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waiting, he turned as if he expected me to follow him and walked into the darkness. So I did.
    I think there was water, still, but I couldn’t be sure. We walked for a short distance and sometimes it was as though the walls were metal, like bronze, and sometimes they were stone. At last the man with the dog’s head turned and said, “We are here. Do not speak unless someone speaks to you. And tell the truth.”
    â€œOkay.” I wasn’t going to argue. I saw another door beyond his shoulder and then he opened it and guided me through.
    I don’t remember a lot about the place beyond that. It was high, like a big cathedral, and it would have been dark except that it was lit by torches along the walls. There were people sitting on enormous stone thrones and I couldn’t see any of them clearly, but their skin was different colours – I don’t mean white or black or mixed like me, except for the dog-headed man, but blue and green and red, as if a child had coloured them in. They looked Egyptian, too: I knew they were gods, but the thought was too big to handle.
    At the end of the room was a pair of scales, the size of a house. They were almost too huge to see, although I did wonder whether I myself had simply become very small. I still don’t know. In one of the pans of the scales, the left-hand one, there was a feather, as long as I was tall, curling and white.
    In front of the scales sat a shadow. It was the size of a normal man, and it sat quite still, with its hands on its knees.
    â€œDo you know who this is?” a voice said.
    I couldn’t tell who was speaking.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHis name is Zachary Upson. Do you know that name?”
    I felt as though I’d suddenly stepped onto a ledge that was too high. I said, “Yes. He’s my dad.
Was
my dad. His name was Zachary but my mum says everyone called him Bardy because he liked writing songs and his mum was Irish. Where bards came from,” I added, in case, being Egyptian, they didn’t know. My fingers closed around the ankh at my throat.
    At that, the shadow lifted its head. I didn’t remember my dad but I’d seen photos and a video that my mum had taken, when I was still a baby. So I knew it was really him, but he looked very young. He
was
young, I suppose. He’d only been thirty-one when he’d died. I don’t know why it had taken all this time for him to come here, but perhaps there was no time in this place.
    â€œWe’re ready for the weighing,” the voice said. I didn’t know what that meant but I’d been told to keep quiet unless I was spoken to, and whereas I might have disobeyed my mum or a teacher, this wasdifferent. Then the voice started speaking again and it was a list of everything my father had done: how he’d nicked things as a kid, and gone on to stealing cars, then drugs. Using, but dealing as well, bringing misery into other people’s lives. I listened and I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t good. I hadn’t known about any of it; my mother had kept all that from me and I was grateful, but also angry. I didn’t know what to think.
    As each of his crimes was spoken, a weight dropped, leaden and black, into the right-hand pan of the scales and it sank lower and lower. At last the voice finished – names, dates, convictions – and the sad-eyed dog-headed man turned to me and said:
    â€œNow it is your turn, Hannah Rose. What do you know that is good, about this man, your father?”
    The trouble was, he’d gone off when I was still a baby. Hadn’t been able to cope, my mum said. Left her completely in the lurch and she hadn’t been able to go back to her own mum, because my nan was dead by then. She must have been so alone. And yet, Bardy was my dad, and here was his shade, looking at me with a hope in his face that hurt.
    I said, “He gave me my name. Hannah, because it was his mum’s name. And he left