Giulia didn’t know what to think. The idea seemed appealing one minute, and totally beyond her grasp the next. Kamal was sure he could help her. He spoke the language, he knew the country. He could be the link between India and Italy. What a wonderful man this is, she thought. Anything seems possible to him. She felt cross at her own despair and scepticism.

She walked home with her thoughts on fire. Her mind was jumping like a monkey in a cage, she found it impossible to calm down. She couldn’t sleep, it was pointless to try. She turned on her computer and spent the rest of the night searching feverishly.

What Kamal had said was true. Online, she found pictures of Indian men and women in the temples. In hopes of a good harvest, a happy marriage or better health, men and women would offer their hair to the gods. Mostly, they were ‘Untouchable’, the poorest in society. Their hair was all they had to give.

She read an article about an English businessman who had made a fortune importing hair. Now he was well known all over the world and travelled in a private helicopter. Strands of Indian hair were delivered by the ton to his factory near Rome. The merchandise was flown in to the airport at Fiumicino, then taken to an industrial estate on the north side of the city, where it was treated in vast workshops. Indian hair was the best in the world, declared the businessman. Reclining poolside at his villa near Rome, he explained how the hair was disinfected and disentangled, plunged into vats to be discoloured, then dyed blond, chestnut, red or auburn, made to resemble European hair exactly. We turn the black gold to blond, he said, with some satisfaction. Then the strands were sorted by length, collected into packets and dispatched all around the world, to be made into extensions or wigs. Fifty-three countries, 25,000 hair salons – the figures were dizzying! His company had become a multinational. People had joked about his mad idea at first, he said. But the business had prospered. Today, he employed 500 people at production sites on three continents, he concluded proudly: 80 per cent of the global market for hair.

Giulia was doubtful. Everything seemed so simple to the English businessman. Could she do the same? How could she accomplish anything of the kind? Who did she think she was? Turning a family business into an industrial enterprise was a hopeless dream. And yet the Englishman had done it. And if he had succeeded, why not her?

One question bothered her more than anything else: what would her father say? Would he support her plan? He always said you should think big, be bold and enterprising. But he was fiercely devoted to his island roots, his identity. Sicilian hair! he would say proudly, pointing to the strands. Would change mean betrayal?