An Evening Through Hannah’s Eyes — Godolphin and Latymer School 11+ (2010)

Source passage

Reading passage needed for the task (complete passage):

Molly and her sister Hannah are staying with their grandparents. Hannah has just had an argument with her grandmother and stormed upstairs.

Me and Grandpa are left in the kitchen. Grandpa rubs at his face, just the way my dad does. He breathes in this breath – I can see his chest rise, under the faded check cloth of his shirt. It’s gone a nasty yellow around his neck and against the cuffs. My dad’s shirts are always stiff and clean, and blue: but you him up all the way to his throat and there, he is locked up safe and going nowhere. But Grandpa Lived Through A War, so he wears things till they fall apart.

“All right, love?” he says now, and I do.

“You don’t want to be in a field, do you?” he says, and I shake my head.

“You shouldn’t listen to Hannah, I’ll tell you. She’s always like that. Dad should have put her in an orphanage or something, instead of sending her here. She would have liked that, I expect,” I add, virtuous, “since she doesn’t want to live here.”

Grandpa comes over and pats my shoulder. “Now, now,” he says, in an absent sort of way. “No one’s going to any orphanage.”

But why not? If Dad could send us here, he could send us anywhere.

I go to the back of the shop, into the hall and up the narrow stairs. The shop is part of Grandpa and Granma’s house, so all of the rooms are muddled: the kitchen is downstairs, next to the storeroom, but the living room is upstairs. At night, when I lie in bed, the light from the television flickers against the land wall, and studio laughter plays across my dreams. Everything is darker here, and older. Nothing matches, so you’ll have our old settee from next door and a red-backed chair with feet like a lion. There’s a dark wood bookcase, with glass doors, where Delia Smith and Priscas sit beside ancient cloth-bound books with gold and silver printed on the spine.

The room I have here was Auntie Meg’s when she was my age. It’s got horrible yellow wallpaper and a brown picture of a tree, and sweet in the corner that doesn’t work. Some of my things here – my old bear Humphrey, my best books, my things. But nearly all of my stuff is still at home, because we’re not staying for ever, just until Dad gets things Sorted Out.

Whenever that is.

I take the clothes out of the wardrobe – blue jeans and my soft yellow jumper – but I don’t put them on. I wrap my arms around them and stand by the window looking out over the garden. The rain is rat-a-tat-tat on the roof and streaming down the windows. The trees are roaring with the wind in them, more like they’re fighting now than talking.

“Listen!” Mum would say, as if she was here. “There’s a night with a devil in it.”

It wouldn’t be a bad thing – the devil in the night – but something exciting. Mum loved thunder-and-rain storms. If she was here now, like if we were staying with Grandpa and Grandma because it was a holiday maybe, we’d go out and jump in the puddles. Even Hannah would, probably.

It is not dark yet, but you can tell that tonight isn’t going to be fun. The sky is full of anger and the trees are raging like they want to kill someone. Standing here alone by the window, I almost believe in a devil in the rain.

Inside, the house is full of fighting too. I can hear Hannah next door, crying. I can hear Grandma downstairs, her voice high and angry, and Grandpa, murmuring at her.

I put on my clothes and climb into bed, pulling the funny old-fashioned quilt and blanket over my head. I get my book out and read, trying not to listen to the loneliness of being alone in a house full of noise. I’m reading Three Cheers, Secret Seven, which is Secret Seven book eight, so when I’m done I’ll only need to read six more and I’ll have read all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books there are.

Outside, the rain falls quieter now.

It’s getting dark.

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Writing task

Part B: Writing

Spend about 30 minutes on your writing. Remember to leave time to check your work carefully. Please write on the lined paper.

Hannah (Molly’s sister) is very ‘different’ to Molly. Writing as if you were Hannah, how would you describe the same evening?