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had told her that Dad had borrowed three pounds from him to bet on the outcome of a dominoes match and hadn’t paid him back.
    ‘I thought I had a good chance and the money would have come in useful if I’d won,’ was all he had said when challenged. He had sat beside the fire in his pit black, looking hunted, so that Marina wanted to shout at her mother to leave him alone.
    ‘And you were the one who wanted the lass to stay on at school!’ Mam had said. ‘Fat chance with you for a father.’
    ‘Shut up, woman!’ Dad had flared up but soon subsided and got out his baccy and cigarette machine to roll himself a tab. So Mam was going to the Co-op today to take out the dividend she had been saving to buy Marina a new outfit for when she started work and use it to pay his debt.
    ‘Marina? You look faraway, what are you thinking about?’ asked Charlie.
    Brought back to reality, she took a sip of coffee. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing important anyway. Do you know, I think I would really like to work in Durham.’
    ‘It is a nice place,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve enjoyed my time here. And now I’m doing post-graduate work, I think I’ll enjoy it even more. When term starts –’
    ‘Oh, of course, it’s not term-time yet,’ Marina exclaimed. So much for her envy of the young girl in the punt, she thought. She was probably just someone like Marina herself, out on her afternoon off and spending it with her boyfriend.
    ‘No, not until October. I have a job though, I have to be here in the holidays.’ He didn’t elaborate on what his job was and Marina didn’t ask.
    ‘I have the afternoon off,’ Charlie continued. ‘Would you like to go for a walk? It’s a nice day, there won’t be many more like it this year.’
    Marina was surprised and flattered. But she was being silly; he wasn’t suggesting they start ‘going out’ together, of course he wasn’t. Maybe he was just being polite because she was a relative of his friends? There was a dismal idea.
    ‘I … I was just going to catch a bus home.’
    ‘Oh, do you have to go?’
    She should, really. Mam was still upset over Dad and this morning had started a migraine which would last for days if it was anything like her usual ones. No dinner would be prepared for the men coming in from the pit.
    ‘No, I can stay for a while,’ replied Marina, not even feeling guilty.
    They walked down Silver Street and the steps leading to the river path there, following the wide loop of the river which surrounded the steep hill with the castle and cathedral on top. They talked as they walked, Marina finding herself telling him all about her family – except for Dad’s gambling of course. And Charlie told her how his father was a miner too, an ironstone miner in North Yorkshire.
    ‘My mother died years ago and Dad married again. I don’t go home often now,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I stay at Fortune Hall with my aunt.’ He smiled down at her as she took his arm impulsively from sympathy. ‘It was a long time ago, you know.’
    They walked along the towpath for a while, silent now. Marina kept her hand on his arm, feeling the warmth of him through the rough serge of his jacket. She hadn’t felt like this about a boy before and found it slightly intoxicating. She peeped up at him through her lashes. Charlie was looking out over the river to where a family of ducks quacked quietly by the opposite bank, the ducklings almost full grown now. The path skirted the old woollen mill which stood by the side of the Wear and they went on round the loop of the river all the way to Elvet bridge and the row of punts and rowing boats.
    Leaves were already falling on the damp earth, the grass at the side yellowing. Autumn comes early around here, she mused, but it wasn’t a melancholy thought. She looked forward to the winter now, starting a new job at Shire Hall, with always the chance of meeting Charlie Hutchinson around the city. If she got the job, she reminded herself.