Bleak City (27 page)

‘Not still at work?’

‘Nope,’ Charlotte said. ‘Apparently not.’ She raised an eyebrow, he raised one of his back.

‘What?’ Alice said, looking back and forth between them. ‘What’s going on?’

Neither of them said anything at first, but then Sean told her. They thought their mother was having an affair, but they weren’t sure who with. In fact, they weren’t really sure, maybe she was just going and meeting a friend, a sounding board, someone she could talk to about earthquake and house stuff because she couldn’t talk to their father about them. But if that was the case, if it was just an innocent friendship, then she would say who she was meeting, which she never did.

‘You could sneak a look at her phone,’ Alice said.

‘Which would only give her something to use against me,’ Charlotte said, ‘whenever I object to her wanting to see the contents of mine. No way.’

‘Then don’t get caught,’ Sean said.

‘Hey, hang on,’ Charlotte said, ‘why all of a sudden am I doing this?’

‘Forget it,’ Sean said. ‘We’re probably just reading too much into things.’

Charlotte caught him shooting a look at Alice. He looked uncomfortable. Did he know more? Was he trying to protect her? She wished he wouldn’t try to do that, she wasn’t a child. And she had lived through hundreds of earthquakes and the city she had grown up in being destroyed. It was probably a change-the-subject look, because that was what Alice did.

‘What do you miss most about the city?’ Alice said.

‘Going to the movies,’ Charlotte said. She had finished her meal and got up to slide her empty plate onto the coffee table. She sat down again, tucking her blanket around her. ‘I’m sick of the malls, I wish they’d do something about getting the Moorhouse Ave movie theatre open again.’

‘Isn’t that all coming down?’ Sean said. ‘The whole railway station?’

‘Is it?’ Alice said. ‘I hope not, I like that old place.’

‘I miss Drexel’s,’ Charlotte said. The place on Hereford Street served American-style breakfasts, and she had loved their pancakes ever since she could remember.

‘There’s the one in Riccarton,’ Sean said.

‘You mean in the mall?’ Charlotte gave him a pointed look.

‘It’s not in the mall, it’s just outside the mall,’ Sean said. ‘You don’t have to go in the mall, you just have to breathe some of the god-awful mall air wafting out the automatic doors.’ It was an old argument.

‘I miss people not talking about insurance all the time,’ Charlotte said, moving on to the next item on her list.

‘What do you want them talking about?’ Sean said. ‘How evil malls are?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Just something else.’

‘People are worried,’ Alice said, her voice softer than Sean’s, kinder. ‘There’s a lot of money at stake, some people could find they can’t afford their house any more.’

‘What would happen then?’ Charlotte said. She pictured people living in tents in Hagley Park. Some people had done that at the end of last year, camping in the park near the hospital. It was part of the Occupy protest movement that had started in New York. Some people who no longer had houses as a result of the quakes had ended up there, which was maybe why the city hadn’t moved them on as quickly as they did elsewhere in New Zealand.

‘They would have to find a smaller place, one they could afford,’ Alice said. ‘Or rent.’

‘What I can’t believe,’ Sean said, ‘is people who didn’t bother to have insurance.’

‘It’s expensive,’ Alice said. ‘Not everyone has loads of money to blow on insurance they might never need.’

‘Well they take their chances, then, don’t they?’ Sean said. ‘They can’t go crying to the Government asking to get paid out because they couldn’t be bothered to get a better job so they could have insurance.’

Alice had tensed up. ‘Are you talking about red zoners?’ she said.

Charlotte knew Alice’s grandparents had a section that might be red zoned. It was a section they planned to build their retirement home on, now it looked like they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. Alice was worried about them, they had a lot going on, they were in a rental while their house was being fixed, and it looked like it was going to take longer than expected. But, it seemed, Sean did not know this. Things could get entertaining.

‘There are some talking about taking the Government to court,’ Charlotte said.

‘The ones who didn’t have insurance,’ Sean went on, ‘people with bare land.’

‘People with bare land can’t get insurance,’ Alice said. ‘It’s just not possible. So it isn’t a matter of negligence or stupidity, they simply can’t get insurance.’

Sean stared at her, baffled. ‘Then why do people talk like they could. The Minister does, and I’ve heard lots of people say the people who weren’t insured shouldn’t get anything.’

‘It’s not about insurance,’ Alice said. ‘It’s about the Government taking their land. The whole insurance thing is a red herring, an excuse for not paying them out.’

‘No, that’s not right,’ Sean said. ‘The red zone offers let people move on, the Government steps in and takes over the claims with EQC and the insurance company so people don’t have to.’

‘What if the Government negotiates a better deal with EQC and the insurance companies than the people would’ve gotten?’ Alice said. ‘What if the Government gets more than they paid the original owner?’

‘That won’t happen,’ Sean said. ‘That’s not how it’s going to work. And besides, we’re talking about people who didn’t bother to get insurance, it’s different.’

‘So my grandparents, who have a section in Heathcote, didn’t have insurance on the land,’ Alice said, setting her trap. ‘If it gets red-zoned, should they should just lose the land, lose the money they used to buy it?’

Sean hesitated. ‘If they didn’t have insurance, couldn’t get it like you said, why should the Government pay them out for the land?’

‘Why can’t they build on the land?’ Alice said.

‘Because of the earthquakes,’ Sean said.

‘No,’ Alice said. ‘Because the Government red zoned it.’

Sean said nothing to that.

Alice went on. ‘They’re losing their land because the Government red zoned it, it’s nothing at all to do with whether or not they had insurance. The Government red zoned it, the Government should compensate.’

She glared at Sean, waiting for his answer. Charlotte kept glancing between the two of them, waiting to see if Sean was going to get it. Finally, he nodded.

‘I get it,’ he said. ‘Not about insurance at all.’

Alice nodded and sighed. ‘I hope, Sean,’ she said, ‘that when you’re no longer a baby lawyer, you do a better job of analysing the finer points of the law than you’re doing now.’

Sean blushed and mumbled what might have been an apology.

Charlotte pulled her blanket up around her face, smiling behind it. The last five minutes had been thoroughly entertaining. It was the most fun she’d had all week. She tried not to giggle, but only ended up coughing.

Lindsay had expected that the winter of 2011 would be the only winter they spent in their broken house, but as 2011 finished and 2012 began to drag on, it became clear there would be at least one more winter. Although they had been handed over to their insurance company months ago, it wasn’t until May when someone came around to have a look at the foundation. The guy who visited pointed out cracks in the concrete ring foundation, different spots where it was crumbling away. He went under the house to check the piles and when he came back up the manhole, he said they looked mostly okay, there were only a handful that looked wonky. But the house would need to be lifted and a new ring foundation built. Kevin and Lindsay were given no indication about how long this would take. They had to wait for the insurance company to send them a scope of works before they could have some idea of timeframes.

‘Once the geotech work is done, it won’t be long,’ Kevin reassured Lindsay. ‘They know what they’re going to do, we just need to be patient, wait a few more months, then we’ll have a better idea of timeframes.’

‘I don’t know,’ Lindsay said. ‘Sometimes it feels like we’ll see another Transit of Venus before we’ll see our house fixed.’

Kevin laughed. ‘Not like we’ll see this one,’ he said. The transit was the next day, but the city was smothered in grey cloud and the air was damp, threatening rain.

The previous Transit of Venus had been in 2004, and Lindsay remembered Kevin trying to explain it to Alice. Alice was still learning to accept Kevin then and had been torn between being fascinated and not wanting to show too much interest. They had both been disappointed that it wasn’t visible from New Zealand and promised each other that they would be sure to see the 2012 one.

When Lindsay woke up the morning of the transit, it was starting to snow and soon the driveway was white. She got the fire going in the lounge to warm up the house. In the kitchen, Alice had made two coffees. Lindsay flicked the fan heater on and sat at the dining table sipping her coffee while Alice made porridge.

‘You’ll be careful on the roads?’ Lindsay said.

Alice raised an eyebrow. Annoying. ‘I’m going to go 70 down 50 kay roads and put an end to my miserable existence.’

‘Okay then,’ Lindsay said.

‘Want some?’ Alice said, filling a bowl with some porridge for herself.

Lindsay shook her head. ‘In a little while,’ she said.

Alice sat down at the table and started to eat while flicking through news articles on her phone. She looked up. ‘You should get Grandma and Grandad over here today, it’ll be cold in their place.’

Neil and Heather were still in their rental, which they hadn’t expected for winter. Repairs on their house were going to take an extra month or so, only the contractor hadn’t told them until a few days before the original completion date. They had frantically negotiated with their landlord for another two months in the place. The landlord turned away the tenants he had lined up for a six week repair, which Neil and Heather felt bad about. But, Lindsay told them, it was probably happening all over Christchurch, they weren’t the only ones with repairs that didn’t stick to the schedule.

‘I think I’ll do that,’ Lindsay said to Alice. ‘Even if school opens, I’ll keep the kids home, and having Mum and Dad here will help them relax for the day.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Alice said.

Lindsay laughed.

‘You’re right, though,’ Alice continued. ‘It will be good for them. Text Sonya, maybe you can pick up Cody and Ella, have them here for the day. It’ll mean she doesn’t have to choose whether or not to go to work.’

‘Another good idea,’ Lindsay said, full of cheer. ‘You’re firing on all cylinders this morning.’

Alice shrugged, scraping porridge from the sides of her bowl. She sucked the last of the porridge off her spoon and got up from the table. ‘Three more days,’ she said. ‘Just three more days.’

A woman Alice had been working with had moved on, taking a job with Southern Response, and soon after she left, she had offered Alice a job as a claims officer. Alice would be trained for the job and she was keen to do something new, something that really helped with the rebuild. Filing and phone calls were, she said, killing her brain.

Southern Response was the organisation the Government had set up after bailing out AMI Insurance. AMI had a large number of earthquake claims, too many, and near the end of 2011, it announced it would not be able to cover all of them. The Government set up Southern Response to handle all of AMI’s earthquake claims and sold all of AMI’s other policies to another insurance company.

It was, Lindsay could see, a good opportunity for Alice, although she would still prefer that she go back to university and finish her degree. Engineering was a good profession to get into, Lindsay insisted, Alice would be able to work wherever in the world she pleased, be able to earn a good living. The insurance industry was all over the world, too, Alice had said. Who knew? Maybe she would rise in the ranks and end up running one. She was joking, of course. Lindsay hoped she was joking. There were too many rumours about insurers doing the dirty on people for Lindsay to feel comfortable with the idea of Alice making her future there.

One thing that especially bothered Lindsay was that when the red zoning was first announced, the Minister for Earthquake Recovery had said that most red zoned properties were rebuilds and that red zoning would allow the homeowners to move on. They wouldn’t have to wait around for months or years for the ground to be repaired before the rebuild could take place. It sounded good in theory. Following the announcement of the Government offers, though, a lot of those properties had switched to repairs, which meant the insurance companies could pay out much less than if the house was classed as a rebuild. These repairs were fictional, the land was red zoned and repairs couldn’t be carried out because the land could no longer legally be built on. The argument over repair or rebuild was simply over how much the insurance company would pay out. There was something nasty about the switch from rebuild to repair, and Lindsay didn’t want her daughter working in an industry that had the whiff of something that nasty going on.

Kevin came through to the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee and poured a bowl of porridge. Lindsay tried to persuade him to stay home for the day, given the snow, but he insisted it would be fine, he had a job to finish, he would run heaters, if necessary, to dry the place out.

‘But if you stay home you can watch the transit of Venus,’ Lindsay said.

‘Not for real,’ he said. ‘Not with this cloud cover. Only online.’

‘It’s as good as the real thing,’ Lindsay said. She didn’t share his passion.

‘It’s nothing like the real thing,’ Kevin said, irritated. ‘It’s the difference between repairs that will actually be done and those insurance companies say can be done because they know they’ll never have to do them.’ They had been talking about fictional repairs a few nights ago. Kevin had gone to school with a guy in that situation. His insurance company had an estimate of over $400,000 for a rebuild, but then they offered only $125,000 because they insisted the house was repairable. Even though the repairs couldn’t legally be carried out. It defied logic. And morals.