This Little Piggy Read Online Free PDF

this is all your stuff. There’s just one line about the press conference. This is all your work, from being out on the estate.”
    Clare nodded. She didn’t want to speak aloud, in case Joe realised how choked she felt.
    “Bunch of bloody bastards.” Joe rolled up the paper. He reached out to put an arm on Clare’s shoulder, then drew it back again. “Come on, let’s go out. I’ll buy you a glass of wine and you can leave the car here again.”
    Clare shook her head, lips tightly pressed together. “Sorry, Joe. Not in the mood anymore.”
    “What will you do? Just head home?”
    Clare’s shoulders slumped. “Don’t feel like doing that, either. Shit.”
    “Come on, slugger. What happened to the stroppy mare that used to be Clare Jackson? I know they’re behaving like gits. You should’ve got the chief reporter’s job and you should’ve got a by-line today and you don’t get paid anything like enough. But we all feel like that from time to time. You’ve been down in the dumps for weeks now.”
    Clare didn’t look up. “Yeah, I know.”
    “What is it?” Joe sat on a stair and folded his arms. “Something else?”
    Clare shook her head. “Nothing. Just the usual bitterness. Ignore me.”
    “You’re my mate. Anything I can do?”
    Clare shook her head again. Upstairs, the phone rang. Clare ran up to the office and answered to find Sharon Catt on the end of the line. “Clare? Dave says he’s sending you home early because you worked late last night.”
    “That’s right.” Clare made a face, for Joe’s benefit, at the phone. “Is there a problem?”
    “I just wanted to warn you that it’s your turn for picket duty next week. Seven-thirty Monday morning, outside the Sweetmeadows Colliery as usual.” She paused to let this sink in. “Enjoy your long weekend.”
    Clare dropped the receiver into the cradle and swore. “I don’t call finishing an hour early on a Friday and starting at seven-thirty on a Monday morning a particularly long weekend, do you? She’s done that on purpose.”
    Joe groaned. “Not the picket line on Monday?”
    Clare nodded. “Everyone’s favourite job.”
    Joe got up and gave Clare a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Watch yourself out there, won’t you? And try to have a good weekend.”
    Clare raised a hand. “You too.”
    The thought of picket duty would loom over the next two days, Clare knew. Ever since the miners’ strike started, the paper sent a reporter and photographer to wait outside the pits early every weekday morning, in case there was any drama. The editor’s regular hard-line editorial columns, denouncing the strike, meant that the miners would turn on the paper’s car, kicking it and spitting on it, and reporters that got out of the car risked getting the same treatment. Clare hated it. She wore ‘Coal Not Dole’ stickers on her jackets and always put money into the NUM collection tins, but it didn’t stop her from the queasy feeling that she was part of the other side. Or certainly that was how the pickets saw all the press, tabloids and local papers alike.
    Clare put a key in her front door and pushed it open with an effort. More mail and today’s free-sheet paper were blocking the movement of the door. She picked all the papers up and, without glancing at them, shoved them on top of the growing pile of envelopes, flyers and magazines on the little hall table. She clicked down the deadlock and flung her bag down on her living room floor. Then she lay down on the sofa and stared at the grey-white ceiling. Shoals of dust flecks floated around this room too, highlighted in the bright afternoon sun. Everywhere needed a good clean. She wasn’t even sure if the flat smelled too fresh. There was probably some vegetable, long-forgotten in the back of the fridge, which had converted itself to a noxious gas, a faint but detectable odour. She should definitely scrub the kitchen, properly, not merely running the odd glass or cup under the tap to make