The theme of this exhibition is folk art, and the building, which is usually a typical white-cube space, has been dressed up to look like a circus. The walls are covered in strange murals; level with my head are alligators eating trapeze artists who are, in turn, eating smaller alligators. In large display cases are arrangements by the famous Victorian taxidermist and artist, Walter Potter. There’s a feast being had by little ginger kittens that look like they were once—before dying and being stuffed with hay and then seated on miniature dining chairs and put in front of tiny cakes, pots of tea, and samovars—from the same litter. Their eyes are beautiful, black, glistening marbles. Next to the cat feast is another Walter Potter—rabbits diligently working at desks in a miniature classroom. It’s thrilling seeing these works. I’ve known them for years; I studied them for my A-levels. In photographs, they seem clean and unreal. Up close, I can see the little dimples in the animals’ skin where their muscles used to attach; I can smell the tiny, microscopic traces of hundred-year-old blood inside them.

A man rushes past me. He slings one of the huge bags of ice over his shoulder and disappears through the same curtain the woman went through. I follow.

On the other side, there is a large hall. There are circular dining tables in here that have huge amounts of clutter on top of them: boxes of nails and screws, paperwork, dried flowers, plates wrapped in tissue. Someone is sawing a piece of wood while standing on a small cherry picker; a man is painting a mural at the back; lights are being tested. They are bright, and then they are dim and they are bright and then they are dim again.

“Um,” I say to a woman who is coming my way, and she shakes her head, quickly, and rushes past. I smell her hair as it brushes my face.

I walk up to a merry-go-round that is very slowly turning in the corner; two men are discussing something about it intently. But, when they see me, they stop, and one of the men walks away.

“Hey,” I say to the man left by the merry-go-round.

He nods.

“I’m looking for reception?” I say.

“Okay,” he says, and he leans the long-handled dustpan and brush he is holding against the wall. He is just a bit taller than I am, slim, clean-shaven. He has very pale skin and eyes that are big and wet-looking. Their irises are like two dirty ponds. They take my face in for just a moment too long for it to feel normal.

“So, what are you?” he says, eventually, wiping his hands on his trousers. And, for a moment, I think that he must know what I am. I blink at him. “Another intern?” he adds.

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”