ANDREW FLOWERS:
Zoe and I went back to hers. Not to air her dirty laundry, but she knew what she was doing. I only say this because I’ve seen stories online suggesting I was her “first” or whatever, and I think we can probably put those to bed, so to speak. In the morning, while she was still out cold, I guess I had a chance to get a good look at her. And I guess some doubt was really starting to bubble up, because I definitely recall thinking, Wait, was this really the girl I met before? The one quoting “Blister in the Sun”? I couldn’t see anything in the room that would verify things one way or the other, but what I could see was giving me an extremely bad feeling. We’re talking Ed Sheeran posters, Harry Potter merchandise, the Twilight books. So I go out into the hall, thinking I’ll just double-check this is the same place I was in before…
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I was the first one awake as usual, watering Chihiro. I’d gone through into the kitchen to make some toast when Andrew walked in, wearing basically the stupid look on his face and nothing else. We just looked at each other, both silently computing the situation. Then he nodded, sighed and went back into Zoe’s room. I sat there for five minutes with the toast in my hand, then I think I left it and went back to bed. That was my first day of being nineteen.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I see no reason why anyone would believe me, but at the time it broke my heart. Before that, even with all the shit I’d been through with élodie and my father, I didn’t even know the meaning of the phrase. After it, I couldn’t believe that people were expected to walk around that way without medical intervention.
When I met Kim for the first time, it just felt different. I felt different. Like another man or the one I might have been. That evaporated when I saw her sitting there in the kitchen and realized I’d slept with her sister. I got dressed, kissed Zoe goodbye and started to leave. She asked if we could see each other again and I suppose I must have said yes.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
It wasn’t the end of the world. Men always went for Zoe over me. [Laughs] Even though I had my own tree and everything. It was just confusing. Was I upset because a boy I fancied had slept with someone else? Or was it because he’d slept with my sister? And I liked Andrew at the time. I think if it had been different, if he’d shagged Alex or Liu, maybe I’d have said something, I might have fought for him. But I was trying to be my own person. I was really trying not to have issues with Zoe. So I never said anything to her about it. I swallowed the whole thing.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
When I got back that morning, I saw Jai, of course. And I mean, he’d had the living shit kicked out of him. Plaster across his nose, black eyes, bald patches. Someone had ripped out clumps of his hair with their hands. I went straight into my room, found the card that the two police officers had given us and called them. It took them three days to get around to visiting and taking a statement.
Three fucking days.
And I knew then that this was all shit they’d put into play. They took that picture of Zoe from him. I’m sure they had something to do with the posters going up around campus, the rumors of a predator or whatever. They knew they couldn’t get him one way so they got him another. I sat there and watched them and didn’t say a word while Jai gave his statement. The fucker taking notes was just doodling, he didn’t even try and hide it.
JAI MAHMOOD:
It wasn’t the violence that sent me off the rails, man. I mean, it didn’t help, but at the end of the day, I could see it for what it was. Some cock lump hit me because he had a hang-up about brown boys and white girls, yeah? Seeing the posters didn’t change his mind or make him think that way, the posters just gave him permission to act like he wanted to. That shit’s normal. What wasn’t normal was getting back to my room the next day and finding it turned over. Like, someone had gotten in there and stolen stuff. I didn’t tell Andrew, I didn’t tell the others and I didn’t tell the cops. At the time, I thought it could of been any one of them. I was scared.
Every single picture I’d taken since I got there, either developed or on film, printed or framed, had been taken. Nothing else in my room was out of place, and it hadn’t been trashed. It was just like those pictures had never existed, man. It made my blood run cold.
6.
“Shadow Man”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
There was someone standing outside our building, night after night, the later the better, holding down the buzzer for our flat. This piercing, mechanical noise, constantly going off at two or three or four in the morning. That went on for most of October. You’d answer, you’d ask who it was, and no one would say anything. It might stop a few seconds, maybe a few minutes, then start up again.
Looking back, there were so many warning signs we missed. Like how much Zoe said she was enjoying her classes, how much extra time she was spending on them—she’d leave for the day saying she was workshopping, showcasing, auditioning, taking extra lectures, you name it. Just doing so much more than the rest of us combined. Then there was how close she seemed with her tutor, Hannah Docherty. I’d never even heard of lecturers taking that kind of interest in students before. I thought, Maybe she really is special? Like, she must have had this incredible talent all along, and I’ve just been too jealous to see. I worried about that a lot. We’d been drifting apart for years, but it was so undeniable there. I suppose her disappearance felt like the logical conclusion to that.
And then there was Andrew.
We never really talked about him, but she must have noticed me backing away from her once they got together. I worried about the way I felt for him, I didn’t want to say or do anything stupid—I didn’t want to ruin things. And I was busy. Unlike Zoe, who could go out all night and still point to this acclaim and incredible attention she was getting from tutors, I really had to put my head down to get the work done.