She had worked tirelessly to develop the project over the preceding days. She had studied the market, prepared a dossier for the bank – they would need money to invest in the scheme, obviously. She had worked day and night, barely slept, but she hadn’t cared: she was on a mission, driven by a quasi-religious zeal. She had no idea where this new-found confidence, this sudden burst of energy, had come from. Was it Kamal’s benevolent presence at her side? Was it her father, deep in his coma, passing his strength and conviction to her? Giulia was ready to move mountains, from the Apennines to the Himalaya.

She wasn’t spurred by the prospect of wealth, she cared nothing for the millions the English businessman boasted of. She didn’t need a swimming pool or a helicopter. All she wanted was to save her father’s workshop and keep a roof over her family’s head.

It won’t work, said Mamma. The Lanfredi have always bought their hair in Sicily. The cascatura is an ancestral custom here. Challenge tradition at your peril, she admonished.

Tradition will lead us to ruin, replied Giulia. The accounts are perfectly clear: the workshop will close in a month, at most. We need to rethink the production process, open it up to supplies from elsewhere. Accept this changing world and change with it. Family firms that refuse to move with the times are shutting down one after the other in Sicily. We need to expand our horizons, look further afield, it’s a matter of survival! Adapt or die, there is no other choice. Speaking these words, Giulia felt wings sprouting at her back, as if she were suddenly a lawyer at the bar of a great courtroom, in an important trial. It was a profession that had always fascinated her – but a profession reserved for cultivated people, from the upper echelons of society. There were no lawyers in the Lanfredi clan, only workers. But she would have loved to defend important causes in a court of law, to be a powerful, distinguished woman. She thought about it sometimes, and the thought joined all the others, in the limbo of her forgotten dreams.

Giulia spoke forcefully, enthusiastically. Indian hair had superb qualities, she said, a host of experts agreed. Asian hair is stronger, African hair is the most brittle, but Indian is best, for its texture, and its capacity to take colour. Once the hair was discoloured and dyed, it looked exactly like European hair in every way.