‘I’ll go,’ says the girl to the right of Claudia.

She starts talking about a perfumery in Le Marais where you can mix your own scent. I remain aware of her vocal modulations and the way her hands are gesturing in front of her; her wedding ring catches the light. But I’m thinking about tonight, about the exhibition: as much as I’d love to chat to Mr Blue Eyes again, let him know the jig is up, I also can’t risk it. I can’t let him know who I am, where I work, or why I was there last night. Because I don’t know him well enough to know what he’d do with that information. He might think it was funny. Or he might call Hyacinth, make a complaint and blow my whole life up. It’s too much of a gamble. It’d be better if I could turn up, take some notes and leave without anyone figuring out why I’m there. And if Noah sees me and asks me, well, I’m Grace…

‘Harper?’ Hyacinth’s voice.

I look up and around, everyone is staring at me.

‘Yes?’

She gives a small smile and I realise she’s about to repeat herself. ‘You’ll be a guinea pig with Nathalie, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ I say, no idea what I’m committing to, nor when, but maybe if I’m super nice and amenable she won’t fire me if she hates my story. And I know that makes me sound annoyingly insecure, but we’re all insecure about something. Usually the thing we think matters the most.

‘Great,’ says the girl who was just talking about perfume. Oh. So that’s what I’m doing. ‘I’ll send you an invite.’

Then Hyacinth’s gaze bores into me. ‘Wonderful. So, Harper, pitch to me.’

Chapitre cinq

There are no white cloths over paintings tonight, and barely any room to move. I’m standing by painting number three, frowning down at my phone, pretending to type. What I’m really doing is pointing the camera lens at the canvas and snapping another picture. I took the first when I arrived fifteen minutes ago and uploaded it to Instagram with the hashtags: #LeVoltage #Paris and #rebel. The last of those refers to the fact that there’s a big ‘No photography’ sign in both English and French by the door (inspired by moi?), but I don’t have a choice. I need to leave before Noah arrives and I want to be able to describe a few of the images in detail for my article. Scratch that, I need to be able to describe a couple of his artworks in detail, otherwise my article will be pretty damned short.