...when she asked about a taxi or hiring a vehicle, the receptionist at the shire office said there were no taxis or spare vehicles during the harvest's busy season. Later, Orla, the hotel's manager, promised to ask around for her, and within a few hours everyone in the town seemed to know about Alyssa and had their own theories about who she was and what she was doing. 

There were other whispers too, nothing said openly, and some people in the community appeared to avoid her; not that Alyssa was aware or even cared. She'd always aimed to focus on her career without distraction or demands. Even her one-time marriage had just been a short, unmarked blip, petering out and ending without acrimony. And there'd been that boy – and she should have felt some regret, a prick of conscience. She wasn't prepared for his childish crush, or for her own unexpected response. He was tall and well-muscled for his age, but under his shirt the skin was warm and baby soft. His tentative touch elicited a monstrous desire in Alyssa that was just as quickly extinguished at his earnest proclamations of love. The whole thing was a mistake, and she was relieved to leave him behind a short time later, returning to a solitary life. She wanted to believe that he'd moved on too. 

The additional attention she was beginning to receive from strangers around town was unnerving. Her research findings into soil microbiology changes might not reflect well upon this rural population, and she would have preferred that the anonymity she enjoyed in the city was preserved out here too. She wasn't expecting anyone to remember her after so many years and she worried about the way the man in the bar had been watching her, how he guessed almost immediately her connection to Salford.

 

Excerpt from ‘Those Small Things' by Theresa Wilks in Follow the Salt (2025, Night Parrot Press) https://www.nightparrotpress.com/follow-the-salt/

 

Author Bio:

Theresa Wilks is completing BA Honours at Edith Cowan University. She won the Talus prize for Prose and for Poetry in 2020, has published fiction in Westerly's issue 69.2, and in Night Parrot Press' 2024 anthology Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs.