I couldn’t recall one time when my father had noticed a light fitting. I couldn’t even remember him looking up.

‘It gives off a lovely light in the evenings,’ George said. ‘Lights up the Romneys beautifully.’

He indicated the two paintings on the wall opposite the piano, one either side of the kitchen door. Mrs Keene was standing at a bench in the kitchen, whipping cream with a whisk.

The portraits were both of the same woman. She had cream skin, a blush on her cheeks and thick, wavy reddish-brown hair. In both she was dressed in a white robe with a ribbon around her waist. In one, she was reclining with her legs on the ground and her upper body leaning against a marble plinth that had a leopard skin draped on it. Her left elbow was on the plinth, hand against her cheek, and her right was extended and holding a goblet. The deep green curtain I could see from our kitchen fell onto the back of the plinth. To her side was the ocean, a horizon, a distant ship.

In the other portrait, a separate salmon-coloured part of the robe over her shoulder was billowing out behind her like a cloud. She held a small brass cymbal in each hand. In the background, a plume of smoke rose at an angle from a volcano that loomed over the curve of a bay. Back there it was dark, but light fell upon the woman from the left. Her robe had slipped, exposing a pale breast. She looked straight out at the viewer in a way that said she knew and didn’t care. The fabric of the robe was tucked under, perhaps not a slip at all. The breast was cupped by the cloth, tilting up to a rose-coloured nipple. It was perfect.

‘I inherited those,’ George said, raising his voice to be heard over a rise in the music. ‘Been in the family since they were painted. Late eighteenth century. Shall we swim?’ He pointed to a door. ‘Conservatory and pool are this way.’

There were speakers out there too, mounted on the wall, which was brick but painted white, probably the original back wall of the house. Between the wall and the pool was a wrought-iron table with a glass top and wrought-iron chairs. A row of terracotta pots stood along one side of the pool, each with a waxy-leafed shrub in it a metre or so tall. George pointed beyond them, in the direction of his gardener, who was outside, clipping brown stalks from a row of plants, trimming them back close to ground level.

‘Chrysanthemums,’ he said. ‘The expert out there – alleged expert – talked me into them. Lovely flowers when they get around to blooming, but they spend all winter looking dead.’

I pulled a shoe and sock off and dipped my foot into the water. It was warmer than I’d expected. Less cool, anyway.