lady’s pencil trembles in her age-spotted hand. ‘A smoking motorcycle like the Triumph he’d tinker with for hours? The linseed oil he’d slather onto his cricket bat? An orchard like the one in Boughton Lees after he’d scythed the grass?’

It’s Saturday and the place is heaving with families. Our ‘Wake Up and Smell the Coffee’ exhibition offers a nose-only parenting experience, from wet nappies to teenage cigarettes poorly disguised with extra-strong mints.

My customer turns her page. ‘Gentleman’s Relish on a Bath Oliver biscuit?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Sandalwood shaving soap by Taylor’s of Old Bond Street?’

‘I could let you have a whiff of our David Beckham eau de toilette.’

She sighs and closes her notebook. ‘Have you ever lost anyone, young man?’

‘Fortunately not, madam.’

I have a sliver of the soap Danielle would use. Juniper with neroli. It’s thirty-seven days since she messaged. ‘We’ve set up camp at Otter Creek. Terrible signal. No point in you trying to call.’

The clock behind the lady says 15:06. The clock on her face says she’s had a long day. The neurons in my nasal epithelium suggest she’s no stranger to Lapsang Souchong.

‘I’m going on my break now,’ I say. ‘Upstairs there’s–’

‘Your parenting exhibition?’

‘No, I meant–’

‘My Geoffrey was nearly ninety.’

‘Actually I meant the café.’

She’s fussing her notebook back into her handbag.

‘Would you care to join me?’ I say. ‘What kind of tea did Geoffrey drink?’