The shop before dawn

Source: an original fiction extract.

By five in the morning, the water had reached the second step. Mrs Vale stood in the doorway of her shop, watching a cardboard tray revolve slowly against the kerb. Her son, Daniel, pulled an empty crate towards the stairs. He had driven across town when she telephoned, expecting to find her packing. Instead, she was arranging towels beneath the door. 'They won't stop it,' he said. She folded another towel lengthways and pressed it into the gap. Behind them the shop clock continued to tick above a display of birthday cards.

The flood warning on Daniel's phone told them to leave the ground floor and follow the marked route to higher ground. The road outside was still passable. He showed her the screen. Mrs Vale glanced at it and asked him to take the boxes of stock upstairs. They had carried six when he said that they must go. She pointed to the low cupboard behind the counter. 'That too.' It contained the shop's old account books, heavy ledgers with marbled covers. Daniel picked up the first two and felt the corner of one dissolve slightly against his thumb.

He had disliked those books as a child. On Saturday evenings, while other parents waited beside football pitches, his mother sat under the counter lamp making small columns agree. His father used to say that the shop would swallow them if they stopped feeding it. Now, in the dim light before dawn, Daniel could see the same bowed head as she searched the cupboard. He put the ledgers down. 'They're numbers, Mum.' She did not answer. A bus went past outside, slowly enough to push a broad wave against the step.

From behind the last ledger she took a flat envelope. Inside was a sheet of paper covered in crooked pencil lines. Daniel recognised his own name before he recognised the drawing: a shop with a red roof, three stick figures and a sun too large for the sky. At the bottom he had written that he would work there when he grew up. His mother held it with both hands. 'I knew it was somewhere.' The water slid beneath the towels and spread towards the counter. Daniel took a plastic document wallet from a shelf and opened it for her.

They left by the side door, carrying the envelope, the phone and nothing else. A volunteer at the corner directed them uphill. Halfway along the street, Mrs Vale stopped and looked back, but Daniel kept hold of her arm and she walked on. He was still angry about the waiting. He could imagine the stock soaking on the shelves and the cost of replacing it. Yet when his mother stumbled on an uneven paving stone, he moved the plastic wallet into his own coat before helping her. The pencil sun shone through the clear cover, absurdly bright in the grey morning.

Consider the whole source. A reader said: “Mrs Vale seems stubborn and unreasonable at first, but the writer makes her reluctance to leave the shop understandable.” Evaluate how far you agree. Support your judgement with detailed references to the text and the writer’s methods.