The cancelled picnic
An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.
The rain began as the basket reached the carriage. Mrs Ward looked at the sky, then at the carefully folded rugs. Her children stood in their best boots, prepared for a journey that had suddenly disappeared. The basket was carried back through the door. Nobody offered to unpack it.
At noon, their father spread a rug across the sitting-room floor. He placed the basket in its centre and opened the curtains wide enough to show the wet garden. The children sat down cautiously, then began arguing over the sandwiches as they always did outdoors. Mrs Ward moved the table aside. By the time the cake was cut, the rain had become something they could watch rather than something that had spoiled the day.
Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to show the family’s movement from disappointment to enjoyment. 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.