Life used to be simple. I was a city girl with humble dreams. Then Dylan O’Dea broke into my flat, held me against the wall and told me to stay quiet.
It was like in the movies, where the universe zeros in on a single scene. I looked into his eyes and knew he was going to change me.
For Dylan, the sky was always falling. He showed me how our world is a contradiction of beauty and ugliness. How we choose to ignore the awful and gloss over it with the palatable. How you need just a tiny drop of something unsavoury to create every great scent.
Pretty deep for a pair of teenagers living in a block of council flats in inner city Dublin, right? Probably. But we weren’t typical. We both had our obsessions. Mine was growing things, Dylan’s was scent. He taught me how to use my nose, and I introduced him to the magic of flowers. I had no idea that one day he’d build an empire from what we started together.
But before that, there was love and happiness, tragedy and epic heartbreak… My name is Evelyn Flynn and I’m going to tell you about the crack in everything.