“You could have knocked this morning!”
“It’s half past five.”
“Yes, and I would have moved it!”
There was a brief pause.
“That’s the first time you’ve said moving it was an option,” I said.
She didn’t have an answer for that.
The enforcement officer turned to her. “Have you previously been asked not to park in this location?”
Denise said, “No,” without a moment’s hesitation.
I put my tea down on the kitchen counter and picked up my phone.
“Would you like the photographs?”
“What photographs?”
I held up the screen so she could see the gallery. Twenty-two images, neatly timestamped, each one showing the same silver car across the same driveway entrance from the same kitchen window angle.
“Can you send those to the case number?” the officer asked.
“Uploading now,” I said.
The last three photographs were still attaching at this precise moment, but I felt the spirit of the statement was accurate.
Denise folded her arms. “This is harassment.”
“Documenting a vehicle obstructing a private driveway isn’t harassment,” the officer said, with the patient tone of a man who has said this before.
Ezoic
“She’s been photographing my house.”
“I photographed your car.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
The driver continued working. The metal sound of the equipment being positioned made Denise turn.
“You’re not actually towing it.”
The officer explained calmly that she had the opportunity to deal with the matter before removal was complete, depending on the procedure, but that a penalty notice would be issued regardless of what happened next.
“How much?” she asked.
When he told her, her mouth opened.
“That’s completely ridiculous.”
I picked up my tea.
“You’ll survive,” I said.
It came out without planning. I hadn’t scripted it, hadn’t rehearsed it, hadn’t even consciously remembered the specific words she had used on my doorstep three weeks earlier until they were already out of my mouth.
