Giulia felt crushed at the very thought. For decades, her whole family had lived on the income from the workshop. She thought of her mother, too old now to work, and Adela, in her last years of school. Her older sister Francesca had young children and did not go out to work, she had married a good for nothing who squandered all his wages on gambling – and Papà had often topped up their account at the end of the month. What would become of them? Papà had secured a loan against their family home: everything they owned would be seized. As for the workers, they would be unemployed. Theirs was a highly specialized trade, there was no other workshop like it in Sicily now that might hire the women. What would they do – that band of sisters, with whom she had shared so much?

She thought of Papà, down at the hospital, in a coma. Suddenly, she froze. An appalling image sprang to mind: her father on his Vespa that morning, overwhelmed, distraught, riding fast, faster and faster, on the steep roads … She drove the cursed thought from her mind. No. He could not have done such a thing, he would not have left them – his wife, his daughters, his employees – ruined, abandoned. Pietro Lanfredi had a highly developed sense of honour, he was not a man to flinch in the face of misfortune. And yet Giulia knew that his pride and joy, his success, the very essence of his existence, was the little workshop in Palermo that his father had run before him, and that his grandfather had founded.

Could he have borne to see his staff laid off, his business liquidated, his life’s work going up in smoke? She felt a cruel, gnawing doubt at that moment, like gangrene in a wounded limb.

A sinking ship, thought Giulia. And they were all on board: her, Mamma, her sisters, the women from the workshop. It was the Costa Concordia. The captain was gone and they all faced certain death by drowning. There were no lifeboats, no rings, nothing to cling onto.

The voices of her colleagues in the main workshop interrupted her thoughts. Like every morning, they were getting ready, talking about anything and nothing. For a second, Giulia envied their carefree mood – they had no idea what lay in store. She closed the drawer slowly, like an undertaker placing the lid on a coffin. She turned the key. She hadn’t the heart to tell them today. Nor could she lie. She couldn’t set to work alongside them as if nothing had happened. She sought refuge up there under the eaves, in the laboratorio. She sat facing the sea, just as her father had done. He could spend hours like that, gazing out at the horizon. He said it was a spectacle he never tired of. Giulia was alone now, and the sea cared nothing for her sadness.