FINTAN MURPHY:
I think the main thing driving me on to campus that day was that I couldn’t face another fruitless search of Owens Park. In my view, we already knew where Zoe wasn’t. I was supposed to be going home for Christmas that night. I badly needed to see my ma, but I just couldn’t face the thought of leaving without being of some use. It was Sunday, December 18. I wasn’t sure if Martin Harris, the building that houses the Music and Drama Department, would even be open. And it seemed even less likely I’d find Zoe’s course tutor, Hannah Docherty, sitting at her desk. When I saw her there, it seemed like such a run of good luck that I thought I might step inside and see Zoe too. But of course that’s where one kind of streak ended and another one began.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
One of the ways that Zoe and I backslid when we went to Manchester was academically. Basically, I turned up to my classes, frowned, did the reading and melted my brain trying to understand it all. I loved reading, but I was never a classroom kind of person. I blended in—I doubt my teachers could have even told you my name. But Zoe’s tutors seemed to really see something in her, and one of them especially. Zoe said they emailed each other all the time, met outside course hours, talked on the phone, all this.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Miss Docherty, yes. I mean, on more than one occasion, Zoe actually cancelled our plans to accommodate her. Dinners, drinks, even concerts and shows. My lecturers just told me to stop talking.
SALLY NOLAN:
When she called home, Zoe talked about Miss Docherty all the time. Rob had looked her up online, checking her credentials. I think he felt like her special interest in Zoe was a kind of vindication of what he’d seen in her himself.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I found her young and friendly, in fact precisely as she’d been described to me. And her face actually lit up when I mentioned Zoe’s name. She said something like, “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this.”
DR. HANNAH DOCHERTY, Zoe’s course tutor:
Well, Zoe Nolan was something of a fascination for me. You get perhaps two or three of them each year, these students who simply stand out from the crowd. Unfortunately, in Zoe’s case, she was standing out for all the wrong reasons. She’d never once made contact with me or attended any of our weekly meetings, which of course she was supposed to. So when this waifish Irish boy tiptoed into my office just before Christmas break, I thought, Ah. This is the boyfriend, and Miss Nolan’s standing out in the corridor, too scared to come in. Of course, as it turned out, that wasn’t quite the case.6
ROBERT NOLAN:
When they told me about it, I said, “She’s lying.” I just said she was lying and then left the room. And I remember this feeling of massive, skyscraping fear out in front of me. Because I couldn’t work out why anyone—why a teacher especially—would lie about something like that.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I think I told her that she had to be mistaken. I took my phone out and started showing her pictures from Facebook, like, “You don’t know this girl?”
DR. HANNAH DOCHERTY:
And I assured him that I’d never seen her before in my life. I explained that the only reason I recognized her name was because she was one of my black marks—she had, as far as I knew, never attended a single lecture, class, workshop, anything. I’d been sending emails and letters, trying to establish if she’d even arrived at the university. Of course I’d learned from the housing department that she had. Her friend, Mr. Murphy, was quite stunned. Quite impressive, though, in another sense. He seemed to be so much more mature than people usually are at that age. His diligence on Zoe’s behalf made me warm to him.
He explained to me that she’d gone missing, then had me produce attendance records, correspondence, you name it. I think he even asked for the email addresses of other students from the course, to corroborate that Zoe hadn’t been in class, but I gently explained there were privacy guidelines and that I might be better off talking to the police.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
The university cleared out another apartment on the fifteenth floor for my parents, somewhere they could stay over the Christmas break until we heard something about Zoe. I didn’t get a say, but it would have been the last thing I ever suggested. We always ended up congregating in one kitchen or another, just watching the paint peel off the walls. Alex was still around for another couple of days, still coming down from whatever she’d taken at the party, so there were five of us for a while. Me, my parents, Alex and Liu, all kind of waiting, when Fintan and DC Manning burst in.
SARAH MANNING:
Fintan arrived back at the tower out of breath, telling me to call Zoe’s tutor to confirm what I couldn’t even understand he was saying. Once I did, once Dr. Docherty more fully explained the situation, it was clear we needed to talk to the family and friends. When I mentioned Hannah Docherty’s name to them, it was nods all around, as if to say, “Of course they’re close.”
So I was watching everyone when I told them that Zoe and Hannah Docherty had never actually met. Either it really was news to them or they were very good actors. Rob Nolan called her a liar and stormed out. Kim started pointing at Fintan before she could even put what she was trying to say into words. She shouted something like, “But you’re her course mate. You met her in class.”
FINTAN MURPHY:
I’d met Zoe at orientation, and after that, we’d attended meetings of the Choir and Orchestra Society together. They were off campus, at St. Chrysostom’s Church. We weren’t actually in the same modules for anything. And while everyone was trying to process the Hannah Docherty situation, Sarah, the family liaison officer, was, quite sensibly, trying to establish how we’d all come under such a grave misapprehension. Specifically, she kept asking, “So what was Zoe doing with her time? Where did she spend her days? Was she staying in the flat?”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
But it was the opposite of that. She got ready and went in most mornings, more than the rest of us, more than anyone else I knew. Afternoons as well, even weekends, even days when she didn’t have to.
LIU WAI:
As far as I knew, Zoe lived for her studies. I’d never met anyone my age who was more motivated.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
And now we’re all looking at each other. Me, my parents, Fintan, Liu and Alex. I don’t even remember who said it, but we were all thinking the same thing. So where was she? Where had she been going all this time?
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Yes, well, the police were very touching when it came to the scratch marks, very concerned for my well-being. They made sure I saw a doctor and got treated and everything. After they’d taken pictures of the wounds, of course, as if they were going anywhere anytime soon. Then they just returned to their new favorite subject. Jai and Zoe, sitting in a tree, F-U-C-K-I-N-G.