READ THE PASSAGE AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW.
“When I leave,” Sophie said, coming home
from school, “I’ m going to have a boutique.”
Jansie, linking arms with her along the street; looked doubtful.
“Takes money, Soaf, something like that.”
“I’ll find it,” Sophie said, staring far down
the street.
“Take you a long time to save that much.”
“Well, I’ll be a manager then–yes, of
course–to begin with. Till I’ve got enough.
But anyway, I know just how it’s all going
to look.”
“They wouldn’t make you manager straight
off, Soaf.”
“I’ll be like Mary Quant,” Sophie said.
“I’ll have the most amazing shop this city’s
ever seen.”
Jansie, knowing they were both earmarked
for the biscuit factory, became melancholy.
She wished Sophie wouldn’t say these
things.
When they reached Sophie’s street Jansie
said, “It’s only a few months away now,
Soaf, you really should be sensible. They
don’t pay well for shop work, you know
that, your dad would never allow it.”
“Or an actress. Now there’s real money
in that. Yes, and I could maybe have the
boutique on the side. Actresses don’t work
full time, do they? Anyway, that or a
fashion designer, you know – something a
bit sophisticated.”
And she turned in through the open street
door leaving Jansie standing in the rain.
“If ever I come into money I’ll buy a
boutique.”
“Huh - if you ever come into money..... if
you ever come into money you’ll buy us a
blessed decent house to live in, thank you
very much.”
Sophie’s father was scooping shepherd’s pie
into his mouth as hard as he could go, his
plump face still grimy and sweat-marked
from the day.
“She thinks money grows on trees, don’t
she, Dad?” said little Derek, hanging on
the back of his father’s chair.
Their mother sighed.
Sophie watched her back stooped over the
sink and wondered at the delicate bow which
fastened her apron strings. The delicateseeming delicateseeming
bow and the crooked back. The
evening had already blacked in the windows
and the small room was steamy from the
stove and cluttered with the heavy-breathing
man in his vest at the table and the dirty
washing piled up in the corner. Sophie felt
a tightening in her throat. She went to look
for her brother Geoff.
He was kneeling on the floor in the next
room tinkering with a part of his motorcycle
over some newspaper spread on the carpet.
He was three years out of school, an
apprentice mechanic, travelling to his work
each day to the far side of the city. He was
almost grown up now, and she suspected
areas of his life about which she knew
nothing, about which he never spoke. He
said little at all, ever, voluntarily. Words
had to be prized out of him like stones out
of the ground. And she was jealous of his
silence. When he wasn’t speaking it was
as though he was away somewhere, out
there in the world in those places she had
never been.
What did Sophie wanted to do after school?
Sophie wanted to __________.
A open a boutique or be a fashion designer
B become a shop manager
C become a boutique-owning famous actress
D all of these
delicateseeming
