The blackout

“The lights went out at eight while Tessa was washing a blue cup. Her flat was on the sixth floor, and the lift stopped between the fourth and fifth. She heard a bell from the corridor. On the kitchen shelf stood a torch with fresh batteries; beside it was a photograph she had meant to send to her sister. She took the torch and left the photograph. The water continued running until she remembered to turn it off.

In the corridor, darkness had erased the familiar distances. The far door seemed a mile away; the walls leaned close enough to listen. Her torch cut a narrow path across the carpet, finding a dropped envelope, a silver button, the toe of someone's shoe. 'It's only me,' said Mr Khan from number sixty-two. The light trembled once before she steadied it. Somewhere below them, the lift bell rang again, smaller now.

They had lived opposite one another for three years and exchanged perhaps twenty words. Tessa knew the times his radio played, the sound of his keys and the exact shape of his parcels. She did not know his first name. Now he carried a small camping lamp and asked whether she could manage the stairs. She almost answered that she was perfectly capable. Instead she said yes, and held the fire door while he passed.

On the fifth-floor landing, a voice came through the lift doors. A woman was trapped with her young son. The emergency service had been called, she said, but the boy was frightened. Tessa knelt beside the door. She could think of nothing reassuring that was certainly true. Mr Khan sat down beside her and began describing the ridiculous cake he had burnt that afternoon. From inside the lift came a small, surprised laugh.

The lamp made a pale circle around their knees. Tessa added the story of a dinner she had once dropped down the stairs, and the woman behind the door told one of her own. They waited. When the rescue crew arrived, the corridor filled with confident voices and bright equipment. Tessa stood, suddenly stiff. On the way back up, she asked Mr Khan his first name. He told her, and she repeated it carefully, as though learning the address of somewhere new.”

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