The missing last line

Text C: an original fiction extract.

Nessa joined the youth centre's poetry display team because she liked arranging words on a page. The group had permission to put a small selection of local poems on the noticeboards in the bus-station waiting room. She imagined people discovering a few lines while they waited. Her own favourite books made poems look spacious, with generous margins and plenty of white paper around the words. She prepared an elegant layout for every contribution and sent small images of the designs to the team.

One poem had been contributed by Mr Vale, who attended the centre's walking group. It described waiting for his brother beside a river. Nessa first read it as an account of loneliness: the empty bench, the cooling flask and the passing afternoon. She selected a photograph of an unoccupied seat to accompany it. Mr Vale's final line was short: “He brought the bread; I kept the afternoon.” Nessa found it puzzling and gave it a separate space at the bottom, beneath the photograph, where it seemed less likely to disturb the balance of the page.

At the waiting room, the team fitted a full-size trial print inside one of the agreed frames. A strip across the lower edge covered the final line. Nessa suggested reducing its size and squeezing it into the gap. Her friend Harun stood several steps away and asked her to read the poem from there. She knew it well enough to recite it. He asked her to look away first, then try the unfamiliar poem on the next board. Its narrow letters became a grey patch against the reflection from the window. The little images on her laptop had not shown either problem.

Mr Vale came to see the trial. When Nessa explained that the last line was difficult to fit, he said it was the reason he had written the poem. His brother had arrived late because he had stopped at a bakery. The waiting had given Mr Vale an unexpectedly peaceful afternoon beside the river. He had not meant the bench to stand for abandonment. Nessa looked at the photograph she had chosen. Nothing in it was false, but together with the missing line it made her interpretation look like the poem's only possible meaning.

They tried a new arrangement without the photograph. Mr Vale agreed to divide the poem differently, but asked to see the complete version before it was printed. The team used larger, clearer lettering and checked the actual frame opening rather than its outer measurement. Harun invited two people who were waiting for a bus to read the trial if they wished. One read the whole piece; another had time for only the opening. Their different responses reminded Nessa that a waiting room was not a quiet reading lesson with an agreed finishing time.

The final display kept every author's words unless a change had been discussed and approved. The team left contact details for comments and checked the boards again after installation. Nessa still cared about the arrangement, but no longer treated the space around a poem as something she owned more completely than the words within it. Mr Vale said he liked the new version. Then he asked whether she had ever sat beside the river without waiting for anybody. She said she might try.

You are Nessa. A youth magazine interviews you about the poetry-display project. Write your answers to the following three interview questions.

In your response:

• What attracted you to the project, and what assumptions shaped your first designs?
• What did the trial and your conversation with Mr Vale change your mind about?
• What advice would you give another group preparing a public poetry display?

Base your response on Text C, developing its ideas in your own words. Write about 250 to 300 words. Up to 10 marks are available for reading and up to 10 marks for writing.