QoreQoreHe has the folder open on your kitchen table. His fee is a percentage of whatever the insurer pays, fifteen per cent, and it says so on the page you signed the week he first knocked. While he is looking for a pen you notice there are two copies of your schedule in the folder, same house, same date, different totals at the bottom. One comes to a few hundred euro, about what two tiles cost. The other is the fourteen thousand. He puts that one in front of you. "That is everybody else in. Since Friday. Just yours now."
Fourteen Roofs
Storm Bettina crossed the coast in February and took slates off half the street. Within two days a loss assessor had knocked on all fourteen houses, signed every household up, and told the street the claims would go in together or not at all. He sends all fourteen claims to the insurer in one batch, and none goes in until every house has signed. The insurer pays each house, and he keeps fifteen per cent. The morning after the storm you went up into your own loft and saw two slipped tiles and one patch of daylight, nothing else. The schedule he has written for your house comes to fourteen thousand euro. Nine thousand of that is a full roof replacement, and it lists the stain on your bedroom ceiling as storm damage. That stain has been there since before Christmas. You are two years into a mortgage you took on alone after your mother died, and nine thousand euro is not a number you can be casual about. Rina at number 9 was your late mother's closest friend and has looked in on you every Sunday since the funeral, and she is the one who asked you to sign so the batch can go together.