Week 16 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

This extract describes a night in an isolated lighthouse-keeper's cottage on Gull Point, where the narrator is keeping watch while her uncle, the keeper, is away on the mainland. She has her cat, Juniper, for company.

The Drowned Bell

Juniper was crouched at the door again, the same low growl rattling in her throat that she'd kept up half of the previous night. I looked round at her and saw that every hair along her spine stood stiff and separate. For a moment I could not move, frozen with a fright I couldn't quite explain. Then I remembered my own resolve — that I had come out to Gull Point precisely to get to the bottom of the old story about the drowned bell, and that the more I ran from strange noises, the more power I gave them over me. So I set down my book, got up from the chair, and went quietly to unbolt the cottage door.

The moment it opened, Juniper streaked past me and up the narrow stairs as though chasing something invisible, still growling under her breath. I heard her come to a sudden stop on the landing above. Even from the foot of the stairs I could make out a faint, steady knocking coming from behind the little cupboard door at the far end — clunk, pause, clunk, pause, clunk — patient and unhurried, as if something were tapping out its own private rhythm.

Resolved to find out what could possibly be making such a sound, I went through to the scullery in search of a screwdriver or anything else that might force the old lock, but found nothing of use among the jumble of tins and rope. I recalled that my uncle kept a proper set of tools in the fuel shed across the yard, so I took up the storm lantern, checked there was still oil enough in it, and let myself out through the back door into the night.

There was a fine, persistent drizzle falling, and the fog that had sat over the headland all evening had thickened rather than lifted. There was no moon, no stars, nothing but the small circle of my lantern swaying as I crossed the yard, and I had to feel my way along the fence more than once to be sure of the path. I had just located the toolbox in the shed and was making my way back across the yard when I heard it — a single, low chime, so close that I was certain someone must be standing at the cottage door — and I turned instead of going in, and walked quickly round to the front, half expecting to find a visitor waiting there.

Out on the gravel at the front of the cottage I lifted my lantern and turned it towards the causeway path, the only way anyone could reach Gull Point on foot. The chime came again, and this time I recognised it for what it was: not a visitor's bell at all, but the old drowned bell of the story, the one that was supposed to lie fathoms deep beneath the channel and never to be heard except by those in danger. With a horrible lurch of understanding, I realised the sound was not coming from the causeway at all, but from the direction of the jetty — where, at this hour, with the tide fully out, there was nothing but bare mud and old timber, and could be no bell, and no ringer, at all.

I stood absolutely still, rigid with a fear that seemed to hold my whole body in a clamp, straining my ears to catch any ordinary explanation for what I had heard. If I could have persuaded myself it was some fisherman's buoy clanking in the wind, or a loose gate somewhere, I would gladly have done so. But there was no wind to speak of, and no gate near the jetty that I knew of, and the chime, when it came a third time, sounded closer than before.

Option 1: Write a short descriptive story with the title 'The Empty Playground'. You should aim to write 3 developed paragraphs.

• Use adventurous, precise vocabulary rather than simple, everyday words.
• Vary your sentence structures — mix short, punchy sentences with longer, flowing ones.
• Make sure your ideas are interesting and engaging for the reader.