Bleak City (36 page)

Kevin welcomed them inside and as they walked into the lounge, he shot Lindsay a look that said he was worried. Kevin wasn’t impressed with EQC, he had heard too many bad things.

Lindsay and Kevin sat on one sofa while Kurt and John sat on the other. Kurt was about to start speaking, but Kevin got there first.

‘We’re not happy with the latest scope of works,’ Kevin said. He reached across to the coffee table, where Lindsay had stacked their information. He picked up their copy of the scope. ‘The first scope had the house being lifted and the ring foundation replaced, this just glues the cracks,’ he said, waving the sheaf of paper.

Kurt and John exchanged glances that Lindsay could not interpret. Were they mentally slotting them into the difficult customer category? Or were they sympathising? Had the previous PM been replaced because there were issues? Lindsay was briefly hopeful that the previous scope would be reinstated, that they wouldn’t have to fight to get their damage properly repaired.

Kurt made no comment on the suitability of the second scope, but he did say he and John would do a new assessment, take some floor level measurements.

‘We’ve been waiting for the geotech report,’ Kevin said, as they started to stand up. They sat back down again. ‘The work was done last year, but the report seems to be taking a long time and it doesn’t make sense to decide what’s done to the foundation without the geotech report.’

‘After all,’ Lindsay added, ‘we’re TC3 and we need foundation work, which requires a geotech investigation. It seems backwards to decide on a repair strategy without the geotech report.’

Kurt tapped on his tablet and after a few moments told them the previous PM had cancelled the geotech report after his first visit.

‘That’s before the structural engineer visited,’ Lindsay said, irritated. ‘He’s decided he can glue the cracks without waiting for the engineering report, and that’s backwards.’

‘Well let’s have a look around and take some measurements,’ Kurt said.

Kevin and Lindsay had drawn up a layout of the house when they first moved in, to figure out what renovations they would do, and it was coming in handy as various people went through the house carrying out assessments. Kevin handed them a copy of the layout and went around the house with them while Lindsay stayed in the lounge, by the fire, trying to quell her sense of unease. After a few minutes of becoming more agitated, she went through to the kitchen and started preparing vegetables for dinner, peeling potatoes, kumara and carrots, chopping broccoli. She became so engrossed in distracting herself that she soon realised she had done enough vegetables for two nights. Oh well, that’s what refrigerators were for, after all.

‘They’re off, Lin,’ Kevin called from the front doorway. Lindsay wiped her hands dry and went through to say goodbye to the men. She and Kevin stood on the front steps and watched them walk down the driveway. The wind had picked up and its chill bit through Lindsay’s jumper, making her shiver. She rubbed her arms, and they continued watching the men. When the two project managers were out of sight, Lindsay and Kevin walked back inside and shut the door. In the kitchen, Lindsay boiled the jug and made Kevin a coffee.

‘You not having one?’ Kevin said.

‘My stomach’s agitated enough,’ Lindsay said. ‘I don’t like this.’

They walked through to the lounge and sat on the sofa nearest the fire.

‘I don’t either,’ Kevin said.

‘They didn’t even go under the house. Did you tell them where the manhole is?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Kevin said. ‘They said they didn’t need to go under, so I didn’t bother suggesting they go up into the roof.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Lindsay said. ‘They were going to lift the house and now they’re not and they don’t have any explanation for it.’

‘They’re trying to stick us with a cheap repair, that’s what’s going on,’ Kevin said.

‘We need a lawyer,’ Lindsay said. She knew this wasn’t what Kevin wanted to hear, but her suspicions the last few months had been confirmed when their new project manager said their geotech report had been cancelled.

‘We’ll call up, ask about the geotech report,’ Kevin said. ‘See what happens.’

‘But they’ve said it’s cancelled, what’s the point of that? We need to get someone involved who knows what they’re doing.’

Kevin closed his eyes, he was thinking. Lindsay kept her mouth shut, pushing wasn’t the way to get her point across.

‘We’ll keep getting as much information as we can,’ Kevin said at last, ‘then we’ll know what we’re dealing with. Until then, a lawyer is jumping the gun.’

Lindsay nodded, although she didn’t agree. ‘I’ll call up about the geotech report,’ she said. ‘But I’ll call the insurance company, not the PMO.’

‘Good idea,’ Kevin said. He swallowed back the last of his coffee and set his cup on the coffee table.

‘I used to feel sorry for people who’ve been red zoned,’ Lindsay said. ‘But in some ways they’re the lucky ones.’

Kevin raised an eyebrow.

‘Not my parents, I don’t mean them, but people like Jase and Carla, they’ve moved on, they’re in their new places.’

‘You’re right about that,’ Kevin said, ‘but they do have a bigger mortgage, red zoning didn’t give them enough to get back the equivalent. That’s set them back some.’

‘That’s true,’ Lindsay said.

‘But are most red zoners better off?’ Kevin went on. ‘Or are there more like the O’Loughlins, who’ve had to get lawyers to get what they’re entitled to?’

A decision had been handed down in the O’Loughlin case in April. The O’Loughlins had a red zoned house and their insurance company offered to settle based on the repair of the property. The court ruled that insurers could do this because the red zoning process could not be regarded as damage that the insurer had to pay for, even though repairs could not legally be carried out. However, the court did find that the O’Loughlins’ insurer had not met their obligations, because their fictional repair involved a strategy that had a high likelihood of failure and had not, in fact, been carried out by the insurer’s experts. In effect, the insurer was trying to get the O’Loughlins to accept a repair strategy that was not realistic and not likely to be attempted if their house actually could have been repaired.

‘Did they say anything about the foundations as you went around?’ Lindsay asked.

‘No, they just pointed and looked,’ Kevin said.

‘At least they can see how crumbly it is,’ Lindsay said. ‘Surely they won’t go away thinking that can be patched.’

Kevin shrugged. ‘Hopefully,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know.’

Kevin put his arm around her and she snuggled into him. Outside drops of rain started to hit the windows, blown in by the chill wind. ‘It’ll be okay,’ Kevin said, kissing her cheek. She nodded. ‘Really, it will.’

It was a strange thing, being excluded from going into the centre of the city you lived in, but it was normal life for the people of Christchurch for over two years following the February 2011 earthquake. The original red zone cordon had gradually been reduced. Each time, Alice had come into the city to walk around the newly-moved barriers, peering in to see what was going on, what had changed. She was never the only one, there was always someone else with a dazed expression, trying to make sense of where they were, what they were seeing. It helped Alice to know she wasn’t the only one feeling dislocated. She knew the demolition and rebuild would take years and that there were people who had decided they would avoid the city centre until then. But Alice preferred to be shocked bit by tiny bit, gradually demolishing her idea of what a normal city was and replacing it with this new transitional city.

Finally the last of the cordon was coming down. Officials held a ceremony to stand down the army troops who had manned the cordon since February 2011, but Alice, Sean and Charlotte wanted to avoid all of that. It seemed put on by people from outside the city, the Prime Minister and other politicians down from Wellington, the officials from CERA. Yes, City Council officials and local Ministers of Parliament would be there, but it seemed more like the locals were guests rather than the hosts.

The rebuild was feeling more and more like something being imposed on the city by Wellington rather than being done by the people who were supposed to be running the city. There were political things going on, tensions between the City Council and the Minister for Earthquake Recovery, and there were rumours that the Government would take over the City Council and put commissioners in place. Sean and Charlotte said they had enough of seeing people play happy families at home, they didn’t want to see it on what should be a relaxing afternoon in the newly cordonless city. Alice understood, the tension between their parents was getting to them both.

Sean had talked to Alice about wanting to leave home. He was 21 and he wanted to go flatting for his last year at uni, but he didn’t want to leave Charlotte home alone, dealing with their parents by herself. Alice could relate, she should be flatting as well, but she didn’t want to leave her family, not if she could help around the house and so reduce some of the pressure her mother and Kevin were feeling. She felt sorry for Olivia and Jack, their happy, fun parents had been replaced by stressed, angry people who had trouble relaxing. Alice was the fun one now, who read to them at night and made them laugh.

Alice, Sean and Charlotte went into the city late in the afternoon, parking down by the hospital and walking along the river into the city. A month earlier they had debated whether or not take a red zone bus tour, but that seemed wrong, being shown around your own city, told a history that might not match your own experience, and seeing it from bus height rather than the eye level they were used to. They had decided to wait until the end of June and do the self-guided option.

Apart from the days after the container mall had opened, Alice had never seen so many people in the city since the big quake. People weren’t in a hurry, they were stopping to look, to figure out what had been where they were standing, thoughtful and quiet, some teary. The day was warm and dry for midwinter, no rain threatening, no chill wind to put people off. It was like the city had put on its best winter weather to welcome its citizens back in.

It was disconcerting knowing what street she was on but trying to convince her brain that was where she was. They stood on the corner of Hereford, Colombo and High Streets, looking up the tramlines and through to Cashel Mall, turning, trying to take it all in. A sculpture of a sheaf of wheat rose from the stone paving, starkly silver, towering above them. Alice couldn’t remember if it was there before the quakes. Of course it had been, why would they put something like that up now when there hadn’t yet been any memorials to the people who had died in the February quake? Maybe the sculpture hadn’t been noticeable because of the buildings. But now there were hardly any buildings, so the wheat sheaf stood out.

Near the wheat sheaf stood a shiny new sign, about as tall as Alice. It had photos of the building that used to stand on the corner of High and Hereford Streets and said that it had been built in Venetian Gothic Style. Sean was reading it, puzzled.

‘Why mark this one?’ he said. ‘But not all the others?’ He was turning again, still trying to get his bearings, figuring out where the building in the photo had stood. He read off one part of the sign. ‘“What architectural styles or features do you like on High?”’

‘Well this rubble grunge motif lends a kind of end-of-the-world ambiance,’ Charlotte said in a posh accent, crooking her arm like she was sucking smoke from an old-fashioned cigarette holder. ‘But I do wonder if the architect has considered the functional aspects of the design. The day-to-day uses, you know.’

‘The signs were for the Rugby World Cup,’ Alice said. ‘Don’t you remember? They started turning up all over the city at the end of 2010. There’s one down on Moorhouse pointing the way to the stadium.’

Sean nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten all about that.’

‘I haven’t had KFC since the day of the quake,’ Charlotte said in a soft, faraway voice, the posh one gone. She was looking up Colombo Street to the spot where the red and white KFC shop used to stand. The site was clear, the whole shopping complex that once filled it gone, pounded into rubble and trucked out of the city. ‘I got out of school early and came into the city, had some KFC and then walked up to South City, met Nanny and then it hit.’ It was the first time she had mentioned what she had been doing the day of the quake to either Alice or Sean. They both glanced at each other over the top of Charlotte’s head. Had Charlotte lingered in the city just a few minutes longer, she would have been on Colombo Street, where a building collapsed onto a bus.

‘Which way?’ Sean said.

The old green-blue BNZ building that had been demolished to half-height pointed the way towards Cathedral Square, but Charlotte had already shot off up Hereford Street. Alice and Sean followed and stopped where she had stopped, peering in through the murky windows of a café. There were still cups and plates on the tables, dried food on them. The food cabinets held what could not really be described as food, not after more than two years.

‘That’s disgusting,’ Alice said. ‘It must stink in there, or do you think it’s beyond that?’

‘Let’s not find out,’ Charlotte said, quickly walking off back towards the Square. ‘There’s probably rats in there.’

In the Square, people were milling around fencing that kept them from getting too close to the gothic cathedral that marked the centre of the city. A few people held up cameras, but more just stared. There was steel bracing holding up the front of the old church, although it was difficult to tell if the bracing was actually doing anything, so much of the front of the building had fallen away. Inside, pigeons lined the wooden rafters.

‘Wow, what a mess,’ Charlotte said. ‘Pigeon central.’

‘Were there pigeons before the quakes?’ Sean said. Alice and Charlotte shot him a look that said he was stupid. ‘Well of course there were, but I don’t remember ever seeing any. Maybe it’s like the birds on the river and rats and stuff and the quakes have given them the opportunity to really take off.’