The Lookout was a celebrity house, built to impress. It was shaped roughly like an arrow – or perhaps more like an American stealth bomber, about to blast off across the sea. Its two wings reached out to enclose us as we walked towards it. Spotlights set at ankle level washed over the asphalt approach. Charles le Mesurier had told me that it had only been completed a year ago and the narrow horizontal windows in their steel frames and the double front doors were aggressively modern. But the architect had also been inspired by art deco: the walls were covered in white stucco and there were three flat roofs forming terraces, rising up one above the other, which added to the building’s sense of dynamism and thrust.

The front doors were open and I could hear live music, a local jazz band launching into an enthusiastic rendering of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ arranged for snare drum, banjo and synthesiser. The minibus was empty. Maïssa and the other passengers had already gone inside. Looking into the house, I could see the silhouettes of people passing back and forth like puppets in one of those Indonesian puppet plays. There had to be a chandelier somewhere because it was casting tiny sparkles of light. I got the sense that I was entering another world.

From the moment I went in, I saw that Charles le Mesurier had spared no expense in the creation of his island Xanadu: it was every bit as spectacular as he had promised. Sure enough, a splendid chandelier – modern rather than antique – dominated the hallway above a floor that was a gleaming expanse of white marble. The art on the wall included prints by Damien Hirst and Banksy. An archway in front of us led into a living room with a sun lounge on one side and a dining room with an archway into the kitchen on the other, but sliding walls had been drawn back to turn these rooms into one huge space. I don’t think I’d ever been in a house where the people furthest away were actually diminished in size simply by perspective.

Looking ahead, I saw the floor-to-ceiling windows had also been slid aside. Light from the interior spilled out onto emerald-green lawns and perfectly cut flower beds, while a gravel path lit by tiny lights set in the ground continued all the way to the bottom of the garden. A square stone building with two windows – some sort of pavilion – had been built at the very end. I could hear the soft murmur of the sea beyond.