Thursdays at Harding’s, by Colin Dewhurst

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Miss Hebblethwaite came into Harding’s every Thursday at twenty past five, and by four o’clock Leonard Pike had usually tidied the biscuit tins twice. He told himself the tins needed it. He polished the brass scoop for the loose sugar until he could see a long, anxious, upside-down Leonard in its bowl, and then he looked at the clock, and then he tidied the tins again.

She bought the same things every week: a quarter of tea, half a pound of sugar, two ounces of cheese. She worked at the public library on Park Street and smelled faintly of book glue and rain. She said ‘Thank you, Mr Pike’ as if it were a complete sentence with nothing missing from it, and every time she said it Leonard felt his face go hot from the collar upwards, like a kettle beginning to boil.

This Thursday she was late. Twenty-five past. Half past. Leonard gave Mrs Gage the wrong change and had to be called back. At twenty to six the bell above the door rang, and he dropped the cheese wire.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Miss Hebblethwaite said, a little out of breath. ‘I thought you’d be closed.’

‘We’d never be closed,’ said Leonard, and then heard what he had said, and wished the floorboards would open and swallow him whole.

He weighed her sugar. The needle swung past half a pound and settled, and he found he could not bear to take any away. He added a little more. Then a little more. It was all he could think of to give her, a handful of secret sweetness she would never know about, and he twisted the blue paper shut with hands that had begun to tremble.

‘You’ve given me too much,’ she said, lifting the bag. She was smiling. ‘I can always tell.’

Every remark he had rehearsed in the stockroom, about the weather and the library and the new film at the Odeon, had vanished.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’

She held his eyes for a long moment. Then she said, ‘Thursday, then, Mr Pike,’ and the bell rang, and the door closed, and Leonard stood in the empty shop with the cheese wire at his feet and his heart going like a train.

How does the writer show Leonard’s thoughts and feelings about Miss Hebblethwaite?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Leonard
• the writer’s use of language to show his thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.