SARAH MANNING:
Carys resisted the idea of Kim portraying Zoe. She explained how traumatic a reconstruction can be. The production company encouraged some victims not to attend their reconstructions at all, to make sure they had someone they trusted with them if they decided to watch it. Rob seemed confused, frustrated by all this. He said something like, “It was Zoe who went missing. Kim’s not a victim of anything at all.”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I wasn’t like Zoe and definitely not like Dad. I wasn’t a public kind of person. Dad thrived on the attention, but to me, it was intrusive, so when he told me about the reconstruction, I just shut down. People were already looking in on our lives, but this felt like moving into a glass house. I hadn’t left Manchester over Christmas, and I stayed on at university because it was the path of least resistance, on autopilot, not really doing anything. So I remember our talk about the reconstruction because Dad dropped into the tower unexpectedly. I didn’t even know he was in town.
He sat on the edge of my bed and told me the producers would only go forward with it if I played Zoe. I’d lived my whole life as something like my sister’s understudy, so it made some kind of sense. I don’t think I even said anything. I think I just nodded and he left.
ROBERT NOLAN:
In my mind, Kim was enthusiastic. She saw like I did that she was the perfect person for the job. With the reconstruction finally walking on its own two feet, I turned to a more long-term media plan. It was too soon to establish a charity in Zoe’s name, our Nolan Foundation, but I didn’t want to be on the back foot if the time came, so I started making arrangements. I envisioned it mainly as a scholarship for gifted young women. I never went to college myself. A lack of opportunity more than a lack of talent, but it had been Zoe’s dream to study music, and if I was about to find myself locked into this thing for years to come, I wanted to make sure other young women weren’t having those dreams snuffed out.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I ended up staying in Manchester over Christmas, which was a difficult decision. My mother was in assisted living by this point. She had severe mental health problems that had deteriorated as I got older. My father, Patrick, had been bedridden with depression when I was a boy. It gave expression to a feeling my mother had always nurtured, that I was weak in some sense, that I’d crumble and let her down one day as well. Perhaps she had some inkling about my sexuality even then, even before I did. So she initiated a program geared toward toughening me up. All the old ways—sending me out to walk a mile in the rain, making me carry sacks of spuds back from town. Then she started trying to scare me. It started with me coming in and finding her collapsed on the floor one day. Except her eyes were wide open, and after the initial shock passed, I realized she was pretending to be dead. She could lie like that for hours, unnervingly still, never blinking, not responding. She wouldn’t get up until I’d calmed down, then she’d emphasize the importance of the lesson, that one day I would find her dead, and I had to be ready for it. Once I got used to that, she started to die in front of me all the time. She’d have heart attacks, brain aneurysms, or strokes and fall down on the ground. Sometimes she’d wet herself, even void herself for the full effect.
It was just the two of us by my teens, and there was something so self-evidently mad about her that I almost found it less disturbing than I should have. It’s amazing what can seem normal when it’s all you know. I spent my first five years dressed as the little girl she’d actually been expecting, which was confusing to say the least. Her issues grew worse as she started to drink more. I came home from school once thinking she was out for the evening, then got woken up some hours later by the sound of screaming coming from under my bed. I mean bloodcurdling stuff. She’d been hiding there the whole time, just waiting for me to nod off. She’d hide behind curtains, under her own bed, in other rooms and do the same thing. She was committed by one of my aunts before I went away. She was safe at least, but it made staying in town and trying to help the Nolans a difficult decision for me.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Maybe it was the way things were between us. Maybe it was how I’d reacted to his suggestion I play Zoe in the reconstruction—not saying anything, just nodding along—but I was never asked by anyone to help with the charity. I was never involved in it at all. It’s true I’d already left town by the time it got up and running, but they shut me out of those early conversations.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I was in the room on several occasions when Robert tried to speak to Kimberly about it. With that said, it was amazing what you could miss at the time. I suppose it made more of an impression on me because the idea of two loving parents was revelatory in my eyes. Even so, when Robert told me that Sally had suggested I help out with what went on to become the Nolan Foundation, I declined. Honestly, I felt like I was already putting my studies in jeopardy by dedicating so much time to them as it was, and I’d also started seeing someone, my flatmate Connor. It was early days, but he was my first real partner, and there just wasn’t time for anything else. Then one day, Robert broke down and said he didn’t think he could do it without me. Sally was in too much pain, and his relationship with Kimberly was fraught, they weren’t on the same wavelength at all. I thought if he pushed her, they might end up in some huge fight again, so I agreed to help, not quite realizing how much work would be involved.
All I did that year was research.
Preliminary conversations trying to work out what would be required, a long way from actually forming the foundation. But, well, suffice it to say that my relationship with Connor suffered as a result. I certainly sympathized with Kimberly a lot more afterward. I got to see Robert’s great skill close-up. He can play people and make them feel like they don’t really have a choice in things.
SALLY NOLAN:
Rob thought Kim and I couldn’t take the strain of dealing with the foundation, so neither of us ever had much to do with it, even when it was still just an idea. I never suggested Fintan help out. It just wouldn’t have occurred to me. I mean, it made sense—he was an old soul even then. But no doubt Rob was telling another one of his white lies to try and get his way.
ROBERT NOLAN:
The way I remember it is that Fintan did all the early legwork without my ever needing to ask. You could probably say there’d be no foundation without him. I didn’t have that kind of patience. I was too hardheaded.
* * *
7 All interviews with Carys Parry were conducted by Joseph Knox and added to Evelyn’s text in 2019.
17.
“Bad News”
As Alex’s personal problems begin to spiral out of control, a figure steps out of the shadows with tragic results.