Chapter 3: She Does This Everywhere
I saved the number and stared at it for a long time.
My husband, Paul, came into the hallway and saw my face.
"What's happened?"
I handed him the note first.
He read it.
His jaw tightened.
"She put this through our door?"
"While we were out."
He set it on the side table, carefully, the way he handles things he doesn't trust himself to hold for long.
Then I showed him the phone.
He read the three words twice.
"Who sent this?"
"I don't know."
"Have you replied?"
"Not yet."
He looked at the number again.
"It's a local code."
I took the phone back and typed: *Who is this, please?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*Someone who's watched her do it to three families on this street before yours.
Can we talk?*
Paul read it over my shoulder.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"Three families," he said.
"That's what it says."
I typed back: *Yes.
When?*
---
Her name was Carol.
She lived four streets over, in one of the semis that backed onto the playing field.
She'd moved there eight years ago and she'd watched Denise work her way through the road like a slow, deliberate problem.
We met at her kitchen table the following Saturday morning while Paul stayed home with the boys.
Carol was in her late sixties, neat and precise, with the kind of stillness that comes from having been angry for a very long time and learning to carry it quietly.
She set a mug in front of me and sat down.
"How long has she been blocking you?" she asked.
"Twenty-two days when I had the car towed."
She nodded like that was a familiar number.
"She did fourteen with the Pattersons at number nine.
Thirty-one with the family before them — the Okafor family.
They had a disabled bay, officially marked.
Didn't matter."
I put my mug down.
"A disabled bay?"
"Her husband needed it.
She blocked it anyway." Carol's hands were flat on the table.
"He missed two hospital appointments before they complained to the council.
She told the council officer he was exaggerating."
"What happened?"
"Nothing.
She was charming.
She's always charming when there's an official involved." Carol looked at me steadily.
"Did she smile when she first introduced herself?"
I thought back to May.
The wave from the driveway.
The easy laugh.
"Yes," I said.
"She always does."
---
I asked Carol why nobody had taken it further.
She was quiet for a moment.
"The Pattersons moved.
Couldn't afford the stress — they had young children, same as you.
The Okafors put in a formal complaint but she disputed every date they gave.
Said they were mistaken.
Said her car had been in for a service on two of the days they listed." Carol paused.
"It had.
She'd planned it that way."
"She planned it."
"She keeps records too.
That's the thing people don't realise until it's too late.
She documents everything her way, in advance, so that if you ever go official, she already has an answer."
I thought about my three weeks of photographs.
The timestamps.
The conversation I'd had with my manager.
"I have documentation too," I said.
Carol looked at me differently then.
Not surprised exactly.
More like relieved.
"How much?"
"Twenty-two days of photographs with the time showing.
Two written records from my workplace.
A note she left on my windscreen in June."
Carol was quiet for a moment.
Then she said: "The Okafors didn't have any of that.
They were going on memory."
"I know."
She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"There's something else you should know about Denise."
I waited.
"She's done this before.
Not just parking.
The Okafors — after they complained — their recycling started going missing.
Their post.
Small things, things you can't prove." She looked at me.
"I'm telling you so you're not caught off guard."
I drove home thinking about the note on my doormat.
May you like
*You'll regret this.*
It didn't feel like an empty threat anymore.
