The wrong platform

Source: an original fiction extract.

“At six forty, Daniel stood on platform three with a paper ticket that had begun to soften in the rain. His train was due at six forty-five. Across the tracks, a family in bright raincoats was sheltering beneath a sign for platform four. Daniel had checked the departure board twice. Both times it had said three. He was returning to the town where his brother lived, after an argument neither of them had mentioned in their messages that week.

Rain hissed along the rails. Under the shelter, a fluorescent tube flickered with the exhausted persistence of an insect trapped in a jar. The station clock advanced in stiff little jerks. Beyond the tracks, the family's red and yellow coats looked impossibly cheerful, like flags planted on the far bank of a river Daniel could not cross. He turned the ticket over, though there was nothing useful on the other side.

The announcement began with his destination, then dissolved into a burst of static. On platform four, the family stood. Daniel looked towards the footbridge. Its stairs rose at the far end of the platform, beyond the locked waiting room. He could ask someone, but nobody stood near him. His brother had sent another message: I'll be there. Daniel read it twice and put the phone away without replying.

A railway employee appeared beside the waiting room. Daniel raised his ticket and called out, but the wind took the first words. He tried again. The employee pointed across the tracks, then towards the bridge. Daniel ran. Halfway up the stairs he stopped to let an older passenger come down, one step at a time. The train was entering the opposite platform. He could hear its brakes and the quick opening of doors while he waited on the narrow landing.

He reached the carriage just before the warning sounded. Inside, his wet sleeve brushed a woman's newspaper and he apologised too many times. As the train moved, he took out his phone. For a while he watched the cursor blink beneath his brother's message. Then he typed: I should have called sooner. Outside, the two platforms slid backwards together, separated now by nothing he needed to cross.”

Refer only to the second paragraph. Analyse how the writer uses language to present Daniel’s uncomfortable sense of waiting. Support your ideas with quotations from that paragraph. You could consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.