Neither his wife nor his children knew of the terrible secret eating away at the Frenchman who stole a Rembrandt and kept it hidden in his bedroom for a decade and a half.
But when Patrick Vialaneix turned up at a police station a free man to confess his secret, he surely knew his life was about to spectacularly unravel.
Far from freeing himself from the pernicious influence of the Child with a Soap Bubble, Mr Vialaneix is embroiled in a legal and emotional web that could take years to resolve.
