Her father's mood was worse than ever when he entered the house on Sunday afternoon. He told Loïc off for slouching at the table, scolded Nell when she spilled on herself during dinner and kept griping crabbily about everything from the weather to work to politics.

Nell's heart sank more and more. She knew she had to tell him. She owed it to Mick, and to herself. It was about time she stopped being a coward when her father was around.

Yet the sullen look on his face and his irritable, tetchy remarks sufficed as warning signs of what would happen when she tried to break the news to him now.

She debated with herself all the way through dinner, which was why she ended up with sauce stains on the front of her blouse, and decided she'd put the confrontation off for another day or two, hoping he'd have calmed down a little by then.

In the end, the decision was made for her the next day.

Shortly after they had finished supper, a series of determined raps on the door heralded the arrival of Jeanne, her father's sister, who came to bring some jars of freshly homemade jam and to welcome her brother back on the mainland.

She had Madeleine with her, who occupied Nell immediately and gave her an eager account of all she'd been doing during the past week, so Nell didn't hear much of her parents' conversation with her aunt.

Barely a quarter of an hour later, Jeanne and Madeleine left. The moment he had closed the front door behind them, Jacques Kervennec turned around slowly, looking into Nell's eyes with a steely merciless glare.

"What's that Jeanne is telling me, Gwenaëlle? You, out and about on your own with a man, and a foreigner at that? That long-haired American the Delacourt boy brought along?" The way he spat out the word 'American', it sounded like some ugly kind of disease.

For a split second, Nell wondered how her aunt knew about Mick, but that wasn't what mattered now. She swallowed hard as she got up from her chair, squared her shoulders and replied calmly in an unprecedented show of defiance, "Your own hair isn't much shorter than his, Father. And anyway, since when does the length of one's hair define one's character? Mick is a lovely person. Very nice. Very decent. A lot more so, in fact, than many of the boys from hereabouts!"

Jacques seemed perplexed for a moment, and at a loss for words. She had a point there. Jacques himself was blessed with a considerable mass of wavy grey hair that he wore rather long at the back.

But of course he'd rather have bitten off his own tongue than admit that his daughter was right. And apart from that, the sudden cheek she was showing did not sit well with him, not at all.

In a dangerously low voice, he hissed, "Don't get clever with me, young lady. Talking back doesn't become you, it really doesn't. I say you stay away from that bloke and out of the trouble he's sure to bring, and that's my final word. I don't want to hear anything about you and that stranger again!"

Nell stood rooted to the spot, unable to say or do anything except look at him incredulously as he turned angrily on his wife. "And you, Mathilde? Did you know about that? Did you?"

When she did nothing but stare at him with large, frightened eyes, he grabbed her hard by the arm and shook her.

"I'm talking to you, woman! Did you simply look on as your daughter got taken in by that … that … sailor type?"

She still didn't speak but uttered a pained whimper.

Nell pitched in. "Mother didn't know anything, Father, she really didn't. Mick was here a few times, yes, but she thought he was coming to see Loïc or to deliver some fish for Jean-Luc."

She hoped and prayed her mother wouldn't choose this instant for displaying the brutal honesty she sometimes resorted to when she was very upset.

She was lucky. Mathilde simply pressed her lips together, stubbornly silent, and her father went on, "Jeanne said the little one saw you and that … that man on the beach. Lying on the beach, mind you."

Nell closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for him to swoop down on her for the final strike she knew would come.

"Haven't you got anything to say, Gwenaëlle?" he demanded sharply. "No denials? Is it true, then? Did you give yourself to the first sweet-talking stranger who happened to come along?"

Mathilde gasped loudly, and Nell protested, "Father, please!"

"Please", he mocked her in an overdone pleading tone. "Please! Is that what you were saying to him on the beach, huh? When you let him fuck you?"

"Father! Of course I did not let him fuck me, as you like to put it, but if you're so keen to know, yes, he kissed me, and it was the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced in all my miserable life in this miserable place!" she shouted, her heart pounding as if it was going to jump out of her throat any second.

And I'm certainly not giving him up, she added secretly.

She didn't say it aloud for she knew she had already gone too far in her father's eyes.

When he swung his fist at her, it didn't come unexpected at all.

She took the hard blow he dealt her cheek with the stoical wordless resignation experience had taught her. She knew that he'd only get more furious and violent if she ducked away and he missed his aim the first time.

He got very drunk that night, tearfully apologizing for hitting her, asserting how much he loved her and cared about her wellbeing and her reputation, imploring her not to let anyone see her face until the bruise had faded sufficiently to be explained away casually.

She hadn't wanted to comply with his wish, not this time, but in the end, she'd had no other choice, fearing he'd knock her about a lot worse if she refused to play along. So they had cooked up the flu story together and she'd sent off her brother with the message to Mick, feeling miserable about lying to him.

Several times, she considered trying to get out of the house somehow to go see him after all, but she was too afraid of what she'd be in for if she got caught. Or, even worse, what her mother would be in for if her father noticed that she'd sneaked away. He might not shrink from taking his anger out on his wife if Nell herself was out of reach.

So she waited at home until the purple blotch on her cheek had shrunk in size and turned a pale yellow-brownish colour, tried to bear her father's moods and her mother's retreating into her shell patiently while she was almost bursting with the desire to fall into Mick's arms and pour his heart out to him.

Every night she lay awake for a long time, shedding silent tears into her pillow as she was trying to figure out how to go on. She certainly would not to give up Mick, this handsome, quiet foreigner who had struck some chord with her that no other boy or man had ever touched upon. She could still feel his callused, scratched, beautiful hands caress her with infinite tenderness, in this natural, gentle, inobtrusive way that was so different from the leering stares and lewd remarks some of the villagers directed at everything that wore a skirt or from the awkward pawing Simon Dupré, her neighbour and childhood friend, had given her once or twice at a village dance.

With Mick, it was something else. He had never made her do anything she wasn't ready to do, had merely found a way to express with his eyes, his lips, his hands what he wasn't able, or perhaps didn't want, to put into words. The very fact he didn't push her made her want to give herself to him, to be his entirely. He was the only man who had ever made her think like that.

But it wasn't only the physical attraction. Despite the language barrier that sometimes got in the way, she loved talking to him. He listened without judging her, and she felt she could tell him anything. He made her feel wanted and loved unconditionally just the way she was. He didn't attempt to change her, or boss her around. He was all she'd ever wanted in a man, or even more than that.

She knew the recent row with her father would be followed by many more quarrels, presumably violent ones, if she held fast to Mick, and she knew it wasn't only her own father who was very leery of any kind of foreigner.

Mick would have a difficult time settling into the village community for good. He'd never be fully accepted as one of their own. Most of the villagers were not keen on intruders from God knew where, and even less so if they were involved with a local girl. The common view was that local girls should marry local boys.

Well, she wouldn't, hopefully.

She was fully aware that choosing Mick would mean choosing the long and winding path, the path that was sure to hold plenty of obstacles. The locals wouldn't regard her as equal any longer, she'd always be "that American's girl", and she couldn't count on her family's support. Except maybe for her brother's, but he was just a boy whose opinion didn't amount to much. Anyway, the village gossips would have a field day whenever Mick did or said something that confirmed their narrow-minded concepts about people from elsewhere.

She wondered in her wakeful hours if she was strong enough to break away for Mick's sake, if she could stand becoming something of an outcast in her own hometown.

The least she could do was give it a try.

She had only known him for such a short time, but deep down she felt he was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

She also resolved to tell him the truth about her bruised cheek at some point. He was right, it wouldn't do to hide behind lies and excuses. Still she couldn't bring herself to talk about her father's abusive streak openly, not yet.

In the end, that was another decision that was made for her.

Mick, perceptive and sensitive as he was, saw right through her paltry story, and she just couldn't not tell him the truth. It was about time he knew all about her family, if he hadn't guessed most of it anyway by now.