He Owed Me
by Hannah Retallick
When he died the man owed me £35 in petty cash and that was my first thought when I heard about The Accident, a collision between a camper van and lorry on the A55 which proved fatal for both drivers, the lorry man being the one who owed me £35, a twinkly-eyed neighbour, a single forty-something-year-old called Luca who smelt of cigarettes and bacon and always told me he loved my hair like that, like however it happened to be, up down blonde curly red straight black crimped, and we were starting to know each other quite well because he had got into the habit of rushing up to my front door and saying he needed to borrow some change to give as pocket money to his niece or for carpark tickets or for slot machines, so I would do the neighbourly thing and pluck coins from the dusty dish in my hallway, saying, ‘Here, hope that helps’, not knowing if I’d ever get it back but making a mental tally as though I needed to know how grateful he should be to me, and it was the selfishness of my first thought when I heard he’d died that meant I couldn’t bear to go to his funeral, crumbling under the weight of guilt, because £35 doesn’t matter in the face of death, and as the weeks passed I purged those thoughts completely and stopped torturing myself about the petty debt and my own failings and just wished I could ask Luca whether he really did love my hair like that, like however it happened to be, or whether he meant something else
About the Author
Hannah Retallick is from Anglesey, North Wales. She was home educated and then studied with the Open University, graduating with a First-class honours degree, BA in Humanities with Creative Writing and Music, before passing her Creative Writing MA with a Distinction. Hannah has gained recognition in many international competitions, including receiving Highly Commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2022 and winning the £2000 Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction 2024 – the biggest flash prize in the UK. Her debut short story collection, Something Very Human, is being released by Bridge House Publishing in November 2024. https://www.hannahretallick.co.uk/about
