A thousand questions were pushing for precedence in my mind, but only one demanded to be asked immediately.

‘Why didn’t you let me know as soon as Pa had the heart attack?’ I asked as we entered the house and walked into the high-ceilinged drawing room that overlooked a sweeping stone terrace, lined with urns full of vivid red and gold nasturtiums.

‘Maia, believe me, I begged him to let me tell you, to tell all you girls, but he became so distressed when I mentioned it that I had to do as he wished.’

And I understood that if Pa had told her not to contact us, she could have done little else. He was the king and Marina was at best his most trusted courtier, at worst his servant who must do exactly as he bade her.

‘Where is he now?’ I asked her. ‘Still upstairs in his bedroom? Should I go and see him?’

‘No, chérie, he isn’t upstairs. Would you like some tea before I tell you more?’ she asked.

‘To be quite honest, I think I could do with a strong gin and tonic,’ I admitted as I sat down heavily on one of the huge sofas.

‘I’ll ask Claudia to make it. And I think that, on this occasion, I may join you myself.’

I watched as Marina left the room to find Claudia, our housekeeper, who had been at Atlantis as long as Marina. She was German, her outward dourness hiding a heart of gold. Like all of us, she’d adored her master. I wondered suddenly what would become of her and Marina. And, in fact, what would happen to Atlantis itself now that Pa had gone.

The words still seemed incongruous in this context. Pa was always ‘gone’ – off somewhere, doing something, although none of his staff or family had any specific idea of what he actually did to make his living. I’d asked him once, when my friend Jenny had come to stay with us during the school holidays and been noticeably awed by the opulence of the way we lived.

‘Your father must be fabulously wealthy,’ she’d whispered as we stepped off Pa’s private jet which had just landed at La Môle airport near St Tropez. The chauffeur was waiting on the tarmac to take us down to the harbour, where we’d board our magnificent ten-berth yacht, the Titan, and sail off for our annual Mediterranean cruise to whichever destination Pa Salt fancied taking us.

Like any child, rich or poor, given that I had grown up knowing no different, the way we lived had never really struck me as unusual. All of us girls had taken lessons with tutors at home when we were younger, and it was only when I went to boarding school at the age of thirteen that I began to realise how removed our life was from most other people’s.

When I asked Pa once what exactly it was he did to provide our family with every luxury imaginable, he looked at me in that secretive way he had and smiled. ‘I am a magician of sorts.’