Heather lets me in when I arrive at the gallery. She takes me upstairs to a room near the offices, where there are a few broken mannequins lying on the floor, a couple of sofas, a coffee machine on a counter with a stack of coffee pods, and a selection of cereal bars and biscuits on an ornate silver platter. “Okay, so don’t touch those, or the fridge or coffee”—I notice a large fridge in the corner that is quietly buzzing—“But you are welcome to help yourself to tap water, okay? You’ll have to find yourself a cup.” Heather instructs me on what needs to be done this morning; I am to attach velvet pads to a collection of wooden coat hangers that are on the floor between the two sofas in the room.

Gideon doesn’t seem to be anywhere around. In fact, it seems like it is only Heather, me, and another intern here today—a young woman, probably a recent art college graduate like me—sitting in the puppet theater, nervously looking out. I thought about smiling at her as I walked past but I was with Heather and, in that moment, Heather was looking at me and telling me what time I should arrive for the opening the next day. Something told me that I shouldn’t look weak in front of Heather, and so I shouldn’t acknowledge the existence of the girl in the puppet theater and therefore associate myself with what was essentially an earlier model of intern.

“The guests tomorrow are extremely important,” Heather says now. “Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” I say.

Heather shakes her head and leaves.

I sit on one of the sofas that I’ve pulled up to the wall so it’s close to a socket where I can charge my phone. I put a box for hangers with newly added pads on the floor to my left, so that they can be carried downstairs to the cloakroom in one go. Some of them have tangled themselves together. I start working through them.

I’m sorting through hangers for a pretty long time. The other intern must have left, as the gallery is completely silent, and maybe Heather has gone too. I start wondering whether there’ll be anyone here to tell me what to do when I finish my job for the day. However, when I’m halfway through my work, I hear a very quiet creaking noise near the fridge. It’s the floorboards; they all seem to be loose up here. I look up and, in the shadowy doorway, I see a man watching me. I blink.