Week 45 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

In this extract, two friends on a school geography trip are exploring a network of old chalk tunnels beneath the Downs when they become separated from the rest of their group.

The Hollow Way

Back with the main party, Priya and Fahim shuffled along the wide central gallery, ticking off each chamber against the trail map as their guide called out its name. Someone, long before their visit, had given the chambers rather grand titles — 'The Ballroom', where the roof arched up into a smooth dome; 'The Cauldron', a churning knot of stone that did indeed look as though it had been stirred; and 'Lantern Hall', hung with a fringe of pale, glistening rock that threw back the torchlight like a hundred tiny candles — fanciful names, Priya thought privately, for chambers that looked, close up, like nothing more than ordinary lumps of stone.

When the guide paused to count heads for the third time, Fahim nudged Priya and nodded towards a side passage nobody else seemed to have noticed. They slipped away together, half a game and half genuine curiosity, following a low tunnel scored from floor to ceiling with old initials and dates scratched by visitors long past. E.H. 1961. M.O.C. Priya traced one with her finger. Somewhere back among the crowd a whistle blew, muffled and small, and neither of them turned round.

The passage narrowed and the carved names thinned out until there were none at all — only bare rock, dripping faintly, and a curtain of pale mineral crust where water had trickled down a ledge for centuries, building up a smooth, glassy sheet like something poured rather than grown. Fahim pressed his shoulder behind it and found that it screened a crack in the rock, barely wide enough for a person, dropping away into darkness. The thought of being the first to see whatever lay beyond seized him completely.

Priya, when he called her over, felt the same pull. They scratched an arrow into the rock with a stone to mark their way back, and eased themselves down through the gap, then on and on, taking turning after turning, scratching a fresh mark wherever the tunnel forked, telling themselves they would remember every one. Twice the passage opened into a cavern too wide for their torch beams to reach the far wall; both times they crept round the edge of it, awed and a little afraid, before diving back into the maze of narrower ways.

It was in the widest of these chambers that they disturbed the moths — hundreds of them, pale as ash, clinging to a shelf of rock until the torchlight found them. They lifted off all together in a soft, silent drift, circling Priya and Fahim's heads in confused loops before pouring away into a crack in the far wall, gone as suddenly as they had come. Fahim laughed, shakily, and admitted afterwards that his heart had been thumping. They pressed on, not admitting to each other how the moths had unsettled them, until the tunnel opened out onto the edge of a still, black pool that stretched further than their light could show.

They sat down on a dry ledge to rest, and it was only then, in the sudden stillness, that the silence of the place pressed in on them properly for the first time. Priya said: 'I didn't notice it happening, but it's ever so quiet, isn't it. I can't hear the others at all.' 'We're a long way down now,' said Fahim, 'and I couldn't tell you which way is which any more — north, south, back the way we came, any of it.' Priya said nothing for a moment. Then, quietly, she began to feel afraid.

Option 1: Continue the story from the point at which it ends.

• Keep Priya and Fahim's characters and their situation consistent with how they have been shown so far.
• You do not need to resolve every mystery in the passage — focus on writing a vivid, well-paced continuation.

Option 2: 'Many people say that children today are given too many organised activities and not enough opportunities for real adventure and exploration.' Write your thoughts in response to this statement. You may agree, disagree, or consider more than one viewpoint.

• Give real or realistic examples to support your ideas.
• Consider more than one side of the argument before reaching your own conclusion.