As we walk up to the château, Nico tells me a little about the history of the house. Originally, it was his grandmother’s parents’ home. When they died, his mother was living in Villacarrillo, in Andalucia, and had been for many years, having met his father while on holiday there. It fell into decline because she rarely came back here. It wasn’t until Nico’s father experienced financial problems that they came here to live. Nico was settled into school and his mother, Viviana, began working part-time as the local notaire’s secretary, who, he explained, was a legal specialist. She kept the family going.

‘He was almost penniless at the time; a typical impoverished artist living on dreams. After he died, eight years ago, my mother returned to Spain and I remained here. As difficult as he was to live with, it broke her heart and two years later she succumbed to pneumonia. Life was never the same for her; it was easier without the worry of his turbulent moods, but she lost her zest for life.’

‘How sad. I’m so sorry to hear that,’ I reply, gently.

Nico leads me through the long corridor, past his bedroom on the ground floor, and I try not to recall the image of him slumped up against the wall.

‘It’s through here.’

I follow him into a large room that overlooks a walled garden. It’s filled with a mass of different hues, from white through to opulent purple. So unlike the orderly allotment, this feels instead like nature has taken over. Several huge rambling roses spill over the walls and there’s a real sense of the beauty of a garden doing its own thing. But the colour isn’t just outside. While the end wall is mostly glass, the rectangular, elongated room – which has two enormous tinted skylights – is also a riot of colour.

There are stacks of varying sizes of canvases leant against two of the walls and I do a double take. Each one would have taken weeks, months, or even longer, to have completed.

The third wall, which is bare brick, has several tracks running along it at three different heights. Extending well in excess of forty feet in length, there are five partially completed paintings.

‘My goodness, that’s impressive!’ I exclaim.

The floor is covered with almost as much paint as one of the canvases I’m staring at, and the smell is heavenly. That intense prickle as it hits my nose and I breathe in a wonderful whiff of oil paint. A sense of excitement wells up within me – it’s intoxicating.