Someone Else's Conflict Read Online Free PDF

priority… She did understand but it didn’t make her feel any better.
    She had the presence of mind to borrow a sturdy shovel in case hers was buried, and allowed Dorothy to drive her up the lane to her house. She even summoned the grace to receive her sympathy with a show of gratitude as she got out of the car at her gate, but insisted there was nothing further to be done. She’d manage.
    Diverted from her purpose only long enough to change into her oldest work clothes and plait her hair to keep it firmly out of her way, she took up the shovel and set to work. After a few minutes she began to feel daunted. She paused, but thought of the jeep, her link with the world, stuck inside, and kept going. Whenever she stopped to wheelbarrow the debris to a disused corner of the yard to deal with later, she noticed how much more she ached. Each time, she allowed herself no more than a minute’s pause. She had to be able to get out, see people, show them she was reliable, not some airy-fairy artist who crumbled at the first sign of a crisis. The breaks became more frequent and her digging – work she would never admit she was not cut out for – slowed, her breathing increasingly ragged as the pile of earth and stones appeared to grow rather than shrink beneath her ineffectual onslaught.
    â€˜Hello again.’
    Marilyn jumped, annoyed both by her involuntary display of weakness and by the interruption. She had hardly given her morning’s encounter another thought, but knew who it was without turning.
    â€˜I haven’t got time to stop.’ She heaved one more shovelful into the barrow to prove her point before turning to face him, wiping her brow with a grimy hand. ‘What are you doing here?’
    It came out more sharply than she’d intended, but he seemed unconcerned.
    â€˜I followed the path up there and paused to admire the view from the shoulder of the hill.’ He waved a hand. ‘Looks bad. I know you said you were OK but I wondered if you wanted some help after all.’
    â€˜I’m fine. Thank you,’ she added as an afterthought.
    â€˜I’m not trying to be patronising. Think about it. Teamwork. One of us digs’ – patronising or not, she knew which one he meant – ‘while the other wheels it away. We’d get the doors free in half the time.’
    â€˜I’m afraid I couldn’t afford to pay you much.’
    â€˜Who said anything about paying?’
    â€˜Mrs Harrington down the lane said you’d been asking for work.’
    He rolled his eyes. ‘No secrets in an area like this, eh? I don’t want payment – it’s not very often I come across a damsel in distress. Good to be able to help. Though a spot of grub later wouldn’t go amiss.’
    She relented. ‘You’re right; I guess it’d be easier with two. I don’t want to hold you up too long, though. It’s quite a way over the moors before you get to Annerdale, and the days are getting shorter.’
    He looked back towards the barn. ‘Are you sure it’s safe to move much of this? We don’t want to make things worse.’
    She was grudgingly impressed by his forethought.
    â€˜Why don’t we go and have a look?’
    He shrugged off his rucksack, left it outside the porch and they climbed the hillside through the trees behind the house.
    â€˜It all looks so different.’
    She gazed across the devastation. The tips of small trees poked through the heap of soil that thickened as it slumped towards the bottom. A hedge with a low wall running at its foot disappeared into one side of the slide and re-emerged on the other. She wondered how many of those stones were now littering her vegetable garden. The worst threat was the lightning-struck tree that was leaning at a crazy angle, still attached to the roots in the ground, but for how long? A huddle of sheep munched unconcerned on the far side of the fall. She felt