The stalled lift

Source: an original fiction extract.

At seven in the evening, Nessa stepped into the lift with a parcel of sandwiches and pressed the button for the sixth floor. Her brother was working late in the offices above the shop. Before the doors closed, a cleaner wheeled in a bucket, followed by a man carrying an enormous bunch of lilies. They arranged themselves around the flowers without speaking. The lift rose, gave a small, almost apologetic shiver, and stopped. The number above the door remained at three. The man pressed six, then three, then six again, as if the order might matter.

The cleaner found the alarm button. A voice answered after several seconds and asked whether anyone was injured. Nobody was. The engineer would come, the voice said, but there would be a wait. Nessa sent her brother a message. The man with the lilies checked his watch and explained that he was expected at a dinner. He said it to the doors rather than to either of them. The cleaner folded a cloth beneath the bucket handle to stop it rattling. With that small noise gone, the lift seemed even more still.

Nessa had never noticed how much movement she expected from a room. She watched a leaf tremble against the man's coat and tried to feel a draught around the doors. The lilies smelled stronger now. The man began describing the dinner: a retirement, twenty people, a speech he had practised in the car. When his phone lost its signal, he asked whether they would mind hearing the opening. Nessa expected to refuse, but the cleaner nodded. The speech began formally, stumbled over a name, and stopped. The man looked at the flowers as though they had interrupted him.

The cleaner asked what the retiring woman was actually like. After a pause, he told them how she had once spent an afternoon teaching him to use the photocopier without making him feel foolish. The cleaner laughed and said that was what he should tell the guests. Nessa opened the sandwiches. They ate carefully, balancing the wrappers above the bucket. The man began the speech again, this time with the photocopier. Nessa forgot to check the number over the door. When machinery clanked above them, all three looked up together. The engineer's voice was much louder than the voice on the alarm.

The lift descended a few inches and the doors were pulled apart. Beyond them stood a security guard, her brother and the engineer, all wearing the serious expressions of people who had been doing useful things. Nessa stepped into the corridor. The man hurried towards the stairs with his lilies; the cleaner unfolded the cloth and rolled her bucket out. Her brother asked whether it had been awful. Nessa looked back at the empty lift, suddenly no more than a metal box. She said it had been a long time, then asked if he wanted the remaining sandwich.

Consider the whole source. Analyse how the writer structures the text to change the reader’s impression of being trapped in the lift. Support your explanation with references to the source.