Arriving here isn’t a sudden event. It is an ethereal experience moderated not by space and time but by a process of absorption, like sunlight into the leaves of plants or ink into blotting paper. You float along a river which becomes ever more placid and less corporeal, until you are deposited upon a seamless shore.

All is the same here as back there. All is different. We could be anywhere, an anonymous landscape previously unexplored, but bewilderingly familiar. As are the voices and faces. Bodies have shape, form and even an understated colour, whilst remaining as insubstantial as clouds whispered through infinite unspace on a heavenly wind.

St. Anoulf oversaw my greeting, perceived my confusion. ‘You all are,’ he consoled me. ‘Nothing can prepare you for your passage here, neither priest nor doctor. Many have traced the short liminal moments between life and death, but none have ever had the temerity to reveal the stages of the final journey, though there are hordes who make the passage. So many, St. Peter has to delegate your greeting to poor vessels such as me to ease your transition into the hereafter.’

I heard him, but he did not speak. The words, or rather the idea of the words, resonated in my being as if I had thought them to myself. ‘You have a spirit body,’ he continued, ‘to be recognisable to others. This was not initially deemed necessary, but so limited is human capacity you could not assimilate the concept of ‘resurrection’ without some form of pseudo-physical presence. As with any compromise, it has its problems. Like at what age a resurrected body might be. Since Christ died at thirty-three, that number seemed appropriate. There will be times when you find it bewildering.’

A typical traveller in a foreign land, I found all confusing: words without sound, boneless bodies, a constellation of thirty-somethings. ‘Where are the infants?’ I asked.

Anoulf had obviously been expecting the question.  ‘The tiny babies, those whose spirit had not yet had time to grow, their souls are re-directed immediately. “Recycled’, you might say. Excuse me if you don’t find that term appropriate, my terrible sense of humour has crossed the divide with me. Otherwise, the youngsters are projected forward to the probable spiritual state which they would have attained if they had survived to thirty-three. Not that it matters, but all physical defects are automatically rectified and in this sepia-tinged environment there is no black, brown or white skin colouration. Corporeal existence is merely a myth we retain in order to ease your transition.’

He whiffs away, leaving me to mingle between the shades. Their number must be infinite, yet the space is no more crowded than the High Street on a wet Monday afternoon. Given the huge numbers involved, what are the chances of meeting someone you know? Infinitesimal, you may think. Not so. On this ‘high street’ alone I spot classmates from school, colleagues from work. Before me now, my own mother, splendid as I remember her in her thirties, her form seeping into me as if we are one single entity. I become one with her as we were for nine months so many years ago. We do not speak. There is no need, we are one and the same.

As with my brothers and sisters. Less so with Grandma, who I have trouble in recognizing from half-remembered black-and-white photographs. Relatives from previous generations hardly impinge upon me at all, as is the case with cousins at various removes. One or two who I expected to see are missing, whilst others, especially those from the deep past, are almost invisible.

I need to question Anoulf on this. As my thought evolves, he arrives at my side. ‘Entropy,’ he says. ‘With some souls the energy seeps away into the ether until only a concentrated droplet remains. Loose energy is re-assimilated into the system. A natural ageing process which exists in a structure which has neither time nor age. Quite a paradox, you might say.’

‘What of those who are completely missing?’ I ask. ‘My great-grandfather can’t have been here for more than a hundred years or so. He won’t have ‘seeped away’ as you call it in such a short time, even before his own grandfather. Had he done something tremendously evil and not been allowed admission in the first place?’

Anoulf sneers at such a crass idea. ‘I passed over in 687, so if time elapsed were an issue, I should have been mere dust by now. Eternity is far more complex. Where you come from all is ‘busy, busy, busy’. Even maintaining the human body is a task in itself, quite apart from other employments you may submit yourself to: looking after others, playing sports, earning money, various entertainments. Here there are no such demands. Neither maintenance nor paid occupation is required. We exists continuously in a state of bliss.

‘The majority accept the situation, blending seamlessly into the web of eternal existence. However, a few, such as your great-grandfather, are prone to ennui, an overwhelming metaphysical boredom or sense of malaise. Why it is so, I cannot say. Perhaps their souls have been insufficiently formed or were deficient in some manner. Finally, they can no longer be detained, having to be allowed to return to a life of toil. All traces of this place are removed, of course, though a few retain fractured slivers of a previous life. Frankly, I pity them for the pain they must endure before their return to our embrace.’

A sad sigh whispers through me. Emotions like his feel out of place in their gross physicality. Mine regarding the time before I passed over have receded. Petty resentments are long since gone, minor loves a dot on the horizon, cries for vengeance an irritating itch which I vow never to scratch. Great loves remain, a comfort blanket there to suppress any unwanted anger.

For now, the excitement of a new environment is repressing the urge to be constantly active, to confront and stave off boredom. What will happen when that excitement wears off? Will I diminish to a mere speck like my ancient forebears, or demand a second chance in the old chaos? I have neither desire nor ambition; the spirit is neither weak nor willing. Only heaven knows.