For a second, I think I did.
Then it all came crashing back and everything hit me at once. The smoke pouring out of the building, the smell of it, then the sound of the fire alarm and how high up I was. I edged back in until I was safe, then pulled off my boots and went back inside, down the stairs as fast as I’d gone up them. It was unreal. Eighteen floors and not a single other person.
When I got to the bottom, I was looking through the glass doors, expecting people to be screaming or gathered around, upset, in shock, but they were all just normal. They were all just like I’d left them. Still drinking, laughing, smoking, being kids, not taking anything seriously. I walked out wondering if I’d gotten it wrong, like when you wake up out of a dream where someone you love died.
LIU WAI:
While Kim was checking the roof, I was going through the crowd, looking for Zoe, asking if anyone had seen her. Alex stayed by the door in case she came out, but of course she never did. The tower was still smoldering, so by the time the fire brigade arrived, we were all just kind of powerless to do anything else. Speechless, arm in arm, staring at it. I think the natural assumption was that Zoe being missing was somehow something to do with the fire? That she must be trapped inside or hurt or something.
JOHN MARBER, Watch manager, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service:
Two crews were dispatched from Manchester Central in the early hours of December 17 in response to an automatic alarm from the Owens Park campus. On inspection, the fire was fairly serious, even if the damage was minimal. A lit cigarette sent up a communal sofa on the seventh floor, then that had spread to the entire kitchen, then the entire flat. No one was hurt, though, and we’d arrived in time to contain it. We were satisfied there was no structural damage preventing most of these kids from spending their last night in there before the Christmas break.
Once the space in question had been made safe, we were made aware of a resident from the fifteenth floor who was unaccounted for. We agreed to look for her while we conducted our own safety search of the premises. Six firefighters and, I think, four welfare officers from the university swept that tower from the ground up. Searches like those are fairly standard procedure for us before letting people back inside a reported structure. We didn’t see anyone, and nothing stood out as unusual. In the end, I think we concluded that if Zoe was missed during our sweep, then the students would have to see her when they went back in an hour later. All I can tell you’s what I wrote in the callout log. There was no one in any of the rooms and there was no one on the roof.5
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
When Zoe didn’t turn up in the search, and when I told the people from housing that she’d last been seen heading for the roof, they called the police. I had to repeat everything to them and things started to ramp up. At the same time, all I could think about was the building site near Canal Street where I’d been dumped after those guys grabbed me from outside Fifth Avenue. I got this idea that Zoe must have been the one they’d wanted. I mean, I’d been wearing her jacket when they took me. I got this idea that they must have come back for her. People were already searching Owens Park, Liu Wai was going on and on, and at a certain point, I just stepped back, out of the light. I heard someone shout after me, but it was so dark, I could be invisible. Then I just gravitated toward town, not even thinking. I was on the 142 up Oxford Road, then standing outside the building site. I don’t know what time it was by this point. If Zoe went missing around half midnight, then I’d guess it was three in the morning, maybe later.
I climbed over the fence and stood on the other side with my back to it for a few seconds, just shaking, like, shivering all over with fear. Then I thought about those men marching me toward the foundations and forced myself forward one step at a time. I got right to the edge of the pit and wavered there. I didn’t have a flashlight, so it was just this big, black, wide open space. And I could feel this magnetism, this thing inside pulling me down, like it was where I was meant to be. I shouted out for her, moved around the edges, listened back, but all I could hear was myself. Then I saw her, this pale, haunted face looking back at me from inside the foundations. She looked horrible, awful, in pain. When I shouted to her, I realized it was just a puddle at the edge of the pit, I was just talking to myself. I slid down the bank to it anyway, down on my hands and knees until I was in it, rainwater up to my waist. I think I just cried and said I was sorry, either to my reflection or to Zoe, probably to us both. Then there were sounds and flashlights. I don’t remember the police or security or whoever it was finding me there. That night was like getting hit by the car when I was a kid or getting taken from outside Fifth. It felt like it was all happening in the same moment.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I’d had this huge blowout with my friend, this screaming row with the girl I was seeing, and—I don’t know. It was like catching my reflection in a mirror and not liking what I saw. And I mean that literally as well as metaphorically—my face was still bleeding well into the next day from Zoe’s attack. So I suppose I decided to go into this self-imposed exile for the night, I decided to walk it all off or something. I seem to recall Christmas lights but… Look, I went over it and over it with the police afterward. “No, I didn’t see anyone who could confirm my whereabouts. No, I don’t particularly remember where I went. Yes, I have some idea of how that might sound.”
JAI MAHMOOD:
Once I clocked that the stuff had gone missing from under my bed, I knew I had to get the fuck out, man. Questions about how and why just had to wait. I still had stitches from getting decked in the car park, so they’d ripped open in my fall down the stairs and the kicking I got at the bottom. I was a sight, hurting all over, and I mean inside as much as out. And yeah, I felt guilty as well, even of these things I hadn’t done. All I had were the pills in my pocket, so I decided I’d spend as long as possible out of my head. If I was careful, I thought they’d last me a few days. My friend Tariq lived in a flat on Oxford Road, and he’d gone home for Christmas. I knew where he kept his spare key, so I crashed there. I thought I’d get my head down, work out where I could get a grand to pay Vlad back with.
I turned my phone on once or twice to see a million and one missed calls from Andrew, but I thought, Stuff him. Part of me wondered if he’d nicked the pills as some kind of revenge for his watch. Everyone was going home for Christmas, which my family didn’t celebrate, so I thought I’d stay put until I was sure the others had left Owens Park. I thought I’d let them worry about me for a week and then have it all blow over in the New Year. I didn’t know Zoe was missing, man.