Then they would set off for the next houses on their list. Arrivederci! At the hair salons, the spoils were even greater, and Giulia loved her father’s expression when he received a long skein of hair, the rarest and most valuable. He would weigh it, measure it, feel the strands’ texture and thickness. He would pay up, thank the client and leave. There was no time to lose. The Lanfredi workshop had a hundred suppliers in Palermo alone. If they hurried, they could be back in time for lunch.

The image held a moment longer: Giulia at nine years old, riding aboard the Vespa.

The seconds that followed were vague, confused, as if reality itself was struggling to focus, caught up in the dream that had just ended.

So it was true. Her father had had an accident the day before, on his rounds. For some unknown reason, his Vespa had skidded off the road. And yet he knew the route well, had ridden it hundreds of times. Perhaps an animal ran out in front of him, the paramedics had suggested. Or perhaps he’d suffered a stroke. No one knew. Now he was in Francesco Saverio Hospital, hovering between life and death. The doctors were saying nothing. You must be prepared for the worst, they had told her mamma.

The worst. Giulia couldn’t contemplate that. Fathers didn’t die. Fathers lived forever. A rock, a pillar, especially hers. Pietro Lanfredi was a force of nature, he would live to be a hundred, as his friend Dr Signore liked to tell him over a glass of grappa. Pietro, the lover of good food and wine, and good company, her papà, the patriarch, the boss, with his fiery temper and his passion for life, her father, her adored father. He couldn’t leave. Not now, not like this.

Today was the Feast of Santa Rosalia, thought Giulia, with grim irony. Palermo was celebrating its patron saint. The festinu would go on all day, as it did every year. And like every year, her father had given the workers the day off so that they could take part in the festivities: the procession along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and the fireworks at nightfall on the Foro Italico.