They were gathered around the boardroom table, where an exquisite Walter Spies painting, an old Kamasan artwork and a contemporary I Nyoman Masriadi hung on the walls. The morning sun was gently filtering through a delicate bamboo blind. Johnny was looking very pleased with himself, Grace thought. He was dressed in a pink open-necked shirt with a long silk scarf knotted at his throat.

Grace pointed at the scarf. ‘Stunning! Where’s that from?’

He unknotted it and opened it out, revealing exotic dark jungle, flowers and mystical figures of a Balinese painting reminiscent of a classic Spies painting.

‘New idea, what do you think?’

‘Love it! I’d like a silk sarong with that print!’

‘I’ll work on it,’ he promised.

Grace was sitting next to Harold Pangisar, and also present were Wija Angiman, Farrouk Eljoffrey, Andy, Rosie Chow and a Balinese man she didn’t know.

After he’d called the meeting to order, Johnny introduced the visitor.

‘I am proud to introduce Professor Johannes Sastro, a close friend of our family for many years and professor of Indonesian and Javanese language and culture at a leading university in the Netherlands.’

The professor smiled and nodded to everyone. A small, wizened man, he had a slightly bemused smile and alert brown eyes and was probably close to eighty years old.

‘Professor Sastro is home in Bali for a couple of weeks and when he came to visit my aunt yesterday, I invited him back this morning so I could show him around our hotel,’ Johnny said, sounding far more formal than usual. ‘After our little tour, he asked if he could join our meeting now to say a few words.’

‘Thank you, Johnny.’ The professor smiled slightly as he spoke in a cultured Indonesian-Dutch accent. ‘Ladies, gentlemen, thank you for having me today. I must say I am very impressed after having had a tour of the Kamasan. It is not what I have come to expect from the usual up-market resorts appealing to international visitors, even those of a certain financial standing. Its design shows a deep respect for our land and culture.

‘Over the decades, as the appeal of our local culture in Bali was replaced by holiday and resort tourism, catering to visitors’ needs as opposed to our own, it has evolved that visitors rarely see or truly experience genuine Balinese culture. At best, they see it on a superficial or commercial level.