Friendship and silence
Text 1: Thursdays, by Patricia Lomax
An original short story extract.
For six years Vera and Dot had caught the 9.40 into town together on a Thursday. They had met at the stop outside the Co-op the week after Vera’s husband died, when Dot had offered her a pear drop from a paper bag and said the bus was always late on account of the roadworks, which it was, and which it still was, six years later, though the roadworks had long since gone.
They sat in the same seats, the double one behind the driver, Dot by the window because of her hip. They went round the market. They had a pot of tea and a toasted teacake each in the café above the shoe shop, and argued about the price of things, and about the weather, and about whether that woman on the telly was wearing a wig. Then they caught the 12.15 back.
They never went to each other’s houses. They never talked about the things that had happened before. Vera knew that Dot had a son in Canada because she had once mentioned a parcel, and Dot knew that Vera did not like to talk about Ron, and that was all, and it was enough.
This Thursday, Dot did not come.
Vera let the 9.40 go. She let the 10.10 go. She stood at the stop with her bag on her arm and realised, as the cold came up through her shoes, that she did not know Dot’s surname. She did not know which street she lived on, or which way she walked home, or who to ask. Six years, and there was nobody she could ring.
At half past ten she caught the bus alone. She went round the market, though she did not want anything, and at the sweet stall she bought a quarter of pear drops in a paper bag. She did not open them. She put them in her coat pocket, carefully, for next week.
Text 2: The Envelopes, by Moira Cathcart
An original short story extract.
The envelopes came on the same morning, brown ones with the council crest, and by half past nine everyone on Gorse Street knew. Jean Forbes had passed. Brenda Kerr had not.
They walked to the rec together in the afternoon, the way they always did, and neither of them said a word about it. Jean’s letter was folded very small in the pocket of her cardigan. She could feel its corner against her hip with every step, sharp as a fingernail.
They had been friends since they were four, since the day Brenda had pushed Jean off the roundabout and then cried harder than Jean did. They had shared chicken pox and a bike. In September, Jean would get the bus in a green blazer to the grammar school on the hill, and Brenda would walk down the road in grey to the secondary modern by the gasworks, and both of them knew it, and both of them talked instead about the new litter of puppies at the Murrays’.
At the rec they sat on the swings and twisted the chains round and round and let them spin out. Brenda had a sherbet fountain. She broke the liquorice in half without asking and gave Jean the longer bit, which she had never done before, not once, in seven years.
Jean took it. She wanted to say that she would rather go to the secondary modern. That was not true, and they would both have known it, so she said nothing.
When it was time to go home, Brenda jumped off the swing and stood looking at the hill, where the grammar school’s windows were catching the low sun. “You’ll need a satchel,” she said. “A proper leather one.”
“I suppose,” said Jean.
They walked back down Gorse Street side by side, close enough for their elbows to touch, not talking, and it was the most either of them had ever said.
‘In both texts, friendship depends on what is left unsaid.’
How far do you agree with this statement?
In your answer you should:
Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.
120 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE English Language 3.3 Section A: Reading meaning and effects – skills, covering 3.3.2 Analyse and compare use of language, 3.3.3 Draw inferences and justify with evidence, 3.3.4 Interpret meanings and effects across texts, and 3.3.7 Evaluate form and structure. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.