Michael is her secret, at first. They confine themselves to flirtations at the café, the occasional ride home. She will not let him take her to the door, but slips from the bike near the train station, waving him away. She knows instinctively her father will disapprove, of the motorbike and the man – his age, his foreignness. He will disapprove of Michael’s charm, will not trust it. She’s his eldest daughter, sensible, dutiful. He would prefer she brought home a local lad, someone who speaks the King’s English. Someone her own age, rather than his. She knows all this.

But her relationship with Michael makes her bold. The attention of a mature man changes the way she sees herself: she is a woman, not a girl, with a new awareness of her powers. With each meeting her confidence grows. She has never been self-assured but she listens to him tell her how beautiful she is, her eyes, her lips, and it’s hard not to believe it; his own eyes traverse her body slowly from her ankles to her brows and there is no doubt what he is thinking. She shivers, feeling her skin tighten beneath her clothes, a stirring she has never felt before. It makes her reckless. She decides to take him home to meet her parents, her siblings, her grandmother. A risky enough venture for the woman Yvonne, but more so for the girl Mimi, who lives in that home and who, among her family, has no other name.