Ezoic
Mark said I should send Paul a bill for inspiring the renovation.
I told him to behave.
“Operation Silver Corsa,” Mark calls it sometimes, when something requires methodical documentation rather than direct confrontation.
“That’s a ridiculous name,” I say.
“You would have chosen something worse.”
“Probably,” I admit.
The thing I think about, when I think about that November morning, is not the recovery truck or the enforcement officer or the expression on Denise’s face when she came running out in her dressing gown. It’s the five minutes I spent the evening before, reading the council’s guidance for the second time, making sure I understood every step of what I was about to do.
Not because I was afraid of getting it wrong.
Because I wanted it to work.
I had knocked on doors and had calm conversations and been told I’d survive and watched my children start every morning in a car sitting in our own driveway, waiting. None of that had changed anything.
What changed it was not a louder conversation or a more persuasive argument or a more compelling appeal to Denise’s better nature.
Ezoic
It was a case number. Twenty-two photographs. A formal record that could grow.
Denise could feel whatever she wanted about me. She could think I was excessive and dramatic and entirely too serious about a parking space.
She could not feel anything about the paperwork.
Oliver doesn’t remember most of it now. He’s seven, and seven-year-olds have a healthy relationship with forgetting. But last week he climbed into the car for school, looked out the window as I reversed down the driveway, and said, “Mum, the road’s clear.”
“It usually is these days,” I said.
“Good,” he said, and looked back at his book.
Which is, honestly, all I ever wanted.
