Before the doors opened

The market manager had told Salma to arrive before five. She arrived at twenty past four and found the side gate open. Her uncle's stall stood halfway down the covered aisle, beyond the fish counter and opposite a man who sold watch batteries. She had helped there on Saturdays, handing over bags and counting change, but today her uncle was in hospital and the stall was hers. In her pocket was a folded list of prices. She touched it once before walking towards the row of shutters.

Under the iron roof, the market was waking noisily. Trolleys growled over the ridged floor; shutters leapt upwards with a clatter that chased itself along the aisle. The fishmonger's ice spilled into a metal tray, a sudden waterfall of broken glass. Warm bread scented the cold air, then vanished beneath the sharp smell of oranges as a crate split open. Everywhere, hands were lifting, sorting, catching. Voices crossed above the stalls like ropes thrown from boat to boat. Salma stood very still while the morning assembled itself around her.

Her uncle's shutter resisted the key. She tried it in both directions, conscious of how long a simple action could take when somebody might be watching. The watch seller came over carrying a mug. He held the bottom of the shutter with one hand and nodded for her to turn the key again. It rose at once. He said nothing about her mistake. Inside, the boxes were stacked in the order her uncle always used, heavier fruit beneath the soft summer berries. A pencil lay across the small weighing scale.

She arranged the apples first. Then she remembered that the pears went nearest the aisle because their colour caught people's attention. She moved them, knocking a handwritten sign behind a box. Each correction created another small task. The fishmonger called across to ask whether her uncle was improving. Salma said that he was, then found herself describing the hospital's terrible tea. The fishmonger laughed. It was the first ordinary conversation she had had since leaving home, and afterwards she stopped arranging every apple with its stalk pointing upwards.

At six the main doors opened. A woman in a red coat came straight to the stall and asked for the pears her uncle usually chose for her. Salma looked at the row she had just moved. She picked up two, testing their firmness as she had seen him do, then added a third that would keep longer. The woman examined the bag and nodded. When she had gone, Salma unfolded the price list. On the back, below the final item, her uncle had written: You know more than you think. She placed it beside the scale, where she could see it.

Read the second paragraph, from ‘Under the iron roof’ to ‘around her’. How does the writer use language to present the market coming to life? Support your analysis with evidence from this paragraph. You may consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.