The empty frame

Source: an original fiction extract.

“Imran arrived at the community gallery at eight on Saturday, carrying a painting wrapped in a bedsheet. The exhibition opened at ten. His teacher had given him the smallest space, between a photograph of the canal and the door to the kitchen. He had painted the view from his bedroom window: a brick wall, a television aerial and a narrow strip of sky. Now, among the bright landscapes waiting against the wall, it looked like something he ought to apologise for.

The gallery smelled of fresh paint and burnt toast. Sunlight spread across the floor in broad, confident rectangles, stopping just short of Imran's shoes. Along the walls, gold frames caught the light and returned it extravagantly. His own frame was plain pine, rubbed smooth by his father's sandpaper. In one corner a knot in the wood stared back at him, a small dark eye that seemed determined to notice everything he would rather hide.

He unwrapped the painting and held it against the wall. The sky looked smaller here. From the kitchen came the clatter of cups and someone's loud, easy laugh. Imran lowered the picture. He could leave it behind the table, tell his teacher that the hook had been missing, and spend the morning helping with tea. He knew how to carry a tray without shaking. He had practised that for years in his mother's café.

A woman carrying a stepladder stopped beside him. 'Is that yours?' she asked. He nodded, keeping the painting turned slightly away. She put down the ladder and looked properly. 'I know that wall,' she said. Imran began to explain that he could have chosen something better. But she was pointing to the thin line of orange light along the bricks. 'I used to wait for that, when I worked nights. It meant I could finally sleep.' She asked him where the picture was going.

At ten, Imran stood beside the kitchen door with a tray. The painting hung on its hook. People passed it on their way to the canal photograph; some did not stop. Then a man leaned closer, and a little girl asked why the sky was so small. Imran put down the tray to answer her. Behind the frame, the wall remained the same plain white. He could still see the dark knot in the pine, but it no longer looked like an eye.”

Refer only to the second paragraph. Analyse how the writer uses language to present Imran’s self-consciousness in the gallery. Support your ideas with quotations from that paragraph. You could consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.