The vote was held in the main workshop space. Mamma was present, together with Francesca and Adela. Giulia opened the ballot papers with trembling hands. Each had been folded and placed in Papà’s old hat – that was her idea, a final tribute to her father. So that he can be with us in a small way today, she said.

There was a clear majority, seven votes to three. Giulia would remember that moment for years to come. She could barely conceal her joy.

Through Kamal she established a trusted contact in India, a man based in Chennai. He had studied business at the university and toured the country’s temples looking for hair to buy. He struck a hard bargain, but Giulia proved a tough negotiator too. Mia cara, anyone would think you had been doing this your whole life! chuckled La Nonna.

At just twenty years old, she found herself at the head of the workshop. She was the youngest business owner in the neighbourhood. She has taken over her father’s desk. She gazes at his photograph on the wall, next to the pictures of their forebears. She hasn’t dared add her own. That will come.

In her sadder moments, she goes up to the attic, to the laboratorio under the eaves. There, she sits facing the sea and thinks about her father, and what he would say, what he would do. She never feels alone. Her Papà is at her side.

Kamal stands beside her now. He insisted on coming with her to the airport. Lately, they have shared far more than their midday breaks. He has proved himself to be a source of tireless support, greeting each of her ideas with kind enthusiasm. He is inventive, enterprising. First, he was her lover, now he is her partner and confidant.

At last, the plane appears. Giulia watches the slowly growing dot in the sky and thinks that their whole future lies there, in the pot-bellied freight hold. She takes Kamal’s hand. It seems to her now that they are no longer two separate beings, drifting through life by chance, but a man and a woman anchored to one another. It doesn’t matter what Mamma says, or the family, or the neighbourhood, Giulia thinks. She is a woman now, standing with the man who has revealed her true self. She will hold tight to this hand.

She will press it often in the years ahead, in the street, in the park, in the maternity wing, asleep, when they make love, when she cries, when she brings their children into the world. She will hold this hand for a long time to come.

The plane lands and comes to a halt. Speedily, the containers are unloaded and taken to the sorting hangar, where the warehousemen are busy at work.