Some of these people had bare sections, which couldn’t be insured so had no EQC cover. Others didn’t have insurance for various reasons, from deliberately choosing not to have insurance to having missed payments due to illness or other difficult situations; these people were offered nothing for their houses. Alice’s grandparents finally received the news that their section was red zoned, but they hadn’t received an offer. But the news of the half-price offers came on the heels of the discovery of the poor state of repairs to their house and both were looking stressed, like they hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a long time. Alice and Lindsay decided to arrange a family dinner for the weekend so everyone could spend some time together, take their minds off what was going on with houses, land, city. Lindsay wanted to have a barbecue, but although technically September was spring, the weather was too unpredictable to guarantee a barbecue wouldn’t result in one miserable man cooking meat in what passed for shelter just inside the open garage.
