Four Flashes, by Rita Chauhan
An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.
The booth at New Street took twenty pence and gave you four photographs in three minutes, and Carol had been saving the coins in a cocoa tin since Easter.
‘We’re not going to cry in them,’ she said, pulling the orange curtain across. ‘That’s the rule. If you cry I’ll have them blown up and sent to your new school.’
‘It’s not even in Toronto. It’s Hamilton.’
‘Nobody’s heard of Hamilton.’
Nadia squeezed onto the stool beside her. There was only room for one, really, so they sat with a hip each on the edge, the way they had sat on everything since the first year of juniors: the wall outside the chip shop, the back seat of the 50 bus, the single bed in Carol’s room on the night of the power cut. Carol was the loud one. Nadia was the one who remembered the bus times. Between them, people said, they made one sensible girl.
Carol fed the slot. ‘Pull a face,’ she ordered. ‘Go on.’
The first flash caught them cross-eyed, tongues out, and Nadia laughing so hard she was a blur.
‘Serious one,’ said Carol. ‘Like a passport.’
They stared straight ahead. The second flash came. In the silence afterwards Nadia could hear the announcer calling a train to Wolverhampton, and the pigeons on the roof girders, and Carol breathing through her nose the way she did when she was concentrating very hard on something else.
‘You’ll write,’ Carol said. It was not a question.
‘Every week.’
‘You’ll say that and then you’ll meet some girl called Shelley who plays ice hockey.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You might. I would.’ Carol stared at the glass. ‘I’d forget you in a fortnight.’
The third flash went off before either of them was ready. Nadia knew, without seeing it, what it would show: Carol with her chin up and her mouth pressed into a line, and herself turned sideways, looking at her friend instead of the camera.
There was one left. Carol took Nadia’s hand on the stool between them, hard, almost painfully, and did not say anything at all.
The last flash caught them both crying.
Outside, they waited by the machine for the strip to drop, damp and smelling of chemicals. Carol tore it carefully down the middle, between the second and third pictures, and gave Nadia the half with the faces pulled.
‘Rules are rules,’ she said, and put the other half inside her coat, against her heart.
What impressions does the writer create of the relationship between Nadia and Carol? How does the writer create these impressions?
You must refer to the language and structure used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.