She didn’t touch the papers at first.
She just stared into the box.
Then she looked at me.
Then at my husband.
He looked just as confused as everyone else.
“What is this?” she asked.
I smiled.
“You wanted to open it.”
She swallowed.
One of the neighbours leaned forward.
“What are the emails?”
She quickly closed the lid.
“Nothing.”
I laughed softly.
“No. Not nothing.”
She opened the box again.
Her hands were shaking now.
The first email was printed in full.
It was from her.
Not to my husband.
To someone called Daniel.
The subject line read:
PHASE TWO — HE’S STILL NOT TAKING THE BAIT
A murmur moved through the garden.
My husband looked at me.
“What’s going on?”
I didn’t answer him.
I looked at her.
“Read the next one.”
She didn’t.
So I picked it up myself.
“July 3rd,” I said. “You wrote: ‘I’ve tried flirting with him directly. He’s either unbelievably loyal or suspicious. I think we need to change tactics.’”
Her face had gone white.
Someone behind me whispered:
“Oh my God.”
My husband stepped closer.
“What tactics?”
She snapped:
“She’s lying!”
I held up the next email.
“July 11th. You wrote to Daniel that you were going to tell me you’d take my husband.”
She stared at me.
“You weren’t supposed to see those.”
There was complete silence.
My husband slowly turned toward her.
“Who is Daniel?”
She didn’t answer.
I reached into the box.
“That’s what the letter is for.”
I handed it to my husband.
He looked at the date.
15 July.
Then he saw the reference number.
His expression changed.
He looked at me.
“You knew?”
“I knew enough.”
He opened the letter.
It was from a solicitor.
His solicitor.
The same solicitor we’d used three years earlier when we’d updated our wills.
He read the first paragraph.
Then the second.
Then he stopped.
“What the hell?”
I looked at the woman.
“Tell them.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Tell them what Daniel’s real name is.”
She backed away from me.
“Don’t.”
My husband looked between us.
“Who is Daniel?”
I finally answered.
“Her ex-husband.”
Everyone went silent.
The woman had told the entire street she was divorced because her husband had cheated on her.
She’d cried over wine at my kitchen table.
She’d told me he had emptied their joint account.
She’d told me she had been left with nothing.
And I’d believed her.
But the letter told a different story.
Her ex-husband hadn’t cheated.
He’d discovered she had been moving money from their company into another account.
When he confronted her, she filed for divorce first.
Then she told everyone he had betrayed her.
The money, however, hadn’t disappeared.
It had been transferred to a company registered under a different name.
And that company had one director.
Her.
My husband lowered the letter.
“She tried this before?”
I nodded.
“Not with you.”
I looked at her.
“With another man.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“You don’t understand.”
“No,” I said. “I understand perfectly.”
Four months earlier, she’d sat at my kitchen table and told me she was going to take my husband.
But what I hadn’t told her was that my husband and I had already started noticing things.
The first strange thing had been an envelope delivered to our house by mistake.
It was addressed to her.
The second was the way she’d reacted when my husband mentioned his business.
The third was the afternoon she accidentally called him by another man’s name.
And then came the emails.
My husband had received one from an unfamiliar address.
It wasn’t romantic.
It wasn’t flirtatious.
It was a warning.
Your neighbour isn’t interested in your marriage. She’s interested in what your husband owns.
At first, he thought it was spam.
Then another arrived.
And another.
So he showed me.
We didn’t confront her.
We watched.
For four months.
Every time she approached him, he stepped away.
Every time she tried to get him alone, he found an excuse.
Every time she asked about our finances, he changed the subject.
And every time she thought she was getting closer, we documented it.
But there was one thing we couldn’t understand.
Why us?
Then, in August, we found out.
My husband had recently inherited a small commercial property from his uncle.
He hadn’t told the neighbours.
He hadn’t even told most of his friends.
But somehow, she knew.
And that wasn’t the worst part.
I reached into the box and pulled out the final email.
“This one,” I said, “is from September 2nd.”
She closed her eyes.
I read it aloud.
“‘Once he’s emotionally involved, he’ll leave her. Once he leaves her, she’ll panic. And once she panics, she’ll sell.’”
My husband looked at me.
“Sell what?”
I didn’t answer.
Because I wanted her to say it.
She stared at the ground.
Then one of the neighbours asked:
“Sell what?”
Her silence answered first.
Then she whispered:
“Your house.”
The garden erupted.
People started talking over one another.
My husband stood completely still.
Our house.
The house we’d lived in for seventeen years.
The house we’d paid off six years earlier.
The house she had somehow known we might be willing to sell.
But I wasn’t finished.
I took one final photograph from the bottom of the box.
I held it up.
It showed her standing outside our house.
With a man none of us knew.
And on the back was a handwritten date.
Three days before she moved into number nine.
My husband stared at the photograph.
“Who is that?”
She didn’t answer.
Then the man across the garden suddenly spoke.
“I know him.”
Everyone turned.
He looked at her.
“He came to my house too.”
Her face collapsed.
“What did he ask you?” I said.
The neighbour hesitated.
Then he looked at my husband.
“He asked how much your house was worth.”
My husband turned toward me.
And I finally understood why she’d chosen our street.
Why she’d befriended me.
Why she’d targeted my husband.
It wasn’t about love.
It had never been about love.
But there was still one question.
Who had sent me those emails?
Because I had never told anyone about them.
And the person who sent them had included a final message I’d deliberately kept hidden from my husband.
I pulled out my phone.
Opened the message.
And turned the screen toward him.
It said:
“You’re looking in the wrong direction. She isn’t working alone.”