AQA English Language Paper 1 Question 5

I have an English test coming up focused on this question and I was wondering if anyone could mark a practice question for me please? I got ChatGPT to mark it for me and it gave me 36/40 with the advice to expand on the end of the writing, but I am unsure if this would be possible with the time constraints of an exam. Thank you so much!

Light is simply an illusion - the dark always returns. I watch the sun set over London, turning the fog, previously chained away by the sun’s illuminating rays, yellow as it disappears from view. The last of the horses and carriages disappear as people return home from a hard day's work, as do the pickpockets and flower girls and beggars. As I meander along the street, I watch a shopkeeper pack up his stall, nearly dropping his handmade wares as he does so. The lingering scents of pastries and pies follow me down a road from a bakery across the street, so strong I can almost taste them. As I travel through the winding labyrinth of backstreets and alleyways, the fog descends, hiding me from drunkards and murderers who seem to be waiting around every corner.

The brightest light casts the darkest shadow. People tucked away in living and*dining rooms light candles and their flames make me long for the warmth of childhood – being tucked into bed with a mug of hot cocoa and a parent to tell me a story of pirates or dragons. I watch as a small girl runs out to grab an abandoned toy from the pavement as her watchful mother eyes me from the doorway of their home. I pass on to the next street, and the absence of the families and candles and joy makes the familiarity of the fog that I have lived in for all my life seem no longer so comforting. The smog swirls and moves with slight breeze that sweeps along the back as though warning me of the things that can lurk in the dark.

The dark protects us from the things we do not want to know. I reach the end of the last street, the last turn before the half-safety of home. As I unlock the door, I brace myself for what could be behind it. Images from the last few nights haunt me – my father shouting, enraged or terrified of things only his drunken mind creates. I creep in and am thankful that my father is a slumped silhouette on the floor. I am grateful for the concealment of the darkness, grateful to not see the broken bottles that surround him, grateful to not see his sorrows for the woman he lost.

The woman we both lost.

The dark is a gift that hides me, protects me from seeing her empty space on the floor next to him.