Bleak City (48 page)

‘I’ll get the wheat bag,’ Alice said, and Lindsay just lay there waiting, waiting for the pills to work, waiting for the microwave to beep, waiting for the wheat bag. Kevin stirred as Alice returned with the wheat bag, mumbled was everything okay. Alice left the room and soon Lindsay heard the jug starting to boil. She told Kevin she didn’t think she’d be of much use today, because of the pain, and soon Alice returned with a coffee for Kevin.

‘Just rest, babe,’ Kevin said. ‘Me and Ali can get it done.’

They had a trailer and were finally going to do something about the backyard. They had neglected it since the quakes. They had made some efforts in that first summer to help the plants recover from being submerged in liquefaction silt, but water restrictions meant they gave up. It was hot that summer, and Lindsay would forget to water the yard on their allotted days, and she didn’t want to be watering on other days. That’s what water restrictions were about, recognising that there wasn’t much water and cutting back so everyone got their fair share.

Sometimes Lindsay wondered whether it was worth playing fair, when it was so obvious others didn’t see things the same way.

Once Kevin had finished his coffee, he got up and pulled on his dirty work clothes from the laundry basket. ‘I’ll put a load on later,’ he said. He made her another coffee and brought her some toast, then kissed her forehead and disappeared out into the yard.

The painkillers took over an hour to kick in, and when Lindsay could move comfortably, she got up and sat through in the kitchen, watching the activity in the backyard. Kevin and Alice were taking down two trees, with the help of Olivia and Jack, who had been given the task of filling up the trailer with the smaller branches that were coming off the trees.

The pain was better the next day, and after dropping the kids at school, Lindsay went home and made herself breakfast. She sat at the dining table and took in the view out back. The trees Kevin and Alice had taken out had opened up the backyard and the kitchen was warmer from all the sunlight coming through. Lindsay remembered everything she liked about the house and the section when they first moved in, their plans to modernise it and raise their children there. Enough dreaming about the years they had lost to the delay in settling their claim, she had invoicing to do. Kevin was picking up more work, so there was one less thing to stress about.

Their claims manager had told them the a couple of weeks earlier that the consent application had been lodged. It would be maybe six weeks before they heard one way or another whether consent was granted. Lindsay hoped not. Getting consent would energise the insurance company, motivate them to proceed with their half-baked repair. They weren’t even clear what the repair entailed, John Rutherford still hadn’t answered their questions or come back to them when they pointed out parts of the scope of works that didn’t make sense. They should ask Bitterman for the consent application, but that would involve contact, and both Lindsay and Kevin detested contact with the man. Kevin, especially, would descend into some dark place for the rest of any day in which he had contact with Bitterman. Lindsay had never seen him like that, not even when his father had been dying.

Lindsay was working at the laptop in the lounge when Charlotte knocked on the window. Lindsay glanced at the clock on the computer, it was nearly one o’clock and time for lunch. She opened up the back door to say hello to Charlotte and invite her in. But Charlotte just stood there, uncertain. Her face was red from trying not to cry, but in spite of her efforts a single tear rolled down her cheek.

‘Is Alice home?’ she asked, wiping the tear away.

‘No, sweetie, she’s at work,’ Lindsay said.

Charlotte struggled to find words. ‘I just thought,’ she said. ‘It’s lunchtime, maybe she would come home for lunch.’

‘You could...’ Lindsay started.

‘I didn’t want to go by her work, because I don’t want Uncle Gerald to see me.’ She started crying properly, sniffing back tears.

‘What’s happened?’ Lindsay said, reaching out to pull the girl towards her and into the house. ‘Come in, have some lunch.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Charlotte said, wiping tears away. ‘But thanks.’

‘Well I am, so you might as well have something, too, while you tell me what’s wrong,’ Lindsay said. She put the jug on, pulled a loaf of bread from the pantry and started getting ingredients from the fridge. ‘Coffee or tea?’

‘Milo?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Milo it is,’ Lindsay said. She started buttering bread while waiting for Charlotte to start talking.

Charlotte pulled two cups from the pantry. ‘You?’ she asked.

‘Coffee,’ Lindsay said.

By the time the jug had boiled and Charlotte had made the drinks, Lindsay had finished making two sandwiches, which she plated and put on the dining table. Both sat down and Lindsay started eating while Charlotte sipped at her Milo.

‘I’ve really messed up my exams,’ Charlotte said at last.

‘You had one this morning?’ Lindsay said.

Charlotte nodded.

‘I remember how stressful exams were,’ Lindsay said. ‘There were times I thought I had done really badly, but ended up doing okay.’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘No, I know I’ve done really badly.’

‘Okay then,’ Lindsay said. ‘What about your other subjects?’

‘Pretty much the same,’ Charlotte said, her eyes down, focussed on her sandwich. She picked it up and took a half-hearted bite, chewed slowly.

‘What do you want to do about it?’ Lindsay remembered the pressure she had felt over doing well on exams, that her whole future hung on getting it right. She felt sorry for Charlotte. From what Alice said, her family were the high expectations type, and with the brother doing well at university, there must be enormous pressure on Charlotte to follow in his footsteps.

‘Not tell my mum and dad,’ Charlotte said.

‘I get that,’ Lindsay said. ‘But you never know, they might understand.’

Charlotte shook her head and started crying. ‘No, they won’t,’ she said. ‘They’ll be disappointed and upset and on top of all the house stuff...’ She sniffed hard through her blocked nose.

Lindsay reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘What are you supposed to be doing this afternoon?’

‘Studying for another exam,’ Charlotte said.

‘Well how about doing that here for the afternoon, Alice will be home at four-thirty and you can talk to her.’

Charlotte nodded. ‘That would be good.’

‘You have your stuff with you? So you can study?’

Charlotte nodded again. She looked like she was five years old.

‘You can work here in the sun, and I’ll be through in the lounge. You can come with me when I pick up the kids. How’s that sound?’

‘Great,’ Charlotte said, giving a brief smile.

They tidied up from lunch and Lindsay settled back in front of the laptop while Charlotte spread her study materials out on the dining table. The afternoon passed quickly and after picking up the kids, Olivia and Jack took Charlotte out into the backyard to show her their handiwork while Lindsay started preparing dinner.

From the lounge, there was an alert from an email arriving. It was from their claims manager and said that consent for their repairs had been granted. The next step, he said, was getting a builder on site to tender for the work and start discussing temporary accommodation.

Lindsay felt a headache starting in her temple, the kind of headache that often turned into a migraine for her. This was another thing Lindsay was experiencing far too often lately, since around the time her painful periods had started. She needed to go to the doctor, but kept putting it off. Too much to do, especially now that they had to figure out some way to stop this dodgy repair from going ahead.

Stress was taking its toll on Lindsay, she recognised that. She needed to do something to stop it from getting to some sort of crisis point, as it had with her mother. Charlotte, it seemed, had reached her own crisis point, with the stress at home affecting her studies. Lindsay wondered what the long-term effects would be on Olivia and Jack. She and Kevin tried to shelter the children from what was going on with the house, but were they doing an effective job of that? Or were their children hiding their problems, the same way Charlotte had, it seemed, been hiding her problems from her own parents?

Soon the edges of her vision started to blur so she topped up her painkiller. Maybe it would head off the full-on migraine. She hoped so, she needed her thoughts in order when she and Kevin talked about the house that night, especially if Kevin retreated into a black mood. If that happened, she would leave him alone to work it out, as trying to talk through it only seemed to put more pressure on him. There was enough stress from dealing with the insurance company, it wasn’t good to be a source of stress to one another.

Although it was officially summer, Alice had a winter cold. She was blocked up and her throat felt like there was something sharp stuck partway down. She kept waking herself coughing in the night, and in the morning when Olivia and Jack were chattering away in the kitchen, Lindsay brought Alice a lemon and honey drink and a paracetamol.

‘You want me to let Gerald know?’ Lindsay said.

‘Yes, please,’ Alice whispered. It hurt to speak too loudly. She dragged herself up into a half-sitting position and sipped at the drink, which took the edge off the soreness in her throat. She soon fell back asleep.

When she woke she was damp with sweat, but she wasn’t sure if it was because the room was so hot or because she had a fever. She opened the bedroom windows. Although it was hot outside, the fresh air was welcome. She got back into bed but threw the duvet off, using only the sheet.

She checked her phone. It was 11:30 and the house was quiet. She got up and walked through to the kitchen, where Lindsay was sitting at the laptop working. All the windows were open and a slight breeze was coming in. ‘You feeling better?’ she asked while continuing to focus on the screen.

‘Not really,’ Alice said. She pulled out a chair and flopped into it.

Lindsay stood up and came over to her, used the back of her hand to feel her forehead. ‘You’re warm,’ Lindsay said, ‘but that might be the day.’ Alice moved to get up and get the thermometer but Lindsay told her to stay there, she would get it.

‘Up just a bit,’ Lindsay said a couple of minutes later. ‘You hungry?’

‘Just a little.’

Lindsay heated up some soup and Alice ate a couple of spoons of it while Lindsay kept going with her work. Once she finished, they could watch some DVDs, she said.

‘Not
Treme
,’ Alice said.
Treme
was a drama set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Wrecked buildings, emergency repairs, temporary accommodation, depopulation, insurance issues. It was all too depressing, and that was just the first episode. Maybe once she felt better she would try again. Lindsay had asked why she wanted to watch it, she said she wanted to understand how a city moved on, wanted to see that was possible, because it didn’t feel like Christchurch was moving on.

‘
Person of Interest
then?’

Alice nodded. But she fell asleep only a few minutes into the episode.

When she woke up, the television was off and Lindsay was stretched out on the other sofa, reading something on the laptop.

‘Whatchya reading?’ Alice asked.

‘News stuff,’ Lindsay said. ‘That engineer’s been expelled from IPENZ. You know, the EQC one doing the cursory inspections, ruling damage historic. Heaps of people complained about him. Expelled for three years. Hardly seems enough, really. Negligent and incompetent.’

‘Really?’ Alice said. ‘I figured IPENZ would let him wriggle out of it somehow.’

‘Here, have a read,’ she stood up from the sofa and passed the laptop over to Alice. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

‘A coffee, thanks,’ Alice said and started reading.

Lindsay came back with two drinks, set one down on the coffee table near Alice and sat back down. ‘It’s a good start,’ she said, ‘sounds like they’ll be having to redo a lot of assessments.’

‘He can appeal,’ Alice said. ‘They won’t do anything till they’ve tried that one.’ She sat up properly and passed the laptop back to Lindsay before starting to sip her drink, which wasn’t a coffee. Lindsay didn’t think sick people should have caffeine, whereas Alice thought sick people should have whatever they wanted as compensation for being sick. It was an argument that had run for many years, one that Alice knew she would likely never win.

‘Sounds like the guy was just doing everything to minimise the cost of repairs rather than actually get the job done right,’ Lindsay said. ‘Engineers have a code of ethics, don’t they?’

‘Sure do,’ Alice said. ‘Google IPENZ and ethics, should be easy enough to find.’

‘Yup, found it,’ Lindsay said. ‘Talks about moral obligations, duties and integrity. And working for the benefit of society.’

Alice scoffed. ‘Yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to be about. Not like that first guy you had around, the one who was clearly just signing off on the project manager’s opinion.’

‘You have a low opinion of engineers these days,’ Lindsay said. ‘Not all of them are bad.’

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t seen much in the last four years that gives me confidence in these so-called professionals,’ Alice said. ‘Engineers, project managers, lawyers, builders, all of them, will dispense with their ethics as soon as there’s lots of money to be made.’

‘Do you include Gerald in that?’ Lindsay said.

‘No, of course not,’ Alice said. ‘He tries to do the right thing. Or seems to.’

‘Just seems? You don’t sound too sure.’

‘It’s not that, it’s just there’s this real grey area in what’s ethical and what isn’t. You have to look after your customers, but you also have to look after your own business, and your workers. Gerald’s very interested in looking after his workers properly.’

‘That’s a good thing,’ Lindsay said. ‘It motivates him to manage the workload well, look after the business’s reputation.’

‘Yeah, he’s not after making a quick buck,’ Alice said. Lindsay was always reserved about any mention of Andrew’s side of the family, except when it came to Gerald and Sylvia. She seemed to have a lot of time for them both, which made Alice wonder why she hadn’t made the effort to ensure Alice stayed in touch with them. ‘So you think Gerald and Sylvia are pretty okay?’