The unfinished staircase
An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.
The staircase ended in darkness. Daniel lifted the candle, but its light reached only the first bend. Below him, the open front door admitted the ordinary sounds of the street: wheels, voices, a boy calling the evening paper. He considered returning to them. Instead, he placed one foot on the lowest step. The wood complained beneath his weight.
At the bend, he stopped. A strip of light showed beneath the upper door, and he heard a chair move across the floor. Somebody was there. The knowledge should have comforted him, yet he lowered the candle so that its flame would not betray his arrival. From below came the sound of the front door closing. The street fell silent.
Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to show Daniel’s anxiety about entering the house. Support your answer with references to the passage.
120 exam-style questions on Edexcel GCSE English Language 1.3 Content: prose fiction study requirements, covering 1.3.1 Read challenging prose fiction for the unseen 19th-century extract. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.