Bleak City (55 page)

The webpage was still open, listing Marjorie’s birth and her two marriages. Suzanne had always thought her parents were married in 1942, but the website said 1943, in the second quarter. Suzanne herself was born in September 1943, the end of the third quarter. Fancy that, all those years Marjorie and Bill had celebrated the wrong anniversary, saying they had been married a year longer to avoid admitting to a wartime indiscretion. Suzanne laughed, and then stopped short.

She searched but could find no deaths for a Walter Finlay that made sense, given what she knew. It seemed the free database didn’t list deaths in combat, so she googled for lists of British soldiers who died in combat. There was a war graves website, and she entered her search terms.

There were only a handful of results, so she quickly found what she was looking for. Walter Finlay, age 23, husband of Kathy, died on the 16th of February 1943, seven months before Suzanne was born. Had Marjorie ever told Bill? She had married him under her maiden name, so possibly not. But there was no way of knowing now, and it no longer mattered.

Suzanne felt relief. Her mother’s attitude had never been about her, it had been about what she had lost and couldn’t bear living without.

Neil and Heather had finally received the payout for their red zoned section in October. A month later, Heather still wondered if she was going to wake up from this cruel dream and realise they still owned a piece of land they could do nothing with. The first few mornings, she checked their bank account while making cups of tea, admiring the substantial jump in their balance and wondering what they could do with it. On the fifth day, she resisted the temptation, to keep doing so would be obsessive and she needed to keep an eye on her tendency to obsessive thinking.

There was so much to obsess about in Christchurch, that had been clear when Heather and Lindsay went to a public meeting about the quality of repairs. The meeting had been held in the temporary cardboard cathedral and was packed. It was good for both of them to see that others were affected by the same issues they were experiencing, it wasn’t just their family being especially unlucky. Lindsay said afterwards that she felt less alone seeing all those people in the cathedral.

The Government was ignoring the shoddy repairs fiasco, and the Opposition seemed unable, or unwilling, to really dig into the issues that the foundation repairs survey had raised. A petition had been launched calling for a Royal Commission into earthquake repairs, something the Government insisted there was no need for. But a full third of the surveyed repairs failing was serious, anyone with a brain could see that. Instead, the Government was saying it wasn’t many houses and all could be fixed up for under $1000 each.

That was rubbish. Going by the shoddy repairs to their own house and what had been proposed for Lindsay and Kevin’s house, it was likely that issues with foundation repairs were because the work hadn’t been scoped properly. If the scope of works was wrong, that was the fault of EQC and Fletchers, not the builder, and it should be up to EQC to carry the cost of re-repairs.

There had also been a court action filed by a group of one hundred EQC claimants. They claimed EQC wasn’t meeting its legal obligations to homeowners and wanted the court to make declarations regarding the standard repairs needed to meet. Other issues the group wanted the court to decide were whether EQC was cash settling claims in a manner that left homeowners with enough money to carry out repairs and whether homeowners should be expected to pay for upgrades to electrical wiring and other wear and tear exposed because earthquake repairs were being carried out.

Heather knew the group was in for a long wait before its members finally had options, the way Neil and Heather did now. After all, the Quake Outcasts group action Neil and Heather had benefited from had first been heard in the High Court in 2013, and that had only recently been resolved.

Neil and Heather had agreed they wouldn’t discuss options until the new year, to let them enjoy a holiday without the worry of the section hanging over them. Heather intended to stick to that promise. It held for two weeks, and it was Neil who broke it, bringing home a copy of the real estate book along with the shopping after work one day.

Heather didn’t want to be interested. ‘We can’t afford anything in here,’ she said, ‘not without selling this place, and while the repairs aren’t sorted...’

‘We could,’ Neil said, ‘if we rented it out.’

‘Only if the bank says yes,’ Heather said.

‘If I sold the business, the bank would say yes,’ Neil said. ‘They’d even say yes if we just rented this place out, on the strength of our history with them, and given the business is doing so well.’ That had been one thing that hadn’t gone wrong due to the earthquakes. The city’s rough roads were hard on vehicles and mechanics all over the city never had to worry about a decline in customers, once their workshops were up and running following the quake. He could put the business on the market and see what interest there was.

‘You’ve talked to them?’ Heather didn’t know whether she should be upset that he had gone behind her back, but she realised it was better this way. If the bank had said no, she would never know and wouldn’t be disappointed and upset. She had spent too much time being upset over the past five years.

It was time to retire, Neil said. He was past retirement age, and she had turned 65 a few months earlier.

‘We have two options, love,’ Neil said. ‘Sell the business and use the money from it and the section to buy something new, which might take as long as a year, or rent this place out and use the section money for the deposit on something. Then, when the business sells, pay off a big chunk of the new mortgage.’

‘What do you want to do?’ she asked. Her head was swimming. They had options, two of them, whereas just two months ago they had none. She had spent the last couple of weeks, since the money had been deposited, thinking they needed to wait for the repairs to the house to be sorted. But no, Neil said, they could think about moving on now.

The repairs of the repairs would take a long time, Heather knew that. An appointment had been made for someone from EQC’s Remedial Repairs Team to come and inspect the repairs. It was nice to have progress, at last, but an appointment was no guarantee that they would be listened to, and Kevin was going to be there during the appointment to be their third pair of eyes. But that seemed like less of an issue now, because they had options. Two of them.

‘Let’s start looking,’ she said. ‘See about selling the business, and start looking.’

They decided to go out to dinner to celebrate. It had been a beautiful day, the temperature had been up around twenty-five degrees and they decided to walk to The Tannery, the Victorian-style shopping arcade on the banks of the Heathcote River. The way there was along the river through the suburb of Hillsborough, then through industrial Woolston.

As they were walking along the river, Heather thought about where they might move to. Her instinct was to stay here, close to family, but there was no way of knowing where Lindsay and Kevin would end up as long as their house was in insurance limbo. They had finally received word from their insurance company that they had been assigned a new project manager, who was going to work through all the issues with their scope of works. It promised progress in the new year, Heather thought, but Lindsay was far from convinced. As many in Christchurch had found in the last five years, insurance company promises usually came with hooks.

Jason and Carla were expecting another baby, due in April. Their Addington townhouse wasn’t big enough for little Eddie and another baby, so they had bought a house in Hoon Hay, a suburb near the river but further west, and were moving in at the weekend.

‘I don’t want to buy anything built before the quakes,’ Heather said. ‘If we can swing it.’

She could see Neil nodding out of the corner of her eye as they walked along. ‘I agree. Far too risky. Maybe something further out in one of the newer areas, like Rolleston or Lincoln,’ he said, glancing sidelong at Heather to gauge her reaction.

‘It’s far from family,’ she said. Where they were now was so handy, less than five minutes from Lindsay and Kevin and only ten from her mother and from Jason and his family. But travelling further to visit family would be a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing that they had bought a structurally sound property.

‘It’s close enough to Jase and Carla,’ Neil said. ‘And maybe we should see about having your mum with us. That place is too big for her.’

‘You’ve thought this all through, haven’t you?’ Heather said, surprised.

‘I have,’ Neil said. ‘I really think it would be good for us to have a fresh start somewhere else. Not too far away, because we need to be near the kids, but far enough to give us room to recover.’

‘I love the idea,’ Heather said. She hooked her arm through Neil’s and kissed him on the cheek. ‘And I love you.’

It was nearly the end of the year and looking back Lindsay didn’t feel like they were any further ahead than they had been twelve months ago. Although their insurance company had assigned them a new project manager, they hadn’t acknowledged the previous one’s incompetence and seemed determined to stick with the same repair strategy, of just patching the foundations. Lindsay had been angry at how the insurance company had phrased the news of their new project manager, ‘In the interests of moving this claim forward, we have assigned it to a new project manager.’ Who knew what the new guy would be like?

Lindsay had stopped thinking about where else they might choose to live or about doing something new and different with their lives. Even her decades-old habit of doing something different in the house to cure her restlessness was constrained by the fact that she was restricted to moving furniture. There could be no renovations, there was no point in painting the lounge or the bedroom or looking at options for making changes in the kitchen. No point in doing anything.

Lindsay wanted to talk about leaving Christchurch, but Kevin said there wasn’t any point to discussing it until they knew how badly off they would end up financially. Lindsay didn’t want Olivia and Jack growing up in a half-finished city, where repaired houses needing to be re-repaired was considered normal. Going into the city was a lesson in contrasts, all the busy construction work going on in private developments south of the Square versus empty sections where nothing was happening north of the Square.

There was too much arguing going on between the people who were meant to be running the rebuild of the city. In the last week, Gerry Brownlee had called Treasury ‘dopey’ over a report Treasury published that said most of the Government’s anchor projects were in trouble. Lindsay couldn’t understand why a Government minister, someone trusted with authority, didn’t seem able to take responsibility for issues. He could, however, be consistently relied on to call any critic a name.

Between their own insurance problems, what was going on with the houses around them and the governmental squabbling, Lindsay was sick of the whole place, and she didn’t want her children growing up in a poorly-functioning city whose so-called leaders showed less maturity than your average new entrant.

School holidays were coming up and the kids only had two weeks left of school. Lindsay and Kevin wanted to do something holiday-like with them over the summer, not just have Alice look after them while Kevin worked and Lindsay did insurance paperwork. No, that was going to be shelved for at least three weeks, they were going to ignore their email so they could have an actual break. They had decided on camping near Arthur’s Pass and were going to head up on Boxing Day, after the madness of Christmas was over.

That was the plan, anyway. All Lindsay had to get through was the next two weeks, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to accomplish that because it was only Saturday morning and already Olivia and Jack had been arguing most of the morning. Lindsay hadn’t even been able to finish making pancakes yet, so getting through the next two weeks without having some sort of explosion was seeming less and less likely. Maybe Kevin and Lindsay should go camping in separate places, one child each, that might be the only way she would get any peace and quiet, any real escape from the pressures of living in the city.

Lindsay could hear them in the lounge, back and forth, trading names. She stepped away from the bowl she was mixing pancakes in and brushed a loose strand of hair away from her eyes. She walked around the corner into the lounge where Olivia was sitting on the sofa with a book held to her chest. Jack was leaning against the edge of the sofa trying to see into Olivia’s book, but she was holding him at arm’s length.

‘You’re so stupid, Jack,’ Olivia said. ‘You’re a poopyhead.’

‘Olivia,’ Lindsay said. ‘Don’t talk to your brother like that.’

Olivia dropped her arm and Jack stepped away from her.

‘But he keeps bugging me with his stupid questions,’ Olivia said. ‘Make him leave me alone.’

‘I get that,’ Lindsay said, ‘and I’ll deal with that in a moment, but you shouldn’t be calling your brother names.’

‘Yeah, it’s not nice,’ Jack said.

‘Jack,’ Lindsay said. He had been about to say something else but shut his mouth tight. ‘Have you made your bed?’ She knew he wouldn’t have made his bed yet. He shook his head and scampered off to his bedroom. Lindsay turned her attention back to Olivia.

‘It’s not like I hit him,’ Olivia said.

‘No, I know you didn’t hit him,’ Lindsay said. ‘But it’s not nice to call people names.’

‘But he’s being stupid,’ Olivia insisted. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away from Lindsay.

‘Look at me,’ Lindsay said. She reached out and touched Olivia’s shoulder. Olivia shrugged her away. She kept her voice firm. ‘Olivia, I want you to listen to me. When you call your brother bad names, you’re not telling people anything about Jack, you’re telling people something about you.’

Olivia turned to look at her, a puzzled look on her face. ‘What do you mean?’