Waking with a start, I saw it was Ally.

‘I’m sorry, Maia. You were asleep, weren’t you?’

‘I guess I was,’ I agreed, for some reason feeling guilty.

‘Ma says that the other girls have gone out on the lake, so I thought I’d come and speak to you. Do you mind?’

‘Not at all,’ I said, trying to shake off the torpor of my impromptu afternoon nap.

‘Shall I make us both a cup of tea?’ Ally asked me.

‘Yes, thank you. The usual English Breakfast for me.’

‘I know,’ she smiled, raising her eyebrows slightly as she left the room. When she returned with two steaming cups and sat down, I saw that, as she lifted hers to her mouth, her hands were shaking.

‘Maia, I need to tell you something.’

‘What is it?’

Ally put her cup down abruptly in its saucer. ‘Forget the tea. Have you got anything stronger?’

‘There’s some white wine in the fridge,’ I said and went into the kitchen to retrieve the bottle and a glass. Given that Ally rarely drank, I knew that whatever it was she wanted to share with me must be serious.

‘Thank you,’ she said as I handed the glass to her. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said as she took a sip. ‘But when we arrived at the spot near where Pa’s boat had been and saw it speeding off into the distance, there was another large boat still moored there.’

‘Well, surely that’s not unusual, is it?’ I queried. ‘It’s late June, and the waters in the Mediterranean are bound to be crowded with holidaymakers.’

‘Yes, but . . . this was a boat that both I and my friend recognised. It was the Olympus.’

My teacup was halfway up to my mouth as Ally said this. I clattered it back into its saucer.

‘And of course, you’ve almost certainly heard what happened on the Olympus. I read about it in the newspaper on the plane.’ Ally bit her lip.

‘Yes, I saw it on the news.’

‘Don’t you think it’s strange that Pa had obviously picked this particular place in which to be laid to rest? And that probably, at about the same time, Kreeg Eszu was choosing to take his own life close by?’

Of course I thought – for more reasons than I could ever tell Ally – that it was a ridiculous, almost obscene coincidence. But anything more than that? It couldn’t be.

‘Yes,’ I said, doing my best to hide my distress. ‘It is. But I’m sure there’s no link. They didn’t even know each other, did they?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ said Ally. ‘But what did we know about Pa’s life beyond this house and his yacht? We met so few of his friends, or his business associates. And it stands to reason that they may well have come across each other in the past. After all, they were both hugely rich and successful men.’

‘Yes, Ally, but I’m sure that this was simply a coincidence. After all, you were in the vicinity too on your boat. Delos is simply a very beautiful island that many boats head for.’