Chapter 6: The Campaign
I didn't sleep well.
By six in the morning I was downstairs with coffee, the notebook open, writing down the text and the time I'd received it.
Unknown number.
I'd tried to reply and got nothing back — no delivery confirmation, no response.
Whoever it was, they'd sent it and gone.
Paul came down at half six.
"You were up early."
"Someone texted me last night.
Said she's calling people on the street."
He poured himself a coffee and sat down.
"Calling them to say what?"
"I don't know yet."
---
I found out by ten o'clock.
Our neighbour on the other side, a quiet man named Graham who kept to himself and occasionally waved over the fence, knocked on the door.
He looked uncomfortable before he'd said a word.
"I wanted to let you know," he said, "that Denise rang me last night.
I don't know how she got my number."
"What did she say?"
He shifted his weight.
"She said you'd been making her life difficult since she moved in.
That you'd had her car towed illegally and that you'd been — she used the word 'intimidating.' She said she was frightened."
I looked at him.
"She said she was frightened," I repeated.
"I know how it sounds.
I'm telling you because I thought you should know, not because I believed it.
I've lived next to you for six years." He paused.
"I told her I hadn't seen anything of the sort and that she should speak to the council if she had a concern."
"Thank you, Graham."
"She didn't like that answer." He almost smiled.
"She rang off quite quickly."
---
By the afternoon I'd heard from two more households.
A woman called Prita at number seven, who'd received the same call and been similarly unconvinced.
And an older couple at number three — the Hendersons — who hadn't answered and had a voicemail they played to me over the phone, Denise's voice warm and worried, saying she didn't know who else to turn to.
I asked if I could have a copy.
Mrs.
Henderson emailed it to me within the hour.
I forwarded it to Mr.
Hendricks at the council with a short note: *Further evidence of a coordinated effort to influence neighbours.
Voicemail recording attached.
Three households contacted so far.*
---
That evening, Carol came round.
She sat at our kitchen table with a folder on her lap — actual paper, organised with dividers — and she set it open in front of me.
"The Okafors left me everything," she said.
"Thirty-one days of blocked access.
Two missed hospital appointments.
The formal complaint they filed and Denise's counter-complaint.
The council's decision to close both." She turned to a section near the back.
"And this."
It was a photograph.
Slightly blurry, taken from an upstairs window.
The disabled bay, clearly marked with the road markings visible.
And the silver Corsa, nose-first across it.
"This is from four years ago?" I said.
"Same car," Carol said.
"She's had it that whole time."
Paul leaned over and looked at it.
"It's the same car."
"Same car.
Same street.
Different driveway." Carol closed the folder.
"The council closed the Okafors' complaint because they said there was insufficient evidence of a pattern.
They had memory and dates.
No photographs." She looked at me.
"You have photographs."
"And now I have theirs too," I said.
"If they'll give a statement."
"Will they?"
Carol reached into the folder and produced a single sheet of paper.
A typed letter, signed at the bottom in two places.
"I called them last week," she said.
"When you first contacted me.
I thought it might come to this." She slid the letter across the table.
"They said they'd been waiting for someone to ask."
I looked at the two signatures at the bottom of the page.
Mr.
and Mrs.
Okafor.
---
I sent everything to Mr.
Hendricks the following morning.
The Okafor letter.
Carol's four years of records.
The disabled bay photograph.
The voicemail from Mrs.
Henderson.
The texts from the unknown number, screenshotted and dated.
Then I sat down and waited.
My phone rang at half past two.
It was Denise.
I almost didn't answer.
Then I thought about Carol's folder, the Okafor signatures, the voicemail sitting in Mr.
Hendricks' inbox.
I answered.
"I think we should talk," she said.
Her voice was still warm.
Still easy.
May you like
"All right," I said.
"Talk."
