Sally Cinnamon’s Sixth Sense

‘No, gran,’ said Sally, fiddling with her gran’s locket. ‘Your perfum smells of peaches, but you smell different.’

‘Different how?,’ said Sally’s gran, trying to hide her smile.

‘A bit darker and warmer. Do you remember that cafe we went into for my fifth birthday? Well you smell mostly like that, but just more purple.’

She’d only been six years old then, and it had been such a struggle to describe the smell of her gran exactly. But she had been old enough to know that her gran found it amusing.

‘How do I smell today?,’ her gran had asked a couple of years later. Sally wanted to say she smelled the same as when she’d last asked, of the shop and the purple. But she didn’t.

‘Peach perfume,’ she’d said, and then went back to her drawing.

Fast-forward ten years and Sally was retching in the store room of the bakery. A customer had just come in who had smelled of burned lavender and yellow melon. She was patient and kind, but the smell had overtaken Sally and she’d only just managed to hold it together, running off to the store room the second she’d handed the woman her change. The woman had exchanged glances with the bakery’s manager. ‘Teenagers!,’ they’d both said, and laughed. But later that day, the manager, who smelled of screwed-up newspaper, told Sally her services were no longer required. It hadn’t been the first time Sally had embarrassed them both in that way.

‘So where did you go from there?,’ the therapist asked the now twenty-eight-year-old Sally.

‘Well,’ said Sally, spinning a gold ring around her finger. ‘I told myself to keep quiet and to hide it as best I could. And I started to wear a face mask. You know, pretending I was ill or something. It helped a lot, but not completely. Some smells still came through.’

Dr Jane leaned forward, her tortoiseshell glasses slipping right to the end of her nose.

‘When you say some smells came through, was it a particular smell or did it come from a particular person?’

Sally closed her eyes. The hands on the clock had moved on ten minutes by the time she opened them, but inaccuracy was something she couldn’t risk. Not if she ever wanted to get to the bottom of what was wrong with her.

‘It was random in that sense,’ she said eventually. ‘But there was emotion involved somehow. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the smell.’

That’s why her mum had always smelled so intense. She remembered then how her mum would sweep her up in her arms and whisper ‘my sweet Sally Cinnamon’ in her ear, her nickname for her precious daughter. Her mum’s was the only smell Sally struggled to describe. It must have been the smell of unconditional love.

‘And do bad smells come from people you don’t like?,’ Dr Jane asked. ‘And what do I smell of?’

Sally sighed. She knew the questions were more about Dr Jane’s curiosity than Sally’s psychology.

‘The answer to your first question is no,’ Sally said. ‘My brother has never liked me and he smells of the circus’. She could see Dr Jane struggling to suppress a smile.

‘And I’m not answering your second question’. She reasoned that Dr Jane wouldn’t want to know that she smelled of a snuffed out candle.

At the end of the session she handed over her thirty pounds with the intention of never going back. There was no way she wanted to be the freaky case that was laughed about by the doctor and her therapist colleagues.

So she was alone again, because apart from dropping numerous therapists, Sally had also dropped all her friends. Friendships had been too difficult to maintain, too fraught. Her most recent attempt, with two women called Sarah and Greta who she’d met at a painting class, had ended abruptly when she’d smelled the unmistakeable odour of Greta’s husband on Sarah’s clothes. Sally had wanted to be wrong, but he was the only person she’d ever known to have an odour of polished stainless steel.

Yet despite her self-imposed isolation, Sally found some level of contentment, her days mapped out by a strict routine that somehow gave her life some meaning. She went out once a day for an hour, just to feel the fresh air against her skin, at a time of day when most people were at work and the streets were quiet. If she did spot a neighbour in a garden, she’d wave and continue on her way. She got all her shopping delivered to her door once a week, and she’d managed to bag a working-from-home job in recruitment. No more headaches or retching when unexpected smells from colleagues and strangers overwhelmed her. She was slightly disconcerted, though, when the vague whiffs of some of her more intense candidates seemed to drift down the phone line, but they were so weak that Sally told herself it was more than likely a trick of her imagination, and after two years she started to think her curse might have resolved itself. So when her doorbell rang one Sunday afternoon, instead of sinking deeper into her sofa until whoever it was had gone away, she decided to try to answer the door like a normal person.

Her hand hovered over the handle, shaking, and she almost changed her mind. Then, after having a few harsh words with herself, she took a deep breath and pushed down, the door hinges creaking with reluctance.

The man who’d rang the bell was at the end of her path, but he pivoted around when he heard the door. He was about her age and dressed in smart casual clothes peppered with discreet designer logos. Sally patted down her old woollen jumper and then inhaled the damp autumn air. She was met with the smell of wet leaves and garden fires. So far so ordinary. The man was too far away for her to smell him, and the wind was blowing in an easterly direction and out towards the road.

‘Hi!,’ he said brightly. ‘I’d nearly given up hope. If it wasn’t for that creaky door I’d be gone!’

‘I’ll have to fix it,’ she said. He was walking towards her now, holding out his gloved hand, and she suddenly wished she’d looked in the hallway mirror. Her hair was probably all over the place, whereas his was military-style neat.

‘Barnaby,’ he said. ‘I’m renting a house down the road, so thought I’d introduce myself to my neighbours.’ He was looking over her shoulder, and Sally was glad she’d tidied up that morning.

‘It’s the same layout as mine,’ he said. ‘Only my staircase runs up the other side. It creaks like crazy!’

‘So does mine,’ said Sally. ‘Unless I keep to the left all the way up!’

He laughed. ‘I’ll try that!,’ he said. ‘And have you got the tiny spare room? I can’t believe how small it is!’

‘Yes, I have. I use it for storage and probably go in it once a year!’

Sally let herself breathe normally. Still no smell came from Barnaby. Perhaps she really had grown out of it, or perhaps it was because Barnaby had his emotions under control.

‘Well I won’t keep you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a few more neighbours to say hi to. But if there’s any day you’re available next week, perhaps we could have coffee.’

‘I work from home,’ Sally said. ‘So apart from 3 until 4 every afternoon, I’m always here.’

‘A creature of habit!,’ he said. ‘Well here’s my card. Give me a call.’ He glanced at the wedding band on her left hand. ‘And get your husband to oil that door!’

Sally blushed.

‘Oh, I’m not married,’ she said. ‘That’s my mum’s ring. She’s, well…’ Tears pricked Sally’s eyes. ‘She loved her gold jewellery.’

Barnaby put up his hand.

‘Gosh, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll leave you alone. Take care.’

Sally closed the front door and leaned against it. Her cheeks burned. It had been so long since she’d spoken to anyone face-to-face that she started to unpick every word of the conversation.

‘Why did I nearly cry?,’ she asked herself. ‘It’s stupid’. But she missed her mum’s all-enveloping hugs and her whispers of Sally Cinnamon and her smell of unconditional love.

Her thoughts turned back to Barnaby from down the road, which spurred her on to fix the hinges on her old front door and took her mind off her sadness. Then the alarm on her watch sounded 3pm and she headed out for her walk, wrapping a scarf around her face just in case she bumped into anyone.

It was a few days before she saw Barnaby again, through her bedroom window. She watched him striding up the road, a mixed-breed dog in tow, stopping to talk to all the neighbours. Even the dour Mrs Humbug at number 8 took to him, fussing the little dog and giving it a biscuit. And old Mr Sawdust at number 15 spent ages chatting to him over the garden wall, no doubt telling him the business of everyone on the street, which Barnaby listened to with a polite interest that Sally found impressive. She was slightly envious that he probably knew all their names already, when she could only refer to them by their smell.

When Sally’s doorbell rang a week or so later, she half expected it to be Barnaby, but was instead surprised to find Mrs Humbug on her doorstep. Her face was streaked with tears and her humbug smell of mint and toffee was overwhelming. Sally invited her in then reached for a face mask.

‘I’ve got a cold,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to pass it on.’

Mrs Humbug wiped her face with a wrinkled handkerchief.

‘I wondered if you could help,’ she said between sobs. ‘I’ve lost my gold watch and five hundred pounds and I don’t know what to do.’

Bang on cue, Sally’s watch alarm sounded 3pm and she grabbed her coat.

‘Let’s go and have a good look,’ she said.

Despite searching high and low, there was no sign of Mrs Humbug’s lost items, and Sally had no reason to suspect that her neighbour had been mistaken about where she’d last seen them.

‘It was here this morning, my watch,’ she said quietly. ‘Right there on the kitchen table. And I haven’t been out all day, except to hang out some washing after the 11 o’clock news, like always.’

Sally lowered her mask and put her hand on Mrs. Humbug’s. ‘We’ll have to call the police,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

The mint and toffee smell was fading now, replaced by a strong odour of fresh paint that gave Sally a pounding headache.

‘Have you been decorating?’, she asked. Mrs Humbug shook her head. But there was something else too. A sweet smell, like blackberry jam.

A loud and persistent knock on the front door made both women jump.

‘I’ll go,’ said Sally.

A red-faced Mr Sawdust brushed past her, barely saying hello. He smelled so strong that Sally’s fingers went to her mask. But she resisted putting it over her face because the smell of sawdust reminded her of her Grandad’s woodwork shop, where she’d spent so much time as a child that he’d called her his little apprentice.

‘Mrs Jones!,’ called Mr Sawdust as he barged into the kitchen. ‘Mrs Jones, they’ve gone.’ He panted as he propped his sturdy frame against the kitchen counter. ‘My bank cards, the money I withdrew for my grandson’s 18th birthday… Even Ethel’s engagement ring.’

His face drained to white. ‘You as well?,’ he said, looking at Mrs Humbug’s swollen eyes and the hanky screwed up in her hands.

She nodded. ‘I’m sorry for you, Len,’ she said.

‘Can I come and check the house?,’ Sally asked Mr Sawdust, ‘before we phone the police?’

Mr Sawdust had only been out for an hour, to collect his granddaughter from school and drop her at home, like he did every weekday. But it had been long enough for the thief to strike. There was no sign of the money or the bank cards, and the ring box was empty. There was, however, the heady smell of fresh paint and a faint scent of blackberry jam. Sally’s temples throbbed.

A visit from two jaded policeman confirmed a lack of fingerprints, and the thefts were assigned a crime number.

‘They’re after cash and jewellery,’ one of them said. ‘It’s unlikely they’ll be recovered.’

‘No sign of breaking or entering, though,’ said the other. ‘So some doors or windows must have been left open.’

Sally saw Barnaby on the way home, walking his dog on the other side of the street. He glanced at his expensive watch.

‘You’re not usually out and about at this time!,’ he said cheerfully.

‘I know,’ she said, without stopping. ‘But back to business as usual tomorrow.’

Sally didn’t feel like chatting. Her head hurt and she just wanted to curl up on the settee. But his dog was oblivious to that and came dashing over the road, jumping up at her legs. It was a beautiful dog, one of the new expensive designer breeds, but the smell of it hit her like a slap, and the blood drained from her face.

‘Felix, come here!’, Barnaby called.

‘Sorry, I’m not good with animals,’ said Sally, by way of an explanation.

It took her a couple of hours the following morning to get her house how she wanted lt. She didn’t have a screwdriver, but a knife was perfectly good for slightly loosening the screws on the left side of her staircase, like her Grandad had once explained to her when he’d fixed her mum’s creaky floorboards.

Then she checked her back door was unlocked, as it usually was during the day.

At two o’clock, just after her lunch and according to her custom, she took her rubbish bag to the dustbin at the end of her front gate, lingering a little longer than usual. From inside her house she heard the faint creak of the staircase. And when she walked back into the house, she saw that the door to the spare room, the room she went in ‘once a year’, had been pushed closed. The smell of fresh paint and blackberry jam made her stomach turn.

‘Hold it together, Sally,’ she whispered to herself, trying to pass the time by pottering around in the kitchen. Her heart was thudding uncontrollably, and she jumped when her watch alarm sounded 3pm, at which point she left the house through the front door, locked it, and walked round to the lane that ran along the back of all their houses, where two policeman were waiting for her.

‘I hope you’re not wasting our time,’ one of them said.

Sally had been vague in her explanations when she’d called them earlier that day. They would never have taken her seriously if she’d said her hunch was based on a smell of blackberry jam that no-one else would be able to detect.

‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘I can hear something!’

Precisely as she’d hoped, Barnaby opened her back door and walked quickly and stealthfully towards her garden gate, a small jewellery box in his gloved hand, the one that contained all her mum’s gold. Gosh, how stupid she’d been to tell him about that, to tell him her comings and goings, to trust him, like everyone else on the street had.

As he was shoved into a waiting police car and his usually calm demeanour was replaced by panic, the fumes of fresh paint drifted out from him.

‘A happy ending all round,’ said the officer, in a follow-up visit to Sally a few days later. ‘All items returned to their rightful owners.’

Sally offered him a biscuit and fiddled with her face mask. He smelled of hot stones when rain falls on them.

‘Well, all items returned apart from the dog,’ continued the officer, dunking the biscuit into his tea. ‘He was stolen, too, but the owner hasn’t been traced.’

So Sally took Felix in and renamed him Blackberry, deciding she could do with the company, and hoping it would break the rigid routine that had almost got her mum’s precious jewellery stolen.

Just as she was kicking off her boots one rainy Saturday morning, Blackberry running circles around her with a soggy lead in his mouth, the doorbell rang.

‘Hi!,’ said a woman, with kind brown eyes and a smell of brand new books.

Blackberry darted towards the door, jumping up at her. The woman fussed him, laughing.

‘Blackberry, get down!,’ ordered Sally.

‘My word, he lives up to his name, doesn’t he?,’ the woman said, burying her nose in the dog’s fur.

Sally frowned. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I’m Misty. I just moved in up the road and thought I’d introduce myself to the neighbours.’

Must be Barnaby’s old house, thought Sally.

‘I was desperate to get out for some air,’ said Misty. ‘The house smells so strongly of fresh paint that it’s given me a terrible headache!’

Sally froze. Someone else, like her. She thought she was the only one.

‘It’ll pass, the smell,’ said Sally quietly, trying to hide her shock as she stared wide-eyed at Misty. ‘Do…do you want to come in for a cup of tea and a chat?’, she eventually stammered.

Misty stepped over the threshold and breathed in deeply.

‘Ooh, have you been baking?’ she asked. ‘It smells of warm cinnamon.’

‘No,’ said Sally, smiling to herself. ‘No, I haven’t.’