The visitor’s chair

Source: an original fiction extract.

“Every afternoon at two, Mrs Vale placed a chair beside the front window. She did not sit in it. She sat in the armchair opposite, with a book open on her knee, and glanced towards the road whenever a car slowed. Her grandson Owen noticed the routine during the first week of his visit. On Thursday he asked who was coming. She said nobody in particular, then told him there were biscuits in the tin above the fridge.

The waiting chair was upright and severe, its wooden arms polished to a dark shine. Sunlight moved across its cushion in a slow golden square, touching the place where a person's hands might rest. Outside, cars whispered over the wet road. Each passing shadow crossed the room, paused on the chair and slipped away, leaving it more conspicuously empty than before.

Owen began inventing visitors. An old friend who had lost the address. A sister returning after a quarrel. Someone from a story Mrs Vale had never told him. He asked his mother, who said that the chair had belonged to his grandfather and that he should not make a fuss. Owen had almost no memory of the man. In the photograph above the fireplace, he looked as though he had been interrupted while deciding whether to smile.

On Friday, a delivery driver knocked with a parcel too heavy for Mrs Vale to carry. Owen brought it into the room. While he found scissors, the driver waited beside the window and, after asking, sat in the chair. Mrs Vale offered him tea. He said he had five minutes. They spoke about the roadworks, then about a school they had both attended at different times. Owen stood with the unopened parcel against his leg. His grandmother had stopped looking towards the road.

After the driver left, Owen asked whether he should move the chair back. It had shifted slightly towards the fireplace. Mrs Vale considered it, then said it could stay where it was. At two the next day, she opened her book in the armchair. Owen sat opposite with his own. Neither of them mentioned that the visitor's chair was no longer facing the window.”

Refer only to the second paragraph. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the significance of the empty chair. Support your ideas with quotations from that paragraph. You could consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.