KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I never really hit it off with Fintan. I think he came over to me talking about Zoe. What an amazing voice she had, her incredible stage presence. I thought he was weird, all wiry and pale. And I was hurt that Zoe hadn’t introduced us. It was like when we were kids again. She clearly had this whole other life I didn’t even know about. And I could sense this veiled criticism in what he was saying. He was making it clear that he loved all these things that I wasn’t, and that he disapproved of the way I looked. I mean, he was probably drunk—I could smell the booze pouring off him.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I think Kim might be misremembering one crucial detail about the way that I was looking at her, and about the way I smelled. She’d just poured more or less an entire glass of wine all over me. She was turning around and I’m not sure she even noticed. I was trying to talk to her, but the music was so loud, and she was so, so wasted.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I had to keep putting Jai out that night, as in extinguishing him. He was so out of it he kept putting lit cigarettes in his pockets. Everyone was throwing their coats into a pile on the landing and when his went down I saw it smoldering.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Well, never let it be said that Andrew Flowers isn’t a world-class prick, but I was as much to blame for the bust-up as him. I was swallowing Oxys like they were spit, man. I’d climbed the ladder from Xans, which are just benzos, to opiates quite quickly, so sometimes he’d be talking to me while I was almost basically in orbit. When we got to the party, there was some argument—I’d left a joint lit in my jacket or something. Yeah, I was a mess, I agree, but there was more to it than that. He was spoiling for a fight.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, we fell out. We both said things we shouldn’t have. We were kids and we were drunk. Jai had God knows what in his system. In any other circumstances, we would have made up the following day and never thought of it again. We were just never afforded that chance—none of us got to return to our real lives or even to progress as people afterward. Call me a cunt, a racist, a sexist, whatever, but don’t print that I didn’t care about my friend, because I did. And I say that in spite of how I might have acted. I say it in spite of whatever he’ll say back about me.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Suddenly, we’re in this fight about his fucking watch again. Andrew saw me taking a pill. I guess he remembered I was supposed to be broke and started doing the math. It kicked off with him saying something like, “If you’ve got it, I won’t mind,” then rose up into him asking if I’d sold it, then shouting, “Fucking give it to me!” Next thing I know, he’s got me by the throat up against a wall.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
He denied having it, so I said, “Let’s see what you’ve got on you, then?” Obviously, I regret that now. I let go of him and saw I’d ripped his collar. That should have been it right there, the warning sign that I’d lost all perspective, but of course I’d committed myself by then, so I pressed on. If I could have talked to him, I could have just told him I’d watched my mother destroy herself with drugs…
Half the floor was watching us.
Suddenly, the music cut out and girls in Santa hats were holding us back from each other, the full soap opera. Jai turned out his pockets like a cartoon character, and of course they were empty. And he looked so innocent and sweet that I knew I had to double down. See, back home, I’d learned from the best. You don’t let innocence stop you, you can’t allow sweetness or lack of malice to slow you down. What you do is you go at innocence a hundred times harder. Because then the other person might blow their lid, blow up right back at you, a little mother-father action, and then it doesn’t matter who was originally right and who was originally wrong. You’re both down in the dirt together, covered in so much shit that no one can say for sure who threw it first.
JAI MAHMOOD:
He gets this superior look on his face, yeah. This curling, smug grin, and he says, “What about your jacket?” And I know what he’s getting at. He thinks I won’t turn out my pockets because of the pills. Then he can stomp off looking like he was right all along. We’re surrounded by people, out on the edge of the landing, this audience he’s playing to. So I go over to the pile of coats and dig through them for mine. I don’t care who sees some pills in my pockets—half the people at the party are scoring from me by then anyway, and I know for fuck sure there’s no gold Rolex in there, man. So I hold up my coat and turn everything out for the whole room. I don’t even look. Not until I hear this sharp intake of breath.
LIU WAI:
I just saw Zoe gasp and put her hands over her mouth, you know, like “Oh my God.” Her knickers, the ones that had been stolen three months before, were scattered all over the corridor.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
And everyone—fucking everyone—started cheering. Like, “Yeah, we all knew what you were, Jai.” Everyone thought this was him admitting to stealing Zoe’s underwear. People started jostling him, roughly rubbing his hair and stuff. Dickheads picking thongs up off the floor and rubbing his face in them. He looked at me to say something in his defense. We both knew he had nothing to do with that, and his eyes actually implored me, like, Say something. I didn’t have the balls to back down, though, so I locked myself in a bathroom instead.
JAI MAHMOOD:
There was some rough stuff, some shit talking, then some guys grabbed me by the arms and legs and threw me down the staircase. I must have rolled down a whole flight before I hit a wall. There were a couple of seconds where I stopped, where I remember concentrating on breathing, in, out, in, out, just to see if I could still do it. Then they all crashed down on top of me and kept kicking. Luckily, I’d taken too much Oxy to really feel it.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I followed them down the staircase in mounting disbelief. I didn’t know what Andrew and Jai’s problem was with each other, but I thought Andrew’s behavior was repulsive. He showed himself up as a real shitbag. The lads who threw Jai down the stairs were even worse. If that’s a party, I’ll stay home, thanks.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
When I saw Andrew wasn’t going to say or do anything, wasn’t even going to defend Jai, I saw what a two-faced fucking coward he could be. I went outside for some air.
Like I said, Fintan’s not my cup of tea, but at least he has the strength of his convictions. He threw himself on these guys and just started scattering them around. I couldn’t believe it, this wiry, white Irish kid. And they actually backed off, they actually shit it. They were laughing at him and taking the piss, but they backed off.