The brass numbers

Source: an original fiction extract.

At eight on Monday morning, Leo arrived at the old swimming pool to help remove the locker numbers. The building was being converted into a dance studio. His supervisor, Hester, gave him a small screwdriver and a cardboard tray. She asked him to begin with the lockers nearest the deep end and keep the screws with each brass plate. There were thirty lockers in that row. Leo placed the tray on a dry bench, took off his jacket and started with number one. Workmen upstairs were lifting tiles, and fine white dust drifted through a hole in the ceiling.

The first plate came away easily. Behind it, the paint was a darker green, protected from years of wet hands and cleaning cloths. Leo liked the neatness of the little rectangle it left. The next screw resisted him. He turned too hard and the screwdriver slipped, scraping his knuckle. Hester brought him a plaster. She said there was no hurry; the plates were going into a local exhibition, and a scratch would remain long after his sore hand had healed. He began again, more slowly.

By lunchtime he had reached number seventeen. Its surface was rubbed almost smooth. Someone had scratched a small star beside the second digit. Leo showed Hester, expecting her to put it in the box for damaged fittings. Instead, she sat on the bench and turned the plate towards the light. She had used that locker every Thursday when she was learning to swim. The star had been there then. She used to touch it before going to the shallow end, as though it could make the water less cold.

Leo had imagined Hester as a person who had always known how to do things. She could identify tools from the sound they made inside a bag. Once, she had repaired a broken door handle while continuing a conversation about her lunch. He asked how old she had been when she learnt to swim. 'Forty-two,' she said. The answer made him look towards the empty pool. Without water, the slope to the deep end seemed much steeper. He pictured her standing at its edge while children splashed past with easy, careless movements.

They wrapped the brass plates in paper before leaving. Hester wrote the pool's name on the tray and carried it to her van. Leo looked back at the row of pale rectangles on the lockers. He could no longer see which had held seventeen. The following month, when the exhibition opened, each number had a small space beside it for a visitor's memory. Hester's was three sentences long. Leo read it, then walked around the other displays. Near the exit he picked up a leaflet for the evening swimming lessons and folded it into his jacket pocket.

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