Bleak City (3 page)

‘More tea?’ she asked. He was surprised that she had given up and he looked at her suspiciously. But he pushed his cup across the table. She filled it and he took it back, then sipped from it.

‘The questions eleven-year-olds ask are much easier,’ Andrew said.

‘Well I’m not eleven,’ Alice said sharply. ‘You need to get used to that.’

Andrew nodded. Their meals arrived, and starting to eat gave them both the opportunity to collect their thoughts.

‘Was it Michelle?’ Alice asked.

‘No, it wasn’t Michelle,’ Andrew said, without looking up from his lunch. ‘It’s not relevant so I’m not going to talk about it.’

She felt her face start to go red. How could he just shut her down like that? Andrew didn’t seem to notice, just kept tweezing up bits of chicken with his chopsticks and directing them into his mouth. Was he unaware? Or ignoring her the way she would ignore her mother when she didn’t want to ‘talk things through’? Alice felt the words boiling up inside her and wanted to smack him with them.

‘You guys split up and changed the direction of my life,’ she said. ‘I think it’s relevant. Was it serious? Or was it just a fling? Why did you get to walk away from being my dad?’

‘Alice,’ he said, looking up at her, bewildered at her obvious anger. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘I wasn’t trying to get away from you. I was just...’

‘Immature? Confused? Blind and mistook some other woman for your wife?’

Andrew sighed, appearing to wish he was anywhere but where he was, having lunch with his daughter, who couldn’t help but ask difficult questions about why he had gone missing from her life.

‘It was Vicky,’ he said, giving an embarrassed shrug.

‘Vicky?’ Alice said.

‘She lived in the neighbourhood, she was going to university and nannied part-time. She would pick you up from kindy and look after you until me or your mum got home.’

‘The nanny?’

‘It wasn’t an ongoing thing.’

‘That’s such a cliché,’ Alice said. She could feel her anger spinning out of reach of her ability to control it. She tried to reel it back in, only to find it skipping off again. ‘You’re such a cliché. You’re probably screwing the receptionist, too, you’re such a cliché and that’s what clichés do.’

‘You’re being unreasonable,’ Andrew said. ‘Calm down.’

As is so often the case when men speak that pair of words to women, the effect was the opposite of that intended. Alice stood up from the table, grabbed her handbag and raincoat and prepared to stalk out of the restaurant. But that would leave him to pay for her lunch, and she didn’t want that, she didn’t want anything from him, so she stopped at the till and paid for her half-eaten meal, fumbling at the eftpos machine and then fumbling again as she wrestled her way into her raincoat before fleeing out into the rain.

Andrew had sent her a text message the evening after their last lunch together, just the words ‘I’m sorry’. Alice hadn’t yet replied. She wasn’t sure how to or if she even wanted to. She wanted to ask what he was sorry for, cheating or not being there for a decade, but wasn’t sure either answer would make a difference for her. She didn’t know what she wanted from him, certainly she wanted to move on from the superficial lunchtime conversations, but she didn’t want the out-of-control argument of their last lunch to be the way they dealt with each other. And, she had to admit, she was probably the one who was out of control.

University holidays started and Alice was working for Kevin. She needed to save money for her next year if she wanted to keep flatting, which she did, she was enjoying the taste of independence. She was studying for an hour before work each morning, during her lunch break and then again at night, and the rhythm of prepping, painting and cleaning up gave her the mental space to turn what she was learning over in her head, make better sense of it all. It had worked for her mid-year exams and she was feeling comfortable about the end of year ones. Not over-confident, just comfortable knowing that if she kept up her routine she would do all right. No need to panic, just keep learning and it would all be in there, waiting to be retrieved.

Alice’s flatmates were all away and she was enjoying the quiet. It reminded her of the years when it had just been her and her mother, before Lindsay met Kevin. Not that Kevin’s appearance in their lives had made things worse, in many ways they were better. But there was a camaraderie between mother and daughter that had changed, and Alice was never sure if that was just part of growing up or if she had actually lost something when her mother remarried.

Between work and study and getting home to see her family every few days, Alice didn’t have much time left to think about what she was going to do about the situation with Andrew. She had mentioned to Lindsay that there had been an argument, but she didn’t say what about and Lindsay didn’t pursue it. Lindsay had always seemed reluctant to say anything about Andrew, either positive or negative, but she hadn’t discouraged Alice from getting in touch with him.

Two of Alice’s flatmates were back from their holidays when she arrived home from work Friday afternoon. Ben and Chloe had decided, in her absence, that they were going out for Thai food that night, which was fine by Alice. She had been busy for two weeks solid and could use a break. There was a place in the city that had good food and, more importantly, was cheap, so they walked into the city, stopping at Ben’s mates’ place to pick up a few more people. Alice could tell it was going to turn into a boozy night, which she wanted to avoid as she did have to work the next day. After the Thai place, she and Chloe walked home together, watched a video and crashed into their respective beds at around eleven.

Alice heard Ben stumbling around about an hour later and she got up to find him sprawled on the sofa. She heaved him upward and walked him down the hallway, dumping him across his own bed, where he would have to clean up his own mess in the morning. It was her sofa, given to her by her grandparents, and no way was he going to be spewing on it. She went back to bed and quickly fell asleep.

She knew right away what she was hearing when she woke because the bed was moving, just slightly, but she was a light sleeper, she tended to notice what was going on in the house. The sound quickly became louder, like a train coming towards the house, and she leapt out of bed. She crouched down in the corner by the doorframe and put her arms over her head as the sound of the roar surged and the house began really shaking, up and down, up and down, and Alice could see the shapes of things around the dark room being thrown up then tossed off her desk and dresser, could hear furniture slamming into walls and glass breaking elsewhere in the house, and everywhere, the thud thud thud of the house itself being shaken. She heard something falling on the roof and closed her eyes, hoping for it to end, somehow, then something smashed along the side of the house. There was the sound of more glass breaking.

The sound of the earthquake eased and the shaking stopped. Alice stood up from where she had wedged herself against the doorframe and reached up to flick the light switch and survey the damage. Nothing. The power was out. She fumbled her way to the side of her bed, where her cellphone had fallen down between the bed and bedside table. It was 4:37. She wrote a text to her mother, fumbling the phone and mistyping. It seemed like an eternity to simply say she was okay and to ask were they. The phone was showing network service, so hopefully she would hear something back quickly.

The phone had a torch function that Alice used to find some shoes. She pulled the door open and shone the torch out into the hallway. Now that the door was open, she heard Chloe crying. The house felt cold, and Alice could feel a breeze coming from the lounge. She picked her way through the doorway into the lounge, where she saw the night outside where most of the wall had been. Most of the brick wall of the lounge had fallen, both inward onto the sofa and outward onto the driveway. She heard another quake heading for the house, which started to shake again, but stopped within seconds. More bricks fell onto the driveway and plaster dust fell from the ceiling. Alice stepped back into the doorway, she felt safer there.

Alice called out to Chloe, who called back saying she was okay. ‘Put shoes on,’ Alice yelled. Then Chloe was beside her, sniffing, trying not to cry.

‘That was so scary,’ Chloe said. She was shivering and Alice put an arm around her.

‘Do you think it was Wellington?’ Alice said, and immediately regretted it, because Chloe began to panic and start crying again, her family was in Wellington. Alice gave her the phone to try calling them, she would call her own family afterwards. She wondered about her parents, if the quake had scared Olivia and Jack. They were only five and three, they would either be terrified or see it as a big adventure.

Someone answered Chloe’s call. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, her voice high-pitched and shaky. Then, ‘We’ve felt a big quake here, we thought it was you.’

‘It must be local,’ Alice whispered. Chloe shook her head furiously, but the gesture meant nothing to Alice. She decided it was best to be quiet, just wait until Chloe had finished her call.

‘Well I’m okay,’ Chloe said. ‘But the house is a mess.’ They heard another quake approaching and braced themselves as the house started to shake. ‘There’s another one now,’ she said, and her voice broke. ‘No, it’s stopped. I’m okay.’

Alice didn’t think she was. Chloe said goodbye to whichever of her parents she had woken and said she would call them later. Chloe passed the phone back to Alice. ‘There’s a message,’ she said.

It was from Alice’s mother, who said they were all okay. Alice took a deep breath, relieved. More rumbling, then shaking.

‘Ben!’ Chloe said, and they moved as quickly as they could to the bedroom at the end of the hallway and banged on Ben’s bedroom door. There was no answer. They opened the door and walked into the bedroom, stepping carefully. Books had slid from the desk onto the floor, landing on the shoes and clothes that were normally there. Ben was draped over the bed crossways where Alice had left him, snoring softly. Alice gave him a shove in the arm, which resulted in a mumbled grunt, but no signs of true consciousness.

‘Typical,’ Chloe said, and turned to leave the room. They heard the roar of another approaching quake and froze, but it didn’t last long, and there was no movement from Ben.

‘Let him sleep, I suppose,’ Alice said, shrugging. Her phone rang. It was her mother. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘but the wall in the lounge has collapsed. I don’t think we can stay here. And I don’t think I’ll be able to get my car down the driveway.’ Her mother had been in touch with Alice’s grandparents and great-grandparents and everyone was fine, but scared. Lindsay said once they got the kids settled, Kevin would pick her up. They had power at home, but from what they had heard on the radio, not many in the city did.

‘Where was it?’ Alice asked. She put her arm around Chloe and pulled her out of Ben’s bedroom and into the hallway. Chloe was shaking again, she was probably in shock. They needed blankets.

‘Darfield,’ Lindsay said. Alice could hear Kevin in the background telling Olivia and Jack to stay under the table.

‘Darfield?’ Alice said. Darfield was a farming town on the Canterbury Plains, about forty kilometres west of the city. It was surprising because the Canterbury Plains were not an earthquake hotspot.

‘What about Darfield?’ Chloe said.

‘I love you, Mum,’ Alice said, and she started to cry. ‘No, I’m okay. I’ll see you soon.’ She ended the call and tried to think what to do.

They couldn’t do much while it was still dark and the power was off, and if she kept using her phone as a torch, it would quickly lose its charge. They decided to bundle up warm and go outside and see what was going on in the neighbourhood. Bricks from the neighbour’s chimney lay scattered on their roof. Out on the street there were no signs of activity, almost as though the quake had only affected them. There was a rumble coming from the west and it became louder and louder, and they crouched down, then felt the ground under their feet rise and fall and heard the house shaking, bricks coming off the wrecked wall. It was a different experience outside, in the dark, with all the street and house lights out and only the waning moon for light. Alice couldn’t decide whether it was more or less terrifying than being inside, surrounded by the sounds of the house shaking and wondering if something was going to fall on them. It seemed safer outside, but it was cold and so they went back inside. Chloe had a double bed, so Alice grabbed her duvet and they piled onto Chloe’s bed to keep warm. They tried talking about nothing to drown out the sound of approaching aftershocks, but it didn’t really work. Both read stories off different news websites, but the pages were loading slowly and it was the same information over and over. A 7.4 earthquake at Greendale, which neither of them had ever heard of, and lots of aftershocks. The slow network was draining their phones so they decided to turn them off, only checking every half hour or so.

Once six o’clock had passed and the news started spreading throughout the awakening country, their half-hourly check-ins had their phones constantly beeping as missed call notifications and messages came through, friends and family checking to see that they were okay. Alice was sending the same message over and over again, ‘Scary, but I’m ok, luv u.’ There was one from Andrew asking if she was okay, and she replied simply, ‘Yes.’

It was getting light enough to get up and have a better look at the damage, and so they wrapped themselves in blankets and walked tentatively around the house. The kitchen was a mess. The oven and fridge had danced across the floor and sat at odd angles, surrounded by bricks from the collapsed wall and food ejected from the kitchen bench and pantry. The place smelled of red wine and Italian herbs.

Kevin arrived just after seven o’clock, and the sound of voices finally roused Ben, who stumbled into the hallway, bewildered.

‘What’ve you done to the place?’ he asked, rubbing his face.