Two Coats in January, by Marcia Beckford

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Grandma Lettice stepped off the coach at Digbeth in January wearing two coats, a woollen hat and an expression that told the whole of Birmingham it had been weighed and found wanting.

‘This,’ she said, looking at the sky, ‘is not weather. This is punishment.’

She had come from Kingston to stay for three months, and within a day she had taken charge of our kitchen. She moved the pans to where they ought to be, threw away a packet of instant rice with her finger and thumb as though it were a dead mouse, and told my father, her own grown son, to sit up straight at his own table. He did.

She rose at six every morning, before any of us, and by the time I came down the house smelled of thyme and fried dumplings. She hummed as she cooked and stopped the moment anyone came in, as if the humming were a private matter. She called me ‘Miss Joy’ when I had done something wrong and ‘my sweetheart’ when I had not, and I soon learned to listen for which it would be.

On the first night it snowed, I found her at the back door in both coats, staring out at the white garden. I thought she would complain. Instead she held out her hand, palm up, and watched a flake melt on it.

‘Well,’ she said quietly. ‘Look at that. Nobody at home will believe me.’

What impressions does the writer create of Grandma Lettice?

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