That silver Corsa belonged to Denise, who’d moved into number 14 back in May. She had her own driveway and two spaces on the road outside it, yet she kept parking across the bottom of ours instead, nose into the hedge, leaving no angle for us to get out.
Twenty-Two Mornings
The first time I knocked, she was apologetic: “Oh — I’ll only be a minute, sorry!” The second time, she said the exact same words. By the fourth time, I stopped believing her and started photographing the car with the time stamped on my phone while she watched from her window.
Tuesday the ninth was the worst of it. My boys, eight and six, sat buckled in the back for twenty-two minutes while we waited. My six-year-old asked if he’d be in trouble again, since late marks go up on a classroom chart. I walked them in myself and arrived an hour late to work, facing a conversation with my manager I’d never had in eleven years.
That afternoon I asked Denise directly to stop blocking us. She looked at me, rolled her eyes, said “You’ll survive,” and shut the door.
The Call Before Sunrise
I didn’t knock again and didn’t tell my husband. I set an alarm for half past five, made coffee, and looked at the Corsa through the kitchen window. Then I scrolled through three weeks of timestamped photos — twenty-two in total — and called parking enforcement and an approved recovery contractor. Her curtains were closed, no lights on. I told the operator, “No, she’s asleep. Take your time.”
After the Penalty
Denise rushed out before the tow truck arrived and moved her car, but still received a parking penalty. She claimed reversing into her own driveway was awkward. A week later she blocked us again and earned a second penalty. Her husband, Paul, apologized and arranged to widen their driveway.
The blocking stopped, though her full apology took months. Working in a school office, Denise later met a mother whose daughter had been unfairly marked late over an unreliable bus — and finally understood what she’d dismissed in us. She acknowledged her pettiness, and I accepted her apology. We never became close, but we stopped needing to argue over our own driveway.