“You are going to strip? Just dunk a hankie in and mop your face. Be done with it.”

It’s like talking at a stone. He curses, turns away from her, shuffles ten steps down the path. The crow is still there in its field, caws hoarsely at him, picks an insect out the dirt. While he waits, impatient, Thomas makes an inventory of his pockets. There is a penknife and a handkerchief so stained with coal dust it is a featureless black. A length of yarn; a spent and broken match. A stone he picked up in some childish moment because it impressed him by its smoothness. Then he finds the cigarettes. There are four of them, each bent like an old man’s fingers. He has a memory of forcing open Julius’s little box and stuffing them in his coat. The smell leaps up to him, sticks to his fingertips even after he scatters the cigarettes on the ground. An invitation to sin. Renfrew would have been pleased to witness his fear.

When Livia finally emerges, her hair is streaming wet. She has no towel and has put on her shirt over her still-wet frame, is using the miner’s coat like a blanket thrown about her shoulders. Her face is flushed with cold. Beneath it shivers her young body, more naked than dressed. Thomas sees it and quickly turns away.

A silence descends. Behind him he can hear her wring out her hair then climb into the shoes she has been holding in her hand.

“There,” she announces at last. “Nearly dry. I needed to. . Those men made me feel dirty.”

Thomas hardly hears her. He wonders whether she saw him look. Whether he showed. He needs to say something; warn her; apologise. Her belly button showed dark through the wet cotton of her shirt; he saw the slender arches of her rib cage. You have to be careful, he wants to say. There is a curve, a hollow where her arm runs into torso, so much softer than a boy’s. I am no different than those who rode the train.

“Livia,” he says instead, his eyes on dirt and crow. It sounds sulky rather than apologetic. “What sort of name is Livia?”

Instantly, her voice turns cold.

“What do you care?”

But his mind has already moved on, slides from thought to thought without finding traction.

“I wish Charlie was here,” he mutters. And then: “He’s in love with you.”

“And you disapprove.”

He listens into himself and discovers she is right.

“Charlie is the best,” he tries to explain. “The most honest, the bravest person I have ever met.”

“While I’m a stuck-up little madam pretending to be a saint.”

“You are like me. Flawed and angry. Only you hide it better. Some day you will let him down.”

“I won’t.”

He startles himself with the sadness that rises up in him. “Who can say for sure, Livia?”