I pause. Searching for the right words. My eyes graze the room around me as I think. It’s a large, cavernous space with high ceilings, exposed metal beams and concrete floors. There are about twelve of us here, all milling around, inspecting ‘the work’ of multiple artists, all with something environmental to say. I look back down at my phone and finish my sentence: deftly represented by the way in which the medium drips and merges: that which goes up, comes down and vice versa.

A full stop later I’m looking up and around again. There’s an abstract marble statue balancing on a tall white stand to my right, but it’s something behind that which has caught my eye, something on the far back wall. It’s a sculpture – it looks like a seahorse. I move past a man in a grey suit who’s enthusiastically sipping champagne to take a better look. Up close it’s made of found objects, mainly bits of rubbish. The nose is constructed of an old plastic soft drink bottle and the rest is fishing nets and hooks and plastic bags and feathers. From a distance it’s beautiful and sparkly and looks like it belongs in Bollywood. But up close, it’s made of junk. I move back and take a picture then upload it to Instagram with the hashtags: #galerienathalieobadia #savetheplanet #beautyoutofrubbish. And then I move on to the next wall. There’s a street sign there that reads ‘Wrong way. Go back’.

I smile, take a picture of that too, and upload it with the caption: Can I get one of these for my life?

The gallerist – a tall, slender man of around thirty-five – is standing over by the desk near the entrance and I want to ask him some questions. He’s towering over a fragile-looking woman of about seventy or so, who’s craning her neck to look up at him as she speaks. As I move in their direction, I overhear her questions and his answers and I start taking mental notes. They’re speaking in French but I catch the odd phrase. She’s asking about things like where the artists grew up and where they trained and the gallerist is answering in good humour, smiling and nodding and, every so often, throwing me a glance to acknowledge that I’m there, a few steps back, and waiting.

Eventually she moves into the main room and the gallerist nods at me with a smile.

I speak in broken French. ‘Hi, I’m Harper Brown, I’m from The Paris Observer and I have a couple of questions about the exhibition.’

He smiles. ‘Of course,’ he says, in perfect English, the way Parisians always do when they detect an accent.

Half an hour later I’ve done another lap of the room and I’m heading outside, making final notes as I walk. It’s dark and the streets glimmer with the red and white reflections of restaurant signs and taxi headlights. The metro isn’t far from here but it’s been a long day so I scroll through my phone to order an Uber. I enter my address and wait for an estimate of the cost. A Deliveroo driver whooshes past me on a bicycle. I step out of the way. And then, seemingly from nowhere, I hear a voice: ‘Grace?’