“They look like Iberian masks.”

“I think they are the ends of T-beams.”

“The South Tank is through there. It’s where the oil was stored in the old power station. It’s the only museum space in Europe made for installation and performance.” We stood in silence. The Tanks had been opened for viewing, but everyone was upstairs now. We were out of sight of the guard. “Want to go in?”

I switched off my phone and made Antonio do the same. The foyer lights penetrated a short distance into the gloom. I released the prop at the bottom of the door, and as it swung shut I waited for sirens, running footsteps, the ignominy of being found out. Nothing happened. The door sealed with a clunk and darkness came at me like a cloth pressed to my face. No space, no distance; only the sharp mineral smell of liquids oozing in to reclaim their rightful place.

Nearby Antonio chuckled.

“Shhh . . .” I whispered, though with the thickness of the walls and the seal of the door, I knew we could have shouted in there and not been heard.

“Let’s find our way to the other side. Want to? No lights.”

“Is this . . . performance art, Eve?” His hand glanced off my shoulder and moved down, groping for my hand.

I snatched it away. “No hands.”

I led the way with a halting gait, arms extended, waiting for something or someone to stop me. No point in opening my eyes. No way to tell if I was walking a straight line or not. The floor was hard and sticky underfoot. Twice my shoe caught and I saved myself from falling at the last minute. Each time I stopped to let my heart rate return to normal. After a while the dark became a friendly soft material that parted to let me pass and closed behind me.

“Antonio?”

“I am here.” His voice was off to my right, not where I thought he was at all. The tank did strange things to sound, swallowed it up or moved it from one place to another. “This is crazy.”

“Just keep going. We’re almost there.”

After a moment he said tersely: “I don’t like this. I’m turning on the light.”

“No! Don’t! Please, Antonio.”

Cats had whiskers, bats had sonic radar; I had whatever skills had been forced on me in the last two years to navigate darkness. I no longer knew where Antonio was. I could hear only my breathing and the sound of my shoes, which left tracks on the air, like smudges of charcoal that vanished as soon as they appeared. How far had we come? Impossible to keep track of time in an empty oil tank. Impossible to know how long it was before my arms went out again of their own accord: a coolness, a thickening of the odor; my hand struck the wall.

“I’m here! Found it!”