‘I couldn’t face breaking my mother’s heart if she had discovered the truth. We needed the money to survive, but she would have thrown it back at him if it had come to light. I should have told her, but it was impossible to do so because she believed it was divine intervention.’ His laugh is jaded and when he raises his eyes to meet mine, all I see now is sadness and love; empathy tugs mercilessly at my heart.

‘What a terrible position he put you in, Nico. The guilt isn’t yours to carry, though. He made his own decisions and, as his son, what could you do? You were so young and who would have listened to you?’

He shakes off my words; he isn’t prepared to forgive himself for what he seems to perceive as his part in this web of lies.

‘The painting in your room is the last one he signed fraudulently. If I sell it, then I’m perpetuating his dishonesty. I’ve spent several years tracking down those pieces and buying them back at market value. I have them all, except one. While that remains in a collector’s hands, the truth is that I’m a party to fraud, which is a criminal offence. I chose to do nothing when I discovered that he’d been signing my paintings; bearing his signature, and not that of an unknown, he sold them for more than they were worth.’

‘But that’s appalling, Nico. You had no say in what he did, no intention of committing a crime,’ I blurt out, feeling angry on his behalf. ‘It’s unfair you could be called to account.’

‘Until I realised what he’d done and from that point onwards, I chose to do nothing. So, it appeared to my mother, and the world at large, that he died just as his work was being appreciated. The truth is that he was on the verge of bankruptcy, but every painting of mine that he sold destroyed another little piece of his soul. He did it so that we could live, but it killed him in the process.

‘There was a hint of genius in his work, but he was his own worst enemy. Nothing he did was good enough; he felt as if he was constantly failing. So many great pieces destroyed needlessly and so many others unfinished. He discarded them as if they had no value, when in truth they could have been masterpieces.’

I shake my head, sadly. What a mess.

‘Unfortunately,’ Nico continues, ‘his tragic suicide added a premium to the pieces out there. The worry about his deception being discovered has weighed increasingly heavily on me as the years have passed. I have an agent who has been working on my behalf to track down the owners via the auction houses.’