Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls

when the wood fire was burning.
    After that, I often smelled coal smoke. Sometimes I could smell coal, but the fire was only burning wood. Sometimes the fire wasn’t even lit. I told Jim, but he didn’t seem that surprised.
    â€œIt’s probably Linda and Dave, or one of the cottages,” he said. Linda and Dave lived about five fields away, and the cottages were even further, and over a hill . I’d never smelled anything from them before.
    There were other smells too. One day, I ran into the living room after school and smelled tobacco. It really scared me. Cigarettes were part of my mum’s smell. I had this memory of her, quick and clear. She used to hold out her arms and say, “Come and have a hug then, pet.” And I’d think, Maybe she likes me after all , and come running over to be hugged, and she’d stub out her cigarette on my arm and laugh like a madwoman. You’d think after this had happened a couple of times I’d learn, but I never did. Every time she said it, I’d think, Maybe this time she loves me and go running back.
    I was a stupid kid.
    Anyway, so when I smelled cigarettes in Jim’s living room, it was like I was five again. I could smell the burnt, roast-meat smell of my arm, and I could hear her laughing. I could even feel my arm starting to burn, and I put my hand on the old scar quickly to stop it hurting. I knew it was just a memory. I knew it wasn’t real.
    But it felt real.
    So then Harriet and Daniel came running in after me, and Harriet said, “Do you want to play Batman?” She flung her arms around me, and I jumped about a mile in the air and screamed, “What d’you do that for? Leave me alone!” I pushed her away, hard, so that she fell against the couch with a surprised squeal, and I ran into the kitchen. Jim was unloading the shopping.
    â€œWho’s been smoking in the living room?” I said.
    Because part of me was worried about my mum. My head knew she probably wasn’t there, but my body didn’t, and it panicked. And, anyway, it could have been her. She could have broken into Social Services and found my file and looked up where I lived. And if it wasn’t my mum, that meant it was someone else, someone I didn’t know coming into the house without me knowing about it, and maybe being here when I was here, and. . .
    â€œWhat do you mean?” said Jim, and then Daniel and Harriet were there, and it was all, “Olivia pushed me!” and I couldn’t deal with it, so I shoved the shopping off the table, and the bag of tomatoes landed with a wet thump, and the apples fell out of their bag and went rolling all over the floor and thebottle of olive oil smashed and oil went everywhere, and I got sent to my room to Think About My Actions Alone. But what I thought was, Good , because I got Daniel and Harriet to shut up, and that was even worth having to clean the kitchen up afterwards.
    When I came downstairs again, I couldn’t smell anything, which was weird. Usually smells stick around for hours and hours. So then I wondered if maybe the smell was in my head, the way the pain in my burnt arm was. I sometimes get memories so strong they come with smells. I tried to ask Jim about it, but he was more interested in talking about me pushing Harriet.
    â€œOlivia,” he said, “what just happened? Did you have a flashback?”
    But I wouldn’t answer.
    A flashback was what a jumping-out memory was called. My stupid therapist Helen blahed on about them for ages, but I didn’t like thinking about them, so I didn’t listen. Something about survival tactics and trauma and blah blah blah blah blah.
    After that, I started noticing the tobacco smell more and more. I started worrying that maybe someone was breaking into the house when Jim was away, sitting around smoking fags and watching telly, and then hiding somewhere when he got back. That really freaked me out. Jim’s