Bleak City (8 page)

‘There’s only one boss in this family,’ Nathan said, speaking more quietly than he had been before.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Who do you think?’ he said and when she continued to look puzzled, ‘Grandmother Moorhouse. Haven’t you noticed how all the adults defer to her?’

‘I’ve only been around them at her house once,’ Alice said. ‘I thought they were all so polite because she’s old.’

‘No,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s cos they’re all terrified of her.’

‘But she’s tiny.’

‘I don’t mean that she’ll beat them up,’ Nathan said. ‘But they all want the land, so they don’t dare do anything to offend her.’

Alice must have looked puzzled, because Nathan continued. ‘She owns that big block of land, river outlook, goes down to the old farmhouse. It’s all prime real estate, and subdivided would be worth millions. Whoever she leaves it to will clear the site, sell it off and make a fortune. Sorry, my mum’s a real estate agent, she knows what everyone’s properties are worth.’ Properties, not homes.

‘So they all try to keep her happy?’ Alice said.

Nathan nodded. ‘And they’re all polite to one another, because great-grandmother expects everyone to get along. Pick a fight, not a fist fight, I mean start an argument or something, and you’re in her black books for months.’

‘And it just works out like that?’

‘Mostly. As long as no one has too much to drink. Might want to stay away if they start cracking open too much wine. Not pretty.’ He shot a glance back at the family gathered around the house, then got up, took their plates and headed back to the house. Alice turned to watch him go. At first, she had thought he was a bit dumb, but clearly there was more going on his head than just rugby. Interesting.

The cousin closest to Alice’s age was Sean, he was Charlotte’s brother. He had just finished high school and was going to be studying law. He didn’t seem terribly interested in the subject, it sounded like something his parents were pushing him towards. They were both accountants, and, he said, thought law would be a good career choice. If his parents were making the career decisions in the family, Alice wondered what they would push Charlotte towards, and whether they would have any luck at all in getting her going in whatever direction they chose for her. Sean was gentle, easy-going, as relaxed as Charlotte was tightly wound. ‘She’s been like this since Mum and Dad got back together,’ Sean said when Alice mentioned it. Their parents had separated for a couple of years and this was their first summer back together.

‘Why?’ Alice said. ‘Are they fighting a lot?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t know what the story is, she’s just determined to be awful.’

Thirteen was how old Alice was when Olivia was born. She remembered how invisible she had felt during the last weeks of Lindsay’s pregnancy. Life was going to change for the second time, and she felt like she was still adjusting to the first change. She didn’t particularly enjoy the first months after Olivia was born, too much crying, too many disgusting things she had been able to avoid thinking about before. Once Olivia became more interactive, Alice found it was actually pretty cool having a baby sister. But she had to work at it, not keeping to herself, making the effort to be part of the family in a new way. It was never going back to how it had been when it was just her and Lindsay, but when she thought about getting Olivia to laugh, watching her try new foods and how excited she got when someone said Dad was home, Alice decided things were actually pretty good.

Maybe it was like that for Charlotte. Things had changed and maybe she had become used to it. Then they had changed again. It would have been frustrating, and then, as her parents had separated once before, she was probably wondering if they would be doing it again.

‘Must be confusing,’ was all Alice said.

‘Maybe,’ Sean said. ‘But that doesn’t give her the right to make everyone miserable.’

‘Looks more to me like she just wants to be left alone.’

‘Yeah, well, Mum’s determined to do the happy families thing, so that’s not going to happen.’

Sean had brought along a card game called Monopoly Deal. Alice hadn’t played it before, but it was easy enough to pick up and a good way to pass the time. At the end of each day, when the evening meal was over, Alice, Sean and Charlotte would sit and play hands. Nathan would always deal in, but had a tendency to be easily distracted, and most often ended up abandoning his hand, which went back into the bottom of the deck. It was still fun just the three of them, and by the end of their week together, Alice had exchanged cell numbers with them and connected on Instagram.

Andrew’s wife Michelle was nice, if a bit overburdened with children. There were four of them, her half-brothers and half-sister. Alice had trouble thinking of them that way. Six months ago, she had only Olivia and Jack, now she had three times as many siblings and her life was starting to feel very crowded. The girl, Matilda, was the baby, she was only four, little enough for Alice to pick her up and carry her, for a short distance at least. At first, Matilda was shy with Alice, would barely say a word, but by the end of Alice’s week there, Mattie was climbing onto her lap after dinner, telling her about her day. She noticed, also, that Mattie’s acceptance of her was softening Michelle’s attitude towards her.

Michelle and Andrew had met in Auckland, when he moved up there for work. Alice had met her a couple of times when she and Andrew first married, but Alice had been so young then that her memories were vague. When Alice had met Michelle and her half-brothers and sister after the September quake, Michelle had introduced Alice to them as their sister, which was nice, but she had been cool with Alice, as though she was unsure what space Alice could occupy in her family. She hadn’t been nasty, but she would leave Andrew and Alice to talk rather than trying to join in the conversation. She wasn’t sure how to read that, whether Michelle was just trying to give them space or deal with some lingering resentment of being reminded that she wasn’t Andrew’s first wife.

The three boys never seemed to stop long enough to have a conversation. They were like puppies, pushing each other around and wrestling. One day, Alice went with Andrew, Michelle and the children on a walk up a hill. The three boys, between eight and eleven years old, raced up the hill while Andrew, Michelle and Alice slogged their way up, Andrew carrying Mattie on his shoulders. Andrew was ahead of Michelle and Alice.

‘How are you finding the family?’ Michelle said.

‘Different from my own,’ Alice said. It seemed the most diplomatic answer, and she didn’t want to get into discussing her own family’s flaws as she had with Nathan a couple of nights earlier.

‘Gerald and Sylvia are great,’ Michelle said. ‘They’ll always do the right thing by you. But watch out for the others, they can be sharks.’

Alice didn’t know what to say and her shock must have shown on her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ Michelle said. ‘Just sometimes it bugs me that all they talk about is money, and the next deal, and how to make more money from all the money they already have.’

‘They certainly talk about money a lot,’ Alice agreed. ‘My grandad says the more money people have, the more they have to worry about.’

‘Well if worrying is indicated by talking, then they’re all very worried,’ Michelle said. She laughed. ‘I’m sorry, they’re not that bad, really, it’s just that there’s so many of them.’

‘Your family is small?’

‘Yes, it’s just me and my brother.’

‘Mum’s family is pretty big, but most of them live outside Christchurch,’ Alice said. ‘Until a few years ago, it was just me and Mum a lot of the time, and I found it hard getting used to her getting married again, and then them having kids.’

‘And now you have four more,’ Michelle said. ‘But at least they aren’t all moving in with you.’

Alice didn’t know how to reply. It was the most open Michelle had ever been with her, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and end up shutting her down. ‘I like them,’ she said. ‘Mattie reminds me of my sister Olivia. Olivia’s a bit older, but this age is great.’

‘She’s taken a real shine to you,’ Michelle said. ‘I hope you’ll be okay seeing more of them, because Mattie will need all the help she can get against those three.’ She smiled at Alice, and for the first time, Alice felt welcome in Andrew’s second family.

They had rounded the last bend and reached the final leg up towards the top of the hill. Andrew was ahead of them, just reaching the top, Mattie clinging on to his shoulders. They could hear the three boys, yelling and whooping, and found them at the top running around, chasing each other up and down the slopes, into and out of the scrub that lined the hill. Andrew was yelling at them to come back, but they weren’t listening, they were off, like hounds after a rabbit. Andrew had put Mattie down and she ran towards Michelle and Alice. Michelle scooped her up into her arms and gave her a kiss. Alice walked over to where Andrew was surveying the view to the west, out over the lake and the mountains. He pointed out Mt Aspiring and asked if she skied. School trips only, she said, but she liked it.

‘We do a family trip every winter, you’ll have to come along. There’s great skifields down here.’

Michelle came over and handed Mattie to Andrew. ‘She’s getting cranky,’ she said. ‘We’d better get back down and get these kids some lunch.’ The boys’ sharp hearing picked up the mention of food and they roared up the hillside and clustered around their parents, throwing out suggestions.

‘We’re going to go broke once all of these are in their teens,’ Andrew said, and Michelle and Alice exchanged a look. Yes, there it was, money once again.

‘I’ll start down with Mattie,’ Alice said. Andrew handed her the keys and Mattie climbed onto her back.

As she started off, she heard yelling, much louder than the boys had been a few minutes ago, mixed in with crying. She turned and looked back up the hill, where Andrew was trying to keep the two oldest boys apart as they flailed their arms at one another. The youngest had tucked himself up against Michelle and was crying. Whatever had gone on didn’t matter, it had happened before and it would happen again. She turned and continued down the hill. There were definite advantages to having siblings you didn’t live with.

Alice had just crossed the road and was walking along the river towards Andrew’s office when it started. The sound of the quake began only a moment before the shaking. Alice crouched down gracelessly, her bottom hitting the ground hard, and she put her arms over her head. Later she wasn’t sure if she had gone down out of instinct or if she had been pushed down by the force of the shaking. It was violent, up and down, up and down, the roar overwhelming, and she couldn’t hear anything but the quake and the sounds of buildings being shaken apart, the street breaking up. The cars parked on the road beside where she crouched were rocking back and forth, side-to-side.

The quake passed, the sound of it replaced with sirens and people shouting, some crying. The river roiled as silt started rising up from the force of the quake, and Alice stood up, her legs barely holding her up. She looked up to a nearby building, where people were starting to pour out, some crying, most desperately tapping at their phones or making calls, trying to get ahold of family. Across the river, a building had collapsed, awkwardly lopsided, and Alice could barely think about the implications, that there were people in there. What about the other buildings? Like the one Andrew worked in. It was hard to see, hazy, and she didn’t understand why. She needed to pull herself together. She started to move towards Andrew’s building but tripped on a crack in the pavement that hadn’t been there moments ago, grazing the palms of her hands and dropping her phone, which skittered across the footpath. She retrieved it and started back along the road, too shaky to run. Her breathing was heavy and fast, and she tried to calm herself down, giving big, slow puffs. She wasn’t calm enough to text, so shoved her phone deep into the pocket of her jeans.

Water was bubbling up from the street, thick and dark with silt. She remembered the sinkholes from the September quake and skirted the edges. There was an aftershock and she crouched down again, then told herself to stop it. There are always aftershocks, they’re not as bad as the main quake. But then what was this? This was way worse than the September quake.

She saw Andrew coming out of the building and ran up to him, threw her arms around him.

‘You’re all right,’ he said, and held her tight.

‘Yes, I’m all right,’ she said. She started to cry, and he held her, told her it would be all right.

‘Text your mum,’ he said. ‘She’ll be worried about you. But let’s get away from the buildings.’ He guided her back the way she had come, and across the river they could see the building that had collapsed, the top three or four stories pancaked, its central tower leaning to one side. She stopped to look across at the collapsed building when there was another big quake, the ground surging under their feet and all around them people screamed and buildings shook, chunks of brick, concrete and steel clattering. She didn’t know whether to crouch down or run and just ended up half-crouched, walking in a circle. She felt Andrew beside her, the pressure of his arm across her back, moving her along the road and away from the disaster unfolding across the river.

They stopped in Victoria Square, which was full of people who had the same idea: stay away from the buildings. She tried calling her mother, but the network was overloaded, so she sent a text and hoped it would get through quickly. She needed to hear back, to quell her fear.

Andrew couldn’t get a call through either, but he did receive a text from Michelle. She was fine, but the house was trashed, and she was going to pick up the kids. He texted back saying he was fine, but there was no answer, so he didn’t know if his text had gone through. Aftershocks continued to roll through.

He had walked into the city that morning, he said. She had parked in the Farmers building, so they decided to go there so they would be able to get around, depending on the roads. But it was too dangerous to go into the building, a man outside said, and Alice and Andrew realised her car was no longer an option.