Pa ran away with his redhead when I was about seven — an even thirty years ago. My mother never spoke to him again and most of us were loyal to Ma. Even after he returned sheepishly to Rome, calling himself Geminus as a halfhearted disguise, Pa kept apart from the family for years. More recently he did impose himself when it suited him. He was a snob about my connections to a senatorial family, so I had to see most of him. Recently my sister Maia took over his accounts at the auction house, one of my nephews was learning the business, and another sister ran a bar he owned.

Once the twittering slaves made their announcement, I foresaw big changes.

‘Who is going to tell me what happened?’

First spokesman was a wine-pourer, not quite as handsome as he thought, who wanted to get himself noticed: ‘Marcus Didius, your beloved father was found dead early this morning.’

He had been dead all day and I did not know. I had been struggling with the baby’s birth and death and all the while this had been happening too.

‘Was it natural?’

‘What else could it be, sir?’ I could think of a few answers.

Nema, Pa’s personal bodyslave, who was known to me, stepped up to give me details. Yesterday, my father came home from work at the Saepta Julia at a normal time, had dinner and retired to bed, early for him. Nema had heard him moving about this morning, apparently at his ablutions, then came a sudden loud thump. Nema ran in and Pa was dead on the floor.

Since I was known to spend my working life questioning such statements, Nema and the others looked worried. I suspected they had discussed how to convince me the story was accurate. They said a slave with some medical knowledge had diagnosed a heart attack.

‘We did not send for a doctor. You know Geminus. He would loathe the cost, when it was obvious that nothing could be done. .’

I knew. Pa could be stupidly generous, but like most men who accrued a lot of money he was more often stingy. Anyway, the diagnosis was reasonable. His lifestyle was tough; he had been looking tired; we were all not long returned from a physically demanding trip to Egypt.