Week 19 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

The Old Windmill

At the top of the ridge, Marnie finally found what she had climbed all this way to see: a squat stone windmill, one sail snapped clean off and dangling by a single splintered strut, the cap of the roof rusted the colour of dried blood. Ivy had swallowed most of the lower wall, and the door — what remained of it — hung crooked on one hinge, swinging very slightly though there was no wind to speak of.

With her stomach fizzing the way it did on the morning of a school trip, Marnie pushed the door wider and stepped inside. She found herself in a round, dim chamber that smelled of damp stone and old flour, a rickety wooden staircase curving up out of sight into the dark above.

Marnie had read enough newspaper stories about children falling through the rotten floors of old buildings to know exactly how careless she must not be. Before trusting any step, she thumped it hard with the flat of her hand, listening for anywhere the wood sounded hollow or gave beneath the pressure. The third step from the bottom answered her with an ominous, splintering crack, though it held. Not only did that discovery make her pause, but the whole windmill seemed, in that instant, to wake up around her: there was scuffling above her head, in the walls, and something in the rafters gave out a single sharp screech.

'It's only me — I'm not going to hurt you,' Marnie called upward, and her voice rang oddly around the curved stone chamber. There was an immediate, total silence, as if a hundred small creatures had all frozen at once. She pictured tiny eyes and quick, hidden hearts, all holding still in the walls around her. 'Sorry,' she muttered, faintly embarrassed at having said anything at all, and turned instead to a second door set into the wall beside the staircase. It was swollen tight in its frame, and when she leaned her shoulder against it, it gave way all at once with a long, tired groan.

Option 1: Continue the passage: describe the next room that Marnie enters.

• Include a source of light, an unexpected sound, and an unusual object.
• Match the tone and sentence style of the original passage as closely as you can.