I’d always been quite careful with cash and, over two months on, I still had some money to spend in the wake of my birthday. Penny had promised to help me get rid of it (her words), so, the day after our shower, she and I embarked on a shopping trip to Middlesbrough. I guessed she was hoping I’d spend some of my money on her and by now I was starting to care for her too much to disappoint her.

We waited on the platform of our local station, which was little more than two decrepit shelters and a footbridge. The guard collected your fare once you had boarded the rattling two-coach diesel train.

The railway ran through farmland and skirted the coast before passing through Redcar then diving into the industrial heart of Teesside. Past blast furnaces, coke ovens where the smell of sulphur was heavy in the air, and docks now devoid of shipping. The names of the blackened, crumbling stations, Warrenby, Dormanstown, South Bank, Cargo Fleet, reflected the industry in pockmarked orange and white enamel. An industry that, by the mid ’70s, had already slipped into terminal decline.

Huge tracts of overgrown weed-wasteland bordered the line. We passed long sidings of rusting goods wagons, many carrying the crude painted ‘Cond’ legend that meant they were destined for the scrap yard. Paint peeled from the vast grey sheds of the steel-mills. I imagined the train becoming a time machine, allowing us to glimpse an earlier, harsher scene. A scene populated by prematurely aged workmen, in overalls, flat caps, and greasy tweed jackets, small knapsacks slung over one shoulder like wartime gas masks. It wasn’t hard to believe that you had slipped back to the 1940s.

Things improved a little after the Teesside Bridge works as the train pulled in to Middlesbrough, passing newer office buildings, including the block where my dad worked, but it was a journey which always left me with a gloomy feeling. This was not helped by arrival at the grim central station, ugly concrete canopies grafted onto the Victorian buildings, the original glass roof having fallen victim to the Luftwaffe.

Penny seemed unaffected and as we walked down the station approach towards the town, she chattered about where we should go first. My own mood lifted as we waited to cross the road, I spotted a bright yellow Lotus among the dull Fords and Austins; I briefly fantasised about the open road and Diana Rigg in The Avengers.

Penny caught the glazed Mr Toad look in my eye as I tracked the Elan. ‘Sometimes I think you like cars more than me.’

‘Not all cars,’ I said, ‘just Lotuses and Ferraris and—’ I jumped out of the way so that her punch didn’t connect.

We walked hand in hand through the crowds down Linthorpe Road and made our way into the shiny Cleveland Centre. I wanted to look at records and books, she wanted to look at clothes, but we were in love so we did both.

We went into Woolworth’s and squeezed, giggling, into the photo booth together. The strip of four pictures I tore in half, so that we had two each. ‘Just in case we forget what each other looks like,’ I joked. My pictures I slipped into my shirt pocket, next to my heart.

She needed to buy a pair of jeans, and in a couple of shops I did the boyfriend thing. Sitting on a hard chair outside the ladies’ fitting rooms, trying hard not to look like a pervert; although I wasn’t entirely sure what a pervert looked like. In the second shop I was convinced all the assistants were looking at me.

‘You were a long time,’ I said when Penny emerged.

‘The first pair was too tight,’ she whispered. ‘I had trouble getting them off.’

I had a fleeting fantasy of her struggling behind the grey curtain. ‘You should have called out, I’d have come in and helped you,’ I leered. My cartoon devil cackled in my ear.

‘And get us thrown out of the shop? I don’t think so.’

I grinned. ‘Spoil sport, I’d let you help me off with my jeans any day.’

‘I might hold you to that,’ she teased as she went back to try on another pair.

I thought about a pair of very tight Wrangler’s I owned, which were almost impossible to take off without my undies coming down too. I drifted off into an erotic fantasy of having sex in fitting rooms. Penny’s hand on my shoulder broke the spell.

‘Come on, I’ll pay for these then we’ll go for a coffee.’

I started. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’ It was lucky she didn’t ask for details of where my mind had been wandering.

At the till, the assistant, not much older than us, looked up from a close examination of her scarlet-painted nails. She glanced at me then at Penny. ‘It’s pointless bringing them shopping, isn’t it? They’re no help at all.’

‘They’re good for holding things,’ said Penny, handing me the carrier bag. 

She wanted to go for a coffee in Binns department store. This was the sort thing our parents did and I was against it. At last Penny talked me round.

The café was on the top floor and we made our way up a series of juddering escalators. A teenage couple in faded denims, I felt that the staff and some of the other patrons were looking down their noses at us. The place was quite busy but we found a vacant table near the pay desk.

‘I feel out of place here,’ I said in a whisper.

‘Why?’

‘It’s where my mum would come.’

‘So?’ Penny laughed.

‘I just feel I should be somewhere  …  trendier.’

She laughed again. ‘You’re going to grow up one day. You may as well start getting into the role.’

I suddenly realised I wasn’t ready to grow up. I wanted to be seventeen for the rest of my life. ‘It’s a frightening thought isn’t it?  One day we could be sitting here moaning about our pensions and looking down our noses at the youngsters.’

Penny spluttered on her coffee. ‘Darby and Joan … who used to be John and Penny.’

‘The folks who sit near the till,’ I said, wishing I could have thought up a decent rhyme for Penny on the spur of the moment.

I saw from her smile that she’d enjoyed the line anyhow. I set my self-consciousness on one side and leaned across the table to kiss her. The blue-rinsed old ladies looked at us and tutted over their tea and scones.

After finishing our coffee we made our way back to the ground floor. Near the door was a counter selling costume jewellery; we paused.

‘I know diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but they’re a bit outside my budget,’ I whispered.

Penny giggled. ‘You can buy them for me later, when you’re rich and famous.’

‘Are you going to hold me to that too?’

‘You bet I am,’ she said.

After a few minutes browsing and some whispered discussion, I bought her a heart-shaped silver pendant. It wasn’t all that expensive, but this was the first time ever I’d bought jewellery for a girl. I felt I’d crossed some sort of maturity threshold.

Returning to the station for the trip home we had to walk through the subway to reach platform two. The passage’s graffiti, made famous by a feature in the Evening Gazette about how the world was going to the dogs, advertised the exploits of the ‘Boro Boot Boys’, in red spray paint on the white brick, stark and bright under the harsh fluorescent lighting. An old tramp was huddled at the base of the steps.

‘Spare the price of a cup o’ tea?’ he rasped as we went by. I dropped a five pence coin into his outstretched hand. ‘God bless you, son. I hope you and the young miss will be very happy.’

‘He’ll most likely spend that on meths,’ said Penny as we walked on, our footsteps echoing on the hard floor of the passage.

‘That’s not very charitable, young miss.’ I tried to imitate the old man’s rusty voice. ‘I thought I was supposed to be the cynical one?’

‘It was very noble of you.’ She squeezed my arm and I grew a few inches taller on the spot.

Once on the platform I found I had just enough money to buy a bar of Nestlé’s milk chocolate from a machine, and still have the train fare home. Since childhood I had always associated Nestlé’s chocolate with trains and only ever ate it on railway stations; we sat on a bench and shared the bar.

‘You’ll be broke,’ said Penny.

‘But at least I’m not Penniless.’ It was a cheesy line and she groaned.

I arrived home out of pocket but contented, a perfect end to the outing.

That evening, after tea, I stuck the pictures of me and Penny onto the side of my bedside cabinet. They became the last thing I saw at night as I turned out the light, and the first in the morning when I woke.