Salthouse Green, by Constance Ambler

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Miss Fenn arrived at Salthouse Green School a week before the autumn term of 1922, carrying the key the vicar had posted to her, and stood for a long moment in the doorway before she went in. The schoolroom smelt of mice and damp chalk. One of the tall windows had a pane missing, stuffed with a folded newspaper, and rain had swollen the floorboards beneath it into a ridge she could feel through her shoes. The stove in the corner was cold and its pipe had come loose from the wall, so that a black stain spread across the plaster up to the ceiling. Only eleven of the slates in the cupboard were unbroken, though the register listed twenty-three children. The globe on the master’s desk still labelled several African territories as German colonies. Worst of all, the clock above the blackboard had stopped at twenty past nine, and she found, when she wound it, that it ran exactly as long as she held the key and not a moment longer. She took off her gloves, hung her coat on the only hook that would hold it, and began to make a list.

List five things Miss Fenn finds wrong with the schoolroom.