ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, if their things were going missing, then I’m sure some of mine were too. I simply wasn’t there a lot of the time. And I guess I didn’t really care about my property either. The only thing that had any value to me whatsoever was my shitty gold Rolex, and only because it had been my grandfather’s, because it was given to me by my mother. My fidelity to that watch was a way of being close to her, it was literally the last surviving relic of my grandfather’s largesse. Jai wasn’t the last person to have it or anything, but he’d expressed interest in it from the off. He’d even taken it for a short period, an hour or so, to photograph.
JAI MAHMOOD:
I thought that watch was fucking hideous, man. Tasteless, tacky, bougie bling. It just went well with my portfolio of ugly objects. Course I said it looked cool. Why would I tell him the truth?
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I just sensed something strange in Jai’s interest. This half smile would creep on to his face whenever he handled it. Anyway, I asked if he’d seen it and he said no, so I left to go and look at Zoe’s.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Yeah, the boy band we were living with became convinced that either me or Andrew, or maybe me and Andrew, were stealing shit. I can’t speak for him, but I’d grab stuff out of the fridge at worst. At worst. And I had money by then anyway. It just wasn’t strictly legal. After I got fired and after I got beat up, when I really was shitting it about the rent, I went limping into the Great Central, this Wetherspoon’s pub in Fallowfield. I’d been taking my CV around bars and coffee shops, hoping to scare something up. So I get there and find this fucking great Russian standing outside smoking, yeah, looking meaner than death. He makes some joke about me being Aladdin, says I must have fallen off my magic carpet midflight, and I just lose it. For a start, the guy was in worse nick than me. Someone had cut both his nostrils open, like with scissors or a knife or something. They’d healed up, but you could tell it had happened—he’d lived this knockabout life and he was giving me shit. So I’m just like, “Suck me off, Igor. I hope those Marlboros turn your lungs black.” He must of been about three times my size, but instead of killing me, he doubled up laughing. When he saw I’d really meant it, like, how pissed off and on edge I was, he offered to buy me a drink. I thought it might be all the nutrition I’d get that day, so I said, “Sure.”
He introduced himself as Vladimir but said that wasn’t his real name. People just called him that because he’d snort anything, Vlad the Inhaler. He asked what had happened to me and I told him, then he asked if my bruises hurt, and I told him that too. Then he dug around in his pockets and found this vial of pills, alprazolam, and said they might help me. I thought alprazolam sounded like something Harry Potter might say. Told him I was grateful, but I didn’t take stuff I couldn’t pronounce, and anyway, I couldn’t pay him, I was on my arse. He asked if I could pronounce Xanax, which was the brand name, and I said I could. It wasn’t around as much then, but I’d heard of it. Then he asked where I lived, and when I told him I was over the road in Owens Park, he offered me a job. Said he had a booming market for pills on campus. Nothing evil, just uppers for students doing late-night cram sessions, downers for ones who couldn’t switch off, painkillers for people like me. That’s what he called those Xans, painkillers—said they’d solve all my problems. He couldn’t really walk around campus himself—he looked like a taller, fatter, more fucked Joe Stalin—but I could. He said all I’d be doing was making some deliveries, maybe fielding some phone calls. It paid more than Caffè Nero, and cash in hand. My phone wasn’t exactly ringing with offers, so I said yes.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I started spending more time at the tower just to get out of our home situation. One unintended consequence of the note on Zoe’s laptop was that I didn’t feel like I could break up with her. I knew if I did, people would think I’d been the one harassing her all that time, so strangely, the whole thing pushed us closer together. Physically at least. She was a person who liked me when I was incapable of liking myself, and that was appealing, but there wasn’t really an emotional connection.
It was already November by this point, so my plan was to limp on until the holidays and break up with her once we got back, to let her have a good Christmas and allow her to start the New Year fresh. I just never got the chance. Technically, I suppose we’re still together.
LIU WAI:
I’ve been thinking about what you said Andrew told you, like how they’re still “technically” a couple. It got me going on all his weird abandonment issues. Like, his mum and his dad and his French ex or whatever. No matter what, his relationship with Zoe is permanent now. Nothing can ever break it off. When you think of it like that, it kind of makes you shudder, doesn’t it?
From: [email protected]
Sent: 2019-01-24 20:56
To: you
From Andrew’s Facebook.
FYI he says he wore this costume back to Zoe’s flat after falling out with his housemates and then lost track of it. Unfortunately, it’s reappeared in a bad way during one of the interviews I’m transcribing for part two…
E(!)
8.
“Self-Harm”
One month before Zoe’s disappearance, serious cracks emerge in her relationship with Andrew. Both Zoe and Kimberly begin acting wildly out of character.
LIU WAI:
I’ve found that a man’s quality has a kind of cataclysmic half-life from the first date to the second, then from the second to the third, and, frankly, kind of just endlessly after that. People always start out on their best behavior when you first meet them, then slide down into who they really are afterward. I thought after the note on Zoe’s laptop, everyone was acting weird, but now I look back and wonder if they were just showing their true colors? Alex really darkened on me, went from this quite nice influence to totally negative overnight. She started spending less time with Sam and more time with this awful wannabe poet she was seeing on the side. She’d met him at an Interpol concert, which probably tells you everything you need to know. Any time the frontman for a band sings like he’s phoning in sick, you can usually depend on his fans being pretentious. I can’t remember this boy’s name, but the one time I met him, he had a secondhand copy of The Stranger sticking out the back pocket of his skinny jeans…
Zoe was up and down like a seesaw, unpredictable and jumpy in ways she hadn’t been before. And I’m absolutely not one to judge in any way whatsoever, but Kim’s drinking was out-of-control crazy. You’d think she was more upset about the note on Zoe’s laptop than Zoe was.