The Neighbourhood Watch Group Chat Has Eleven Messages Nobody Will Explain

Our neighbourhood watch chat is normally about wheelie bins and a man called Gary who parks badly.

On 8 May, at 02:14, Sandra at number 4 wrote: "Is anyone else seeing this over the school?"

02:15, Priya: "Yes"

02:16, Priya: "What is it"

02:17, Sandra: photo. It is useless. It is a photo of the night with two bright smears in it.

02:19, Gary — Gary! — "I'm outside. It isn't making any noise. That's the bit I don't like."

02:22, someone whose number I never had saved: "Please stop taking photos."

Just that. No hello. No context. And here is the thing that has bothered me for two years: nobody in the chat asked who that was. Twelve adults, wide awake, frightened, and not one of us said "who is this?"

02:24, Sandra: "It's gone."

02:26, Gary: "It's not gone, it's higher."

02:31, Priya: "I'm going in. Don't like it."

And then nothing. In the morning, nothing. At the school gate, nothing. I said something to Sandra by the bins and she did a laugh I have never heard from her before, sort of two notes, and said, "God, that was mad, wasn't it," in a way that closed a door.

Three weeks later the group was deleted. Not archived. Deleted, by the admin, who was Sandra, and when I asked, she said it was "getting spammy".

I have screenshots because I am the kind of person who screenshots. I have shown them to my wife, who was asleep that night and is quietly convinced this is a phone-hacking scam of some kind.

Maybe. Maybe a stranger got into a WhatsApp group and told twelve people to stop taking photos of something that was making no noise over a primary school at 2am.

I would love that explanation. I would take it in a heartbeat. I just cannot make it work.