The empty shelf
An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.
At closing time, Mr Lyle and his assistant counted the medicines in the apothecary. A small blue bottle was missing from the locked shelf. Mr Lyle completed the ledger while Daniel lowered the blind and extinguished the lamps. Their conversation circled the empty space on the shelf.
Identify the phrase which suggests that the missing medicine remains an unspoken subject.
456 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.