📖 Read the extract (about 300 words)

When we were small — small enough for the world to smell of damp earth and boiled sweets — Sephy and I found our own island beneath the old railway bridge. It was not an island on any map, only a place where the grass grew long and the river kept a secret slow enough for us to catch it. Sephy taught me how to skip stones with the flat stubbornness she kept for everything she loved; I taught her how to tie a sailor's knot, fingers fumbling while she laughed. Neighbours called out from gardens and grown-ups kept their distance with muttered reasons, but for a little while none of that touched us.

We shared a tin of plums and the daring that came with having no one’s rules to follow. Once, when a thunderstorm turned the sky angry-purple, we sat pressed against each other under a tarpaulin and promised not to be frightened. She told me about books that smelled of other people's houses and I told her the truth about my father’s boots that always went missing on market days. Our hands found each other in the dark; it was the simplest thing in the world, the sort of belonging that didn't need explanations.

Years later, I would realise how fragile that island had been — a brittle place of secret rules and laughter patched together by two children who did not yet understand how the lines everyone else drew would one day cut between us. For now, though, the bridge kept our world safe and the river kept our stories. We were invincible in our smallness, and between Sephy's quick smile and my steadying silence, the future felt like a promise we hadn't yet been taught to doubt.

🔎 Part A: Retrieval Questions

🧠 Part B: Inference Questions