No, it wasn’t guilt I felt. But the joy had gone out of everything. The ball of barbed wire in my heart had grown to monstrous proportions. Food had no taste; sleep brought no rest; wine just made my head hurt. The threat of Mimir’s prophecy hung over me like an anvil; I couldn’t talk to anyone; I felt terribly alone.

It didn’t help that Sigyn was cloyingly sympathetic.

‘Poor angel, you look terrible,’ she said, on seeing me looking less than fragrant after another sleepless night. ‘What have you been doing to yourself? Come over, and I’ll fix you something nice for dinner. The boys would love to see you . . .’ And so on, and so forth.

My sons had become increasingly wild since Fenny’s disappearance. Now they barely spoke to me, or to their mother, but spent their days lounging on the battlements of Asgard, throwing stones down onto the plain and jeering at Sól in her chariot as she raced across the sky.

As for the gods – since Balder’s death my colleagues had been less than warm. Some of this was Frigg’s doing; the Enchantress, although she had no evidence to support her belief that I was to blame for what had occurred, had nevertheless somehow managed to convey her suspicions to everyone else, with the result that no one (with the exception of Sigyn, of course) wanted to be seen with me.

All their grudges and grievances were brought out for an airing; Sif, the fact that I’d cut off her hair; Bragi, the kidnap of Idun; Freyja, that whole business with the sons of Ivaldi and the gold necklace; Thor, all the times I’d mocked him. No one remembered all the times I’d saved them from the enemy. The court of public opinion had judged and condemned me all in one. No one talked to me any more. No one even looked at me.

That hurt my feelings – no, don’t laugh – even though I was guilty. They didn’t know I was guilty; they just assumed it had to be me. As if I was the only one ever to have done bad things. As if I was dirt. It made me angry to think of it and, one hot night, when I’d had a few drinks alone in my dingy little rooms, I heard the sound of music coming from Aegir’s under-sea hall down the way. It sounded like a party and so I went to investigate.

I found all the gods assembled. Aesir and Vanir; boys and girls; Aegir and Ran, his glaucous wife; even the Old Man himself was there, drinking from a horn of mead and looking almost mellow.