DISTANCE LEARNING By Touch the Light This would have been submitted to the Valentine's Day contest - if I hadn't read the rules first.

Twenty past three. She’s late. Usually you can set your watch by her. Not today.

I light another cigarette, huddled forward to protect the flame from the biting wind. For an instant it fights off the gloom shrouding the derelict chapel, the avenue of leafless trees leading to the main gate and the untended headstones stretching into the disconsolate dejection of another overcast February afternoon.

Nearly twenty-five past. Maybe she’s onto me. Maybe I haven’t been careful enough. It’s not as if I do this for a living.

Relax. She always comes through the cemetery. She has to. Any other route would take her past one of the schools, and she won’t risk that.

She thinks she’s safe here. I’m going to convince her that she isn’t.

I won’t hurt her. I intend to scare her to within an inch of her life, but I’ll stop short of actual violence. I’m not an evil man.

There she is!

I can recognise her at a distance nowadays. It’s the way she walks in those shoes, the way she carries that shoulder bag, the way her free arm swings…

She’s becoming more confident, more sure of herself. Her bearing is prouder and more upright.

We’ll see how calm and collected she is when I’ve finished with her.

Less than a hundred yards to go. Safe behind the chapel wall, I reach inside the plastic bag at my feet and remove the clown mask from it. There’s no one else in sight; I can pretend to chase her without fear of someone coming to her aid.

Fifty yards.

It’s for her own good. She’s got to be made aware of how vulnerable she is. That there are places she can’t go, situations she mustn’t allow herself to wander into. If I don’t do this, who will?

Thirty yards.

The mask is on. I’m ready.

Twenty yards.

Ten.

She steps by, the hem of her fawn overcoat swishing against her knees. Perhaps it’s the streaks of grey staining her short, nutbrown curls, or the creases around her delicate cherry lips that hold me back.

Or perhaps it’s a vision of her stripping naked before she climbs into the bath, looking down at what’s between her legs and wondering why of all the women in this town she’s the one who was cursed.

Or the tears she sheds for the children to whom she will always be a stranger.

Or the reflection that reminds her more sharply with each passing day that her best years are behind her.

I wait until she’s started down the path that leads to the west gate, then head in the opposite direction towards the town centre. My mask is still in place, but I don’t care; if it attracts attention, it’s nothing compared to what that woman has to deal with every time she leaves the house.

I take it off before I go into the card shop so I won’t frighten the assistant. If I’m going to pick the one that's just right for her I’ll need all the help I can get.