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‘This is my last chance to find the astrarium. We will dive tomorrow.’
    ‘I’m still coming with you,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not going to allow anything to happen.’
    Isabella rolled on top of me, her slim body pressed against mine as she stared solemnly into my eyes. I tried smiling but her face stayed serious, her gaze boring through any pretence, as if she were trying to look beyond the banter that had become the veneer of our relationship. I knew that I had no option but to support her. Isabella did not believe in compromise, emotional or otherwise. For her, this would have been surrendering to mediocrity. She threw herself recklessly from one experience into another. This impulsiveness was one of the reasons I had first been attracted to her. A characteristic so opposite to my own controlling nature, it had always provided a healthy counterbalance, but recently it had become something I couldn’t protect her from, as much as I longed to.
    ‘What is it, sweetheart?’ I asked, unnerved by her unblinking stare.
    She appeared to be on the brink of speaking, but then hesitated before kissing me instead, her long hair falling either side of my face in a wave of musk.
    I always wanted Isabella. I never understood why that was - maybe the differences between us created a space, a place I could eroticise. I couldn’t tell you how; it just worked. The touch of her lips, her fingers, the scent of her neck, made me stiffen. She was the first woman with whom I had truly understood the notion of desire, a thirst that was intensely emotional, not just physical. She was home to me; we made our own nation.
    I pulled her down to me and, finally, she smiled.
     
    I was woken an hour later by Isabella thrashing about in the bed. I shook her and she woke up - her heart racing against my chest; her face veiled with sweat.
    ‘The same nightmare?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes, except I don’t know if it’s a nightmare or a memory. This time it was clearer, more specific . . .’
    She faltered, staring into the distance as she forced herself to remember. I waited, knowing that, for her, part of the exorcism was in the telling.
    ‘There’s a platform,’ she said slowly, ‘with a group of people standing on it. They’re dressed bizarrely, like animals. ’
    ‘Maybe they are animals?’ I said.
    She waved the suggestion away. ‘No, they are humans, real people. There’s a man with the head of a dog - a jackal, I think - crouching by a large set of scales. Then a tall figure with the head of a bird, a big bird holding a quill, and a man dressed in white - he looks terrified. There’s blood on his robe. Another figure’s holding him - this one has the head of a falcon - and they’re in front of a throne. There’s a figure sitting on the throne - maybe the god Osiris . . .’
    ‘A ritual, perhaps?’
    She was silent for a moment, then suddenly clutched at my hand. ‘Incredible! I’ve just worked out what it is, after all these years. It’s the ceremony of the weighing of the heart, Oliver! I’ve shown you the pictures, remember?’
    The Ancient Egyptians believed that after a person died their heart was weighed by Osiris. Depending on the purity of the heart, the deceased was either allowed to pass into the afterlife or was denied entry - a terrifying concept for them. The idea of the ritual disturbed me, partly because of its sheer grotesqueness but also because it reminded me of my mother’s attempts to indoctrinate me with a notion of sin.
    ‘But why would I dream such a thing?’ Isabella said, now almost more distressed. ‘Over and over?’
    ‘It’s probably a motif you return to when you’re stressed - maybe a fear of being judged by your peers?’
    ‘But it’s so clear - the detail of Osiris’s headdress, his eyes, the terror of the man waiting to be judged, the heat of the flaming torches on the walls . . . I’m telling you, it’s like I have lived this. I just can’t remember . . .’
    ‘Buried memory?’
    The