SALLY NOLAN:
Well, Andrew was reluctant, we could all see that, so Rob said, “Don’t you worry. If anyone says anything, I’ll make it crystal clear those scratches are nothing to do with this. We think of you as part of the family—you’re doing a brave thing. And you’re doing it because my Zoe loved you and you loved her.”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
It didn’t seem like the time to clarify that. “Well, actually, I thought she was all right…”
ROBERT NOLAN:
If Sally tells you that’s what I said, then we have to agree to disagree. That day, that week and everything around it was madness, but I don’t think I made any promises like that to Andrew. If it’s not clear by now, I’ll spell it out. I’m what they call a man of the old school—I say what I mean and I mean what I say.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
The press conference was first thing Monday morning, so December 19. It was the third day Zoe had been missing, and you couldn’t help but wonder where she was, what she was going through. None of us had really stopped or slept or eaten in that time. We were all hollowed out and jumpy, not even really speaking, because everything—everything—turned into an argument. We were all living on top of each other in Owens Park, and every time the phone rang or someone walked into a room, we all thought they’d found her. Sometimes you’d think it was bad news and sometimes you’d think it was good, but it didn’t seem possible that it would be nothing. It didn’t seem possible that there could be no news at all. But that’s what it was, every single time.
LIU WAI:
So it’s this exhausting roller coaster of constant ups and downs and disappointments, even when nothing’s happening. And of course for the parents—I mean, I’m sure they couldn’t help but wonder and worry about where she was. I’m saying this to kind of explain why they looked like a pretty ragtag bunch when it came to the appeal. Mrs. Nolan had kind of aged with worry, she was just staring off into the distance like a fisherman’s wife. Mr. Nolan, Rob, looked like he was trying not to shout and scream, and his hair was all crazy and all over the place. Then you’ve got an extremely pale, thin and temporarily de-gothed Kim, but still with her black brush cut. And bringing up the rear you had Andrew, looking like the world’s least successful rapist, claw marks all down his face.
If I’d been watching it at home not knowing any of them, I’d probably have thought, Wow, I think they can close this case. Like, arrest everyone on camera.
FINTAN MURPHY:
Robert offered me a place on the appeal. He thought I might discuss Zoe’s love of music, but I didn’t quite think it was appropriate. To be honest, I thought that Kimberly would want to say something in that vein, something personal and touching, but she never even opened her mouth. There’d been some kind of blowup between her and her parents, but still. Andrew was asking Jai to come forward, so I just helped Robert and Sally get their feelings down on paper, so the statement wouldn’t sound artificial.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. The appeal was filmed at Owens Park and the second we got in front of the cameras, every eye in that room was on me. I mean, why wouldn’t they be?
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d had something to say. When I see pictures from it now, I think it looks more like a police lineup than an appeal. My parents did their bit: “Zoe, we love you. Please come home.” Andrew kind of stammered through his thing to Jai: “You’re not in trouble, mate. We just need to talk.” Then when they went to questions from the press. You could see which way it was going.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Of course the first fucking question was, “How did you get the scratches on your face, Mr. Flowers?” I looked to Rob for his promised ride to the rescue, but he never saddled up. He didn’t even look at me. My heart sank down to my stomach, and finally, I said something like, “We’re not here to talk about my face. We’re here to talk about Zoe.”
SARAH MANNING:
The whole thing devolved into my worst-case scenario. The read-through was fine. You could maybe say Rob Nolan looked like he wanted to punch the camera while he recited his “please come home” message, but who wouldn’t? The words were neutral at least. What felt disastrous was how the focus landed on Andrew and stayed there.
The whole point of this conference as we saw it was to get Zoe’s picture circulating and appeal for Jai Mahmood to come forward. The call history and texts on Zoe’s phone, her unexplained absences from class—all of it pointed to a clandestine relationship that her friends hadn’t known about. Jai, the person we needed to talk to about that, had fallen off the face of the earth and we needed him back. But the only questions were “Who scratched your face, Mr. Flowers?” “Was it Zoe?” Then into stuff like “Were you at the party that Zoe went missing from, Andrew? Can you account for your whereabouts from Saturday into Sunday?”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I just stood there and took it. I didn’t need to look at the newspapers the next day to know what the headlines would be, though. None of them could come out and explicitly say I had anything to do with Zoe’s disappearance, but it was all there, written between the lines, written on my face in fucking scratch marks. I heard from my father quite quickly after that, believe you me.
SALLY NOLAN:
We argued. And in that stupid tiny flat with Liu Wai and Fintan and Kim. I thought Rob had been stupid. Playing games while Zoe was missing. There was no one he could kick or punch, so he did the next best thing. It wasn’t about helping the search or doing what we had to. It was about proving he still had it, whatever it was. I didn’t like Andrew—I took a dim view of him the day we met. Believe me, it’s got dimmer since, but if he was involved, then this was exactly the thing that could make him do something stupid, hurt our daughter, or worse. The one thing we’d been told not to do.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I remember Mum turning gray. She was holding my dad’s arm afterward, saying, “What about this Jai Mahmood? What about this lead we were given by the police? The one name that’s come up in connection with all this, from the professionals, as a result of talking to everyone involved?”
He just shrugged her off.
Most of the papers didn’t even print Jai’s picture. They all just went with Andrew. Some of them printed bigger pictures of Andrew than they did of Zoe. That scared me, because through all of it, the weirdness of that situation, I thought everyone at least agreed that they wanted to help. Everyone at least agreed they wanted to get my sister back. When they printed Andrew’s face instead of Jai’s, I saw it all for what it was—a fucking game show.