The municipal baths

Nadia reached the old swimming baths just before the caretaker locked the gates. The council had agreed that she could collect the painted sign from the entrance, provided she removed it herself. Her mother wanted it for the exhibition in the library. Nadia had brought a screwdriver, an empty rucksack and the photograph that showed her mother standing beneath the sign at fourteen. In the photograph the doors were open. Now one was secured with a length of chain, and the other admitted her sideways. The caretaker waited outside, looking at his watch.

The drained pool lay under a lid of grey light. Along its sides, the blue tiles had lost their shine; their missing neighbours left dark sockets in the wall. A lane rope sagged across the shallow end like a necklace dropped into a grave. Every sound Nadia made returned to her thinner and more distant. When her shoe nudged a loose tile, its small click travelled the length of the pool and died beneath the diving board. Above her, the high windows held the sky in separate, clouded squares. Nothing moved, yet the whole room seemed to be holding its breath.

She remembered the smell before she remembered the lessons: chlorine on her wrists hours after she had gone home. Her mother used to sit on the balcony with a towel across her knees. Nadia would look up after each width, pretending to check the clock. Today the balcony rails were wrapped in striped tape. A stack of plastic chairs blocked the stairs. She searched the seats for the one her mother had favoured, although she knew they had all been identical. From outside, the caretaker called that she had ten minutes.

The sign was heavier than she expected. She loosened one screw and supported the lower edge with her shoulder, trying not to let it swing. Behind the painted wood was a cleaner rectangle on the plaster. A beetle crossed it, stopped at the boundary of the light and disappeared into a crack. Nadia remembered that she had refused to put her face in the water during her first lesson. Her mother had not shouted instructions. She had simply stayed in the same seat until Nadia was ready. The second screw turned, releasing a fine stream of rust.

Outside, the caretaker helped her wrap the sign in an old towel. It would not fit inside the rucksack. She carried it upright instead, both hands around the narrow edges, and walked slowly towards the bus stop. At the gates she looked back. From this distance the dark entrance concealed the empty pool, the scattered tiles and the chairs. She took out the photograph once more. Her mother's face was blurred, but one hand rested clearly on the open door, as if she had been holding it for whoever came next.

Read the second paragraph, from ‘The drained pool’ to ‘holding its breath’. How does the writer use language to present the disused swimming pool? Support your analysis with evidence from this paragraph. You may consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.