Because, after the editorial meeting, Hyacinth handed me a black-and-white printout of my street art piece with a lot of red pen notes (Why is this here? What do you mean? Reference other artists! Give the reader something to learn! Did you do any research at all?). And so I didn’t get that head start on my Noah X article after all. Instead, I spent the rest of the day reworking the street art piece, trying to ignore my smug inner critic. But after I finally pressed send at 5 pm, I devoted a good solid hour to researching Noah X, looking more carefully through his Instagram page, dissecting his website, and reading reviews of his older work. But all that left me with were rudimentary details (‘born in Indiana’ and ‘attended Maryland Institute College of Art’) and useless tidbits (his sister’s name is Anna and she runs a gluten free bakery back in Indiana – this, I discovered by clicking on the handle beside an ‘I miss you’ on one of his Instagram posts). There are hardly any pictures of Noah X online and it seems he’s at that stage of his career where he’s ‘emerging’ enough to have a write-up in The Paris Observer but not quite famous enough to have a Wikipedia page or anything else that might make my job easier. He’s not quite Banksy-level invisible, but the ‘X’ in his name is indicative of a strong and unusual branding choice: mystery. Which is all fine and good and probably sells paintings, but it doesn’t help me.

I look around the gallery, making sure nobody is watching me. But thankfully Noah’s model, the redhead, is here wandering around with her iPhone out, videoing people’s reactions to the work. Everyone’s attention is on her; lots of eyes darting to her nipples then back at the paintings.

But wait, there’s a woman I recognise standing on the far side of the room.

The woman from that magazine article on Instagram. The one with the short strawberry blonde bob and fine features who ‘discovered’ Noah. What was her name? It started with an ‘A’… She’s chatting to a man with thick salt-and-pepper hair and black, square-framed glasses, and her body language says she’s in charge. She must be Noah’s agent or the real gallerist here. I should ask her some questions. But the moment she looks up and catches my eye, I instinctively look away.

Talking to her would be a bad idea.

It’s just gone quarter past seven, Noah will arrive soon and I don’t want to be trapped in conversation with his agent when that happens. It’ll make it harder to slip out unnoticed.

I glance down at the photograph I just took: good, no reflections. The artwork has the same Marvel comics and the same model, but this time she’s sitting up in bed, her legs barely covered by white sheets, her red hair brought forward over one shoulder. She’s smoking a cigarette as she stares down at her phone. It’s all in black and white except for her hair, the red string around her wrist, the red lighter beside her and the end of her cigarette.