The silent minute

Source: an original fiction extract.

By half past seven, the sounds were ready. Leah had arranged them on the studio computer in the order her grandfather had written on an envelope: market shutters, bicycle bells, the clock above the pharmacy, gulls. It was to be a three-minute piece for the local radio station, a small portrait of the town in which he had spent eighty years. She had cut out the coughing and the long gaps between his sentences. On the screen, the coloured blocks fitted together without any empty spaces. At eight, she would play it to him over the telephone.

She listened once more. The market shutters crashed obligingly; the bells sparkled; the clock struck six. His voice came in exactly where she had placed it. 'You always knew where you were,' he said. Leah reduced the gulls a little. The piece sounded brisk and cheerful, like a town with somewhere useful to go. She imagined the presenter thanking her. Then she noticed that one file, labelled MILL, had not been used. Her grandfather had put a thick pencil line beneath that word on the envelope.

In the recording, they walked for a while. There was traffic, the scrape of his shoe and her own impatient breathing. Then he stopped. Nothing happened. She moved the cursor forward, looking for the moment when he spoke, but there was only more traffic. She remembered the afternoon: the blank wall, the supermarket trolleys, his hand resting on the fence. She had thought he was tired. 'Shall we go?' she had asked. He had not answered immediately. Now, through the headphones, she heard him draw a breath and let it go.

She rang before eight. 'What am I supposed to hear at the mill?' He asked her to play that part. Leah held the phone beside the speaker. For nearly a minute they listened to tyres passing over wet road. At last he said, 'That used to be the loudest place in town.' She waited. 'You felt it through your shoes. Even on Sunday, when the machines stopped, you could hear them in your head.' Behind his voice she could hear his kitchen clock. She did not ask another question.

After the call, Leah opened the programme again. To make room, she shortened the bells and took out the second crash of the shutters. The neat blocks no longer touched. She let his footsteps continue into the space where the mill should have been, then placed his explanation after it. When she played the whole piece, the waiting felt much longer than a minute. The town was still there, but it no longer hurried from one cheerful sound to another. At the end, she left the little breath she had almost deleted.

Consider the whole source. Analyse how the writer structures the text to change the reader’s understanding of the silent recording. You could consider the opening focus, shifts in time and attention, the order of revelations and the ending. Support your explanation with references to the source.