Twenty identical pages, by Clara Truscott

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Florence Tulliver copied orchestral parts at a desk overlooking the tram depot in 1937. Her husband complained that the trams made the windows shake, but she liked their regular clanging and worked less steadily when the service stopped. She ruled the staves herself on thick cream paper. Before beginning a new part she sharpened three pencils and placed them in order of length. Her left hand held a little strip of card beneath the bar she was copying so that her eye would not slip to the next line. If she made a mistake in ink, she scraped it away with a blade instead of crossing it out. She charged by the page, yet left a wider space wherever a player would need to turn over during a rest. A horn player once sent her flowers in thanks. Florence dried one blossom between two sheets of blotting paper and used it as a bookmark in her account book.

List five things you learn about Florence in this extract.