The returned coat

“On Saturday morning, Sam brought a borrowed coat back to the theatre. The performance had closed a week earlier, and the costume room was due to be packed that afternoon. He had folded the coat into a supermarket bag, with the missing button in a separate envelope. Mrs Reed, the costume supervisor, was waiting beside a rack of empty hangers. Sam explained about the button before she had asked him anything. She held out her hand for the bag.

Without the stage lights, the coat looked tired. Gold braid frayed at the cuffs; the velvet had a grey bloom where shoulders had rubbed against scenery. Onstage it had made Sam seem taller, sharper, impossible to ignore. Here it slumped over Mrs Reed's arm like an exhausted guest after a party. She turned it inside out, exposing a map of careful stitches that no audience had ever seen.

Sam had played the smallest part in the production, a messenger who entered, delivered two lines and left. For those thirty seconds, the coat had done most of the work. He had kept it hanging on his bedroom door for a week, telling himself he had simply forgotten to return it. Mrs Reed found the empty place where the button belonged. Sam waited for a reprimand. Instead she fetched a tin of thread.

'You can do it,' she said, setting the tin beside him. Sam said he had never sewn anything. 'Then this will be the first.' She showed him how to make a knot and watched while he pushed the needle through the cloth. Twice he missed the hole in the button. Once he caught his finger. Mrs Reed slid a thimble across the table without comment. Outside, someone began taking down the poster with his name printed near the bottom.

When the button was secure, Sam cut the thread. His stitches were uneven, but the button held. Mrs Reed hung the coat on the rack and asked whether he would help sort the remaining costumes. Sam looked at the clock, then at the empty bag. He had planned to leave immediately. 'For a bit,' he said. She gave him a box of labels. The coat stood behind them, no longer his, while the room filled with the quiet work of making ready for somebody else.”

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.