‘Art should be on display to all,’ he’d said to me. ‘It is a gift to the soul from the painter. A painting that has to be hidden from sight is worthless.’

When I’d dared to mention the fact that he himself owned a private jet and a large luxury yacht, he’d raised an eyebrow at me.

‘But Maia, can’t you see that both those things are simply a mode of transportation? They provide a practical service, a means to an end. And if they went up in flames tomorrow, I could easily replace them. It’s enough for me to have my six human works of art: my daughters. The only things on earth worth treasuring, because you are all irreplaceable. People who you love are irreplaceable, Maia. Remember that, won’t you?’

These were words he’d spoken to me many years before and that had never left me. I only wished with every fibre in my body that I’d remembered them when I should have done.

I walked away emotionally empty-handed from the door of Pa Salt’s study, and went into the drawing room, still wondering why on earth the room had been locked. I’d ask Marina tomorrow, I thought, as I walked across to an occasional table and picked up a photograph. It had been taken aboard the Titan a few years ago, and showed Pa, surrounded by all of us sisters, leaning against the railing on the deck of the yacht. He was smiling broadly, his handsome features relaxed, his full head of greying hair swept back by the sea wind, and his still toned and muscular body bronzed by the sun.

‘Who were you?’ I asked the photograph with a frown.

For want of anything better to do, I switched on the television and flicked through the channels until I found the news. As usual, the bulletin was full of war, pain and destruction and I was just about to switch channels when the news-reader announced that the body of Kreeg Eszu, a famous captain of industry who ran a vast international communications company, had been found washed up in a cove on a Greek island.

I listened intently, the remote control frozen in my hand, as the newsreader explained how his family had announced that Kreeg had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The inference was that, given the diagnosis, he had decided to take his own life.

My heart began to beat faster. Not only because my father, too, had recently chosen to spend eternity at the bottom of the ocean, but because this story had a direct connection to me . . .

The newsreader stated that his son, Zed, who’d been working alongside his father for a number of years, would be taking over with immediate effect as Chief Executive of Athenian Holdings. An image of Zed flashed up on the screen and I instinctively closed my eyes.

‘Oh God,’ I groaned, wondering why fate had decided to choose this moment to remind me of a man I’d spent the past fourteen years desperately trying to forget.