The things we did not bury

Text C: an original fiction extract.

The school anniversary committee had bought a metal container large enough to hold a football. Nessa saw this as an invitation to fill it. The time capsule would stay beneath the new entrance stone for twenty-five years, and her class had been asked to choose what it should carry. She arrived at the meeting with a bag of objects and the feeling that she had prepared more thoroughly than anybody else.

Her first suggestion was a school sweatshirt. Mr Vale asked whether the fabric would fit alongside everything the other classes might contribute. Nessa folded it smaller. Then she offered an old phone. It no longer worked, which seemed an advantage: nobody would miss it. A classmate asked how someone in the future would know what its screen had looked like. Nessa had imagined the objects explaining themselves.

The smallest item in her bag was a bus ticket. Its ink was already fading. She could still read the date, but the route number had become a pale uncertainty. Her friend Imran said he would include a drawing of the stop where they waited each morning. Nessa thought a drawing sounded less authentic than the actual ticket. Then he mentioned the broken shelter panel, the corner where rain reached their shoes and the driver who waited when she was running late. None of those things appeared on her ticket.

They began making a list of experiences rather than objects. It grew quickly: the noise of chairs during an examination, the smell outside the kitchen before lunch, how the new entrance would replace a door which always caught on the mat. Mr Vale asked them to imagine that the person opening the capsule did not know their abbreviations or recognise everybody's face. Nessa crossed out the word obvious beside one suggestion.

The container still mattered. Paper, labels and anything else they chose would need the school's agreed preparation and storage arrangements. A cheerful pile of memories was not yet something ready to be sealed. Mr Vale would check the practical requirements with the anniversary team. Nessa volunteered to ask each class for a short explanation of its item, rather than another large object.

Her own contribution became a drawing of the bus stop with a small account of an ordinary wet morning. She kept the ticket beside it, identified as already faded. She did not restore the missing number from memory. Imran drew the shelter panel, but left space for her to add the part he could not see from his usual place in the queue.

At the final meeting, the sweatshirt stayed outside the box. Nessa wore it while reading their account aloud. Several people laughed at the line about the driver waiting; he had waited for most of them at some point. Their page did not make the present look especially impressive. It made it possible to imagine being there. Before the capsule was sealed, the school kept copies of the contributions. Nessa liked the thought that they would not have to wait twenty-five years to discover what they had chosen to say.

You are Nessa. At the anniversary assembly, give a speech explaining your class’s contribution to the time capsule.

In your response:

• describe your initial plans and the difficulties you discovered
• explain how discussion changed what you chose and how you prepared it
• reflect on what you want future readers and your classmates to understand

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.