A heart, bottled

You may think this bottle of perfume looks past its best – there's only a quarter left, and the box is tatty. But the fragrance is still perfect, just as it should be. Because this bottle holds the quintessence of my relationship with the most important person in my life. It is literally my heart, bottled.

In 2006, for my 40th birthday, my then husband and I took our toddler daughter on holiday to France. My holiday reading was The Emperor of Scent, by Chandler Burr. It's a biography of Luca Turin, a biophysicist studying olfaction, but what gripped me was how he talked about perfume. Dotted through the book are anecdotes, reviews and descriptions of perfumes old and new, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I needed to smell these things. 

At a branch of Marionnaud I met classic Guerlains, to find out what was special about this thing called Mitsouko and why a perfume called Apres l'Ondee smelled 'sad'. I left the shop smelling more expensive than I had in a long time and quite confused. For some reason, Mitsouko made me think of my Nana, though I'm sure my working -class Nan from the industrial South Wales Valleys, never wore a fragrance created in Paris in 1919 and worn by Anaïs Nin.

One perfume kept me sniffing one spot on my wrist again and again. I didn't understand it. It put me a little off kilter and didn't smell like any other perfume I knew. Its name was L'Heure Bleue. Soft, melancholy, thoughtful, edible but structured, and very charming, this was a rarity in a world that felt increasingly bland. I realised I needed a bottle.

So this particular bottle came into my life. I started wearing it, along with lots of other new perfumes I was buying and trying as I became obsessed. I spent hours online reading blogs like Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, and Perfume Posse, and learning about perfume and history from wiser, more experienced perfumistas on Basenotes' forums. Our little family moved overseas for my then husband's job and I returned to this bottle of L'Heure Bleue often. It really does have an oddness to it, like music played in a scale we're not used to hearing. Beautiful, strange, other-worldly, and therefore thought-provoking.

My daughter started to ask for a spritz of it, so she could smell like me. It became a tiny ritual of comfort for both of us. On difficult days, days when she was starting something new, she would have a spritz from this bottle, as would I. We would be linked by the perfume and that would strengthen us both. She wore perfume from this bottle the day she started Kindergarten. When I left my husband and brought her home to Wales she started in the local school, wearing L'Heure Bleue along with her sweet little uniform.She wore it for the Christmas Nativity Play, for the Easter Concert and Sports Day. It was her perfume for each eisteddfod, choir concert and school play. She wore it on her first day at Big School. She was wearing it when she sang a solo acapella to a full theatre where you could hear a pin drop, the audience was so rapt. She wore it for her exams, scented like a duchess at a dinner party while she toiled through maths problems.

Small Girl became Big Girl and is now Adult Woman. She turns 21 this week. In July we went on holiday to France, and I revisited that branch of Marionnaud, just to complete the circle. Next week my daughter enrols in Art School and leaves home. She won't be coming back. Kids don't. Once they've left for college, they rarely come back to live with their parents. My heart, of course, is breaking.

One of the things she's taking with her to college is this bottle of L'Heure Bleue. I offered to buy her a new bottle, but she wants this particular one. It's become a symbol of new beginnings, personal strength, the support she has behind her, and her own history. This bottle will carry with it all I hope for her. My profound love for her, because truly she is my heart. My wistfulness at her leaving me. The strangeness of her new situation. The glamour, the freedom, the hardship, the joy, the growth.

When she wears it, my child will smell like a mysterious Grand Dame from a century ago, of the 'blue hour' of dusk and dawn, like a little girl starting school, like a soloist coming into the power of her voice, of luck and love, and like her Ma. A flicker-book of images piled on top of each other to create a whole that is much greater than its parts. My heart, bottled.