““The heavens opened and there was a thunderstorm. The rain hammered on the windscreen and the wipers became frantic in their efforts to push it away; headlights came on everywhere and the spray from tyres seemed to be going in all directions at once. It was going to be short and sharp, and so Smith pulled up in the road outside Woodlands where he’d waited once before, giving the rain a minute or two to cease. He wound down the windows a little and the smell of it wafted into the car – petrichor, the magical scent released when the golden blood of the gods touches the arid rocks of the earth. The older you get, he thought, the more evocative such things become. It smells like a secret.””
