The main door creaked open, and a bright swarm swept into the empty space. In an instant, the workshop sprang to life and became the bustling place Giulia loved so much. In a hubbub of conversation, the women hurried to the changing room, donned their overalls and aprons and reported to their stations, talking all the while. Giulia joined them. Agnese’s features were tired and drawn – her youngest was teething, she hadn’t slept all night. Federica was holding back her tears – her fiancé had left. Alda was indignant – again?! He’ll be back tomorrow, Paola reassured her. The women shared more than their work here. While their busy hands treated the hair, they talked about men, and life, and love, all day long. Here, everyone knew that Gina’s husband drank; that Alda’s son was caught in the tentacles of the mafia; that Alessia had had a short-lived affair with Rhina’s ex-husband; and that Rhina had never forgiven her.

Giulia loved the company of these women. Some had known her since she was a child. She had almost been born here, at the workshop. Her mother liked to tell everyone how the contractions had caught her by surprise when she was busy sorting the skeins of hair in the main atelier. She had given up work now; her poor eyesight had forced her to step aside to make way for a new, sharper-eyed employee. Giulia had grown up surrounded by the hair waiting to be combed out, the strands ready to be washed, the orders prepared for dispatch. She remembered holidays and days off school spent among the women, watching them work. She loved to see their hands darting busily back and forth, like an army of ants. She watched them draw the hair through the cards – the big, square combs that remove the tangles – before washing it in the great vat on its trestle support, an ingenious solution assembled by her father, who didn’t like to see his employees straining their backs. Giulia smiled to see the bunches of hair hanging up in the windows to dry, like a series of bizarre trophies – the scalps in an old Western movie.

Sometimes, it seemed to Giulia that time stood still here. Outside, everything went on as normal, but inside these walls she felt protected. It was a gentle, comforting feeling. The certainty of a strange kind of permanence.