The first footprint

Source: an original fiction extract.

Before dawn, the beach belonged to the wind. Sand moved in thin streams across the hard strip left by the tide, filling every hollow it found. Lila stood beside the dunes with a notebook and a torch she had not yet needed. She had volunteered to help survey the beach after the storm. From where she stood, it seemed empty enough to finish quickly: seaweed, scattered shells and the long curve of water. Her supervisor, Dev, handed her a wooden frame and asked her to begin with one square of sand.

She placed the frame near a dark ridge of seaweed. Inside it lay a broken shell, a feather and something blue that looked like a small stone. She picked up the blue piece and found smooth plastic beneath the grit. Dev asked her to record it. Lila looked beyond the frame. There were blue fragments everywhere once she knew their colour, tucked into the line of weed and half buried near the dunes. The beach had not changed, but the first quick glance no longer seemed much use.

An hour earlier, she had left home pleased to be escaping a morning indoors. She had imagined a walk with a clipboard, perhaps a photograph of the sunrise to send her friends. Now the page was filling with numbers and awkward descriptions. She wanted names for things that had lost the shapes that made them recognisable. Dev showed her the survey categories, explaining which items they should record without trying to identify their original purpose. They moved the frame along the beach, one measured section at a time.

Near the steps, Lila found a footprint filled with water. At its heel lay a tiny green shoot, carried down from the dune edge where part of the sand bank had fallen. She almost listed it among the plant debris. Then Dev pointed to the root still gripping a small lump of sand. They recorded it and left it where it was. Around them, the beach was becoming busy. A dog ran past, a runner crossed their line of frames, and the café owner dragged a board across the path to make a dry crossing over the puddles.

At nine, Lila closed the notebook. From the top of the steps, the beach again looked like a simple curve between land and sea. She could no longer pick out the blue fragments or the shoot beside the footprint. But she knew roughly where each lay and which parts of her page referred to them. She took the sunrise photograph she had planned, though the sun was now well above the water. Then she took another, pointing the camera straight down at the square of sand beneath her shoes.

Consider the whole source. Analyse how the writer structures the text to develop Lila’s way of looking at the beach. You could consider changes in scale and focus, shifts in time and the relationship between the opening and ending. Support your explanation with references to the source.