The corridor concert

At half past seven, the lift stopped between floors. Nora heard the alarm from her kitchen, a thin sound repeated at exact intervals. She opened her door and found Mr Lewis from number twelve pressing the call button. A repair engineer was on the way, he said. Inside were a delivery driver and a boy carrying a cello. Nora recognised the boy's instrument case; she had seen him return from lessons on Tuesdays. Until then, their longest conversation had been an apology when the case caught her shopping bag.

The engineer would take forty minutes. Mr Lewis announced this towards the closed doors, then looked at his watch as though the message had used up some of the time. The delivery driver said that he was all right. The boy said nothing. Nora asked his name. Adam. She asked whether he had somebody to call, and heard him speaking into a phone. The alarm continued. Mr Lewis fetched a chair from his flat and sat beside the lift, leaving his own front door open behind him.

Nora went back to her kitchen. The rice was nearly cooked, and steam had clouded the window. She turned off the heat. In the corridor, Mrs Kent had arrived with a torch, although the lift's emergency light was working. Someone suggested a glass of water, then realised there was no way to pass it through. They spoke across one another, offering things that could not yet be used. At last Nora sat on the floor opposite the doors and asked Adam what he had been learning to play.

He named a tune she did not know. The delivery driver asked whether it was the one from an advertisement, and Adam laughed for the first time. He could play a little of it, he said, if they wanted. There was a scrape as the case opened, then several uncertain notes. The sound arrived through the metal doors softened at the edges. Nora stopped looking at the floor numbers. Mrs Kent sat beside her with the torch in her lap. When the tune ended, Mr Lewis tapped his walking stick twice against the tiles, and the others joined in with their hands.

The engineer arrived while Adam was explaining a difficult change of rhythm. After the doors opened, everyone stood awkwardly, as though they had been caught using the corridor for something private. The driver hurried away with his parcels. Adam lifted the cello case and thanked them, although Nora could not decide exactly what they had done. The next Tuesday she heard the case bump against the lift door. Before he pressed the button, she asked how the tune was going. He put the case down to answer. Her rice had been cold that first evening; she remembered it now without regret.

Consider the whole passage. How does the writer structure the text to develop a connection between people who barely know one another? You could consider the opening, shifts in focus, changes in pace, and links between the beginning and ending. Support your analysis with references to the passage.