Platform Three

Text 1: Five Seconds, by Priya Selwyn

An original novel extract.

At nine twelve, the ticket was in Ben’s hand. At nine twelve and five seconds, it was gone.

A gust punched through the station entrance and snatched the square of card from his fingers. The ticket scraped across the tiles, spun beneath a bench and shot towards the crowded platform. Ben ran after it. Behind him, his mother dragged their suitcase upright and called his name.

‘The train now approaching platform three—’ announced the loudspeaker.

The ticket vanished among the shoes and bags. Ben stopped. People streamed around him, pulling cases, folding newspapers, checking watches. Then his sister pointed. A white corner showed beneath a vending machine.

Ben dropped to his knees and reached into the narrow gap. His fingers brushed the ticket, pushing it farther away.

The train arrived with a roar. Its doors slid open. Passengers stepped out.

‘Use this.’ His sister thrust her umbrella towards him. Ben flattened himself against the floor and guided the handle beneath the machine. Once. Twice. On the third attempt, the ticket slid into the light.

The doors began to beep.

Ben seized the ticket and the family hurried aboard. As the doors closed behind them, the noise of the platform disappeared. Ben looked down. The ticket lay quietly in his palm, no more than an ordinary square of card.

How is a sense of urgency built and then resolved through the writer’s choices of language and structure?

You could write about:

• the precise times and the ticket’s sudden movement
• the changes in pace and sentence length as the train arrives
• how the atmosphere changes after the ticket is recovered.

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.