The weather box

Source: an original fiction extract.

On Thursday, Ben met his aunt outside the village library at half past three. She was carrying a wooden box with a white lid. Inside were three instruments from the old school weather station, which she wanted to donate to the library's local history display. Ben had brought his bicycle trailer to carry the box. They fastened it with two red straps and set off along the riverside path. His aunt walked beside him as he pushed the bicycle. The display would open on Monday, and she wanted time to write the labels before the weekend.

At the first bend they stopped to tighten a strap. Ben peered beneath the lid. He recognised a thermometer, but another instrument looked like a narrow glass tower containing a tiny ladder. His aunt told him its name and explained how the children had taken turns reading it. In winter, she said, you had to brush snow from the lid before lifting it. The lucky child held the notebook; the other one took off a glove to write. Ben imagined a class being pleased to stay indoors while two pupils froze outside.

'We fought to do it,' she said. This surprised him. She described the careful columns of numbers and the teacher who checked them each Friday. There was no prize. Their measurements went into a folder, and another class continued the following year. Ben asked what happened to the folders. She did not know. The instruments had survived in a caretaker's shed, wrapped in newspapers that crumbled when she touched them. The records might have gone when the old building was demolished.

They passed the new school, where rain had collected in the shallow hollows beneath the swings. His aunt stopped talking. Ben was trying to think of something encouraging to say when she asked for his phone. She wanted a photograph of the box on the trailer. 'Before we make it look important in a cabinet,' she said. He took one with her standing beside it. She asked for another without her, so that the straps could be seen. They were useful, she said, because the original carrying handles had broken off.

At the library they set the box on a sheet of brown paper. Ben stayed while she wrote the first label. It included the instruments' names and the years the school had used them. At the bottom she added that the measurements were recorded by pupils whose names were not known. Ben read it twice. The sentence made the missing children seem more present than the polished glass did. Before leaving, he sent her both photographs. On Monday he returned to find the one with the red straps beside the display, smaller than a postcard but clearly visible.

Refer only to the first paragraph. Choose one answer for each item. Write the four letters in order, labelling them 1 to 4.