Chapter 58

I don’t know why, but we ended up on the canal towpath. It wasn’t an area Mark and I frequented. The canal had been reopened a few years earlier, the occasional coal barge using the waterway to take its cargo to the power stations a couple of towns over.

We walked along the towpath, neither of us speaking. Off in the distance I could make out a couple of figures by the water’s edge. As we drew closer, I could see it was a man in his mid-thirties with a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten years old. They were sitting on a couple of wicker boxes, holding fishing rods. I’d forgotten the canal, since its clean up, had become a popular place to fish.

Mark came to a sudden halt. He was staring at the man and boy. His right arm rose up, and in a quiet voice that cracked with emotion he said, “That should have been me. I begged and I begged Dad to take me fishing with him. But he never would…he never would.”