Narrator: Carys E. | South Wales
I was fifteen when a man in a yellow raincoat began walking behind me on the footpath home. It was raining hard enough that I couldn’t hear his footsteps, only the occasional squeak of wet fabric.
I sped up. So did he. I slowed to let him pass, and he stopped a few yards back, looking at the stream beside the path.
There was a narrow bridge ahead. I crossed it and ran the last stretch to our gate. Mum was at the kitchen window. She opened the door before I reached it and pulled me inside.
She said she’d seen the man take hold of my school bag as I came through the gate. I hadn’t felt it. The bottom of the bag was ripped, and one strap was twisted twice round itself.
We called the police. They found nobody. A section of the path beside the stream had washed away, leaving the bridge almost cut off. I had crossed moments before it became unsafe.
Mum thinks he was helping me get clear. I remember the squeaking behind me getting faster whenever I did. We have very different feelings about that yellow coat, and neither of us has managed to change the other’s mind.
