The roof at dawn

Source: an original fiction extract.

From the roof, the city seemed unfinished. A crane stood motionless above an empty patch of sky, and the windows opposite held the pale colour of the hour before sunrise. Tessa had climbed the stairs to escape the noise of packing. Below her, her mother was wrapping plates while her uncle argued with a cupboard door. The removal van would arrive at eight. Tessa sat on the low wall beside the water tank, where the building's caretaker had said she could wait, and counted the chimneys she had once believed were towers.

When she was small, her father had brought her up to watch fireworks. She remembered his hand against the back of her coat, keeping her away from the edge. The fireworks themselves had become less clear than the smell of his woollen sleeve and the cold metal of a flask. He now lived across the city, beyond the crane, though she could not have pointed to his street. Their new flat would be closer to him. Everyone mentioned this as an advantage, as if distance could be measured only between addresses and not between other things.

A window opened across the courtyard. An old man shook crumbs from a cloth, and pigeons landed on the ledge below him. Tessa had seen him almost every morning without knowing his name. Two floors beneath him, a woman in a yellow dressing gown watered a plant. The ordinary actions irritated her. Nobody seemed to have noticed that this was the last morning. A door banged at street level. The caretaker appeared below, pulling the bins into a line, then looked up and waved. Tessa raised a hand before she could decide whether she wanted to be seen.

Her mother came through the roof door carrying two mugs. She sat beside Tessa and did not ask if she was excited. Together they watched sunlight reach the top windows, then descend one floor. Her mother said she had thought the building ugly when they first moved in. Tessa found this almost insulting. Then her mother pointed to a kitchen window where they had watched a paper star hang through an entire summer. Tessa remembered arguing about whether it would survive another Christmas. The star had gone years ago. The window was already bright enough to hide the room behind it.

At eight, the van's reverse signal sounded in the street. Tessa stood, leaving a damp circle from the mug on the wall. The crane was moving now, carrying a bundle so high that it seemed to pass through the morning rather than across the city. On the stairs, she met the caretaker coming up. She asked the name of the man who fed the pigeons. He told her, and she repeated it once so she would remember. Downstairs, a square of clean wallpaper showed where the hall mirror had been. Her mother handed her a box marked KITCHEN, and Tessa took it out to the van.

Consider the whole source. Analyse how the writer structures the text to develop Tessa’s feelings about leaving her home. Support your explanation with references to the source.