FINTAN MURPHY:
I’d hear from Jai every so often, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes with a call from someone he owed money to. More often than not from the police or the Royal Infirmary. I always tried to reach out, but he didn’t make it easy. Maybe that’s why I started steering the work of the Nolan Foundation more and more toward the problems of substance abuse. It was something Robert always resisted—I think he thought it unseemly—but it was the great problem of our time and place and something it seemed likely Zoe had struggled with too. Our work drifted naturally in that direction as Robert’s attention drifted elsewhere. The foundation merged with a homeless shelter I’d worked at in Ancoats and then began expanding their program. When four out of five people are walking through the door with addictions, it doesn’t seem good enough to just give them a warm meal and send them on their way.
JAI MAHMOOD:
It was another year after the funeral before I ran out of things. Underpants, socks, excuses. I got right down to my very last possession, right down to my soul, and I’d started to feel like even that had one foot in the grave. The limbo pole was set too low, man. I couldn’t get under it anymore. When I finally asked Fintan for help, he never called me out on my shit. He never said, “How many times am I gonna have to bail you out?” He stumped up and put me in rehab, probably saved my life.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Once the sex-tape story broke, I got packed off home from work. My phone started ringing with strange offers and requests, and I got the whole sodding weekend to myself so I could really stew in it. Technology’s come on leaps and bounds since the last time I waded through this sort of shit, and it was great to get a demonstration in how connected we are now, all the ways you can get called a liar, a cheater and a cunt without leaving the comfort of your own home. If you haven’t received a death threat via LinkedIn, if there isn’t a Twitter parody account with your picture attached—mine’s called Andrew De-Flowers—then have you even really lived? One company called TripleXDirectory offered me money to produce an actual porn film, as long as I could get Kim involved. They sounded sincere, but I was probably live on Australian radio or something, probably speaking to a shock jock or their prime minister, however it works over there. I told them the truth anyway, that it sounded a fuck sight better than another Christmas in retail, but alas, I hadn’t spoken to Kim in the worst part of a decade.
JAI MAHMOOD:
When you live a life like mine, you don’t get a lot of ideas about the future. I wasn’t walking out of rehab with a five-year plan in my pocket. Fintan came through there, man. Food and lodging if I worked in the foundation center in Ancoats. I’d been in often enough, always on the wrong side of the counter, but still. I knew the place, the people, and what they were going through. And I wanted to help. I really did want to start giving back instead of taking all the time. I was doing maintenance, making sure people stayed fed and bedded, leading NA meetings—you name it. He said if Rob ever came around, I should keep my head down, but he never did.
There’ve been about five million names, about five million people down through the years, and a lot of them I know I won’t ever see again, so imagine my mug when I saw Vladimir, Vlad the Inhaler, my first connect from back in Owens Park days. He walked in wearing his rucksack and looking for something to eat. He’d shrunk down so much I nearly didn’t know him. He’d been this great big guy before, but everything had taken its toll, everything had sunk. You could have changed his name too, just straight up called him Vlad the Impaler, because he’d clearly graduated from snorting anything in sight to shooting it. When you saw his arms and legs, they were like pincushions, just war-torn with sores and track marks, broken veins all over. I was surprised he was even alive. I could tell he had no interest in getting sober or asking for help. We were just somewhere he could sit indoors and get a bite to eat between binges—and listen, fair fucks, life’s not for everyone.
He walked in midmeeting that night. I couldn’t stop and talk, but I was staring at him, assessing the damage, when I saw something I never thought I’d see again. I can’t even remember the rest of the meeting. I just wanted to get it over with and talk to Vlad. With one thing and another, people coming up and stuff, I couldn’t get to him in time. I might have spooked him, looked a second too long or something, but he left. When I ran down the road a few minutes later, he was gone.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I emailed some of the websites streaming the video that weekend. I tried to get them to take it down, but I don’t think any replied. After what Dad had done, I didn’t feel like talking to him, and when Mum called, I was too embarrassed to answer. So I called the one person who’d gotten in touch and offered me their help. I called Fintan.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I must say, I wasn’t fully prepared for a phone call from Kimberly. Yes, I’d called earlier to put her in the picture about Robert. I felt I owed her that much, the foundation’s full support when it came to the potential blowback from her father’s actions, a small local scandal. But I’m afraid that all changed for me when ten or more journalists left a press conference I was hosting to watch a smut film she’d made with Andrew Flowers. I was dumbstruck.
Perhaps people who’d been around them more at the time were better equipped to deal with it than I was. Other people knew them better, so perhaps they’d picked up on a certain kind of energy that was moving back and forth. But you have to remember that I only knew Zoe back then. Zoe, who spoke so highly of them both. And all the time they’d been having this sordid affair behind her back, taking her for a fool. Look, I’ve always been behind the curve when it comes to sex, I can come across as more conservative than I’d like, but it took my breath away that they didn’t think it might be relevant in her disappearance. She went missing minutes after discovering their affair.
In my mind, their silence was either incredibly thoughtless or deeply suspect. I’m a man with a lot of sympathy, but for some reason, I just couldn’t extend it. It just wouldn’t reach as far as the limb I felt like Kimberly was out on. I was still reeling from the revelations about Robert’s proclivities, I’d almost lost everything I’d worked for, and I discovered the same day that Kimberly had done something at least as unforgivable, in my opinion perhaps more so. Andrew Flowers was a fly-by-night, shallow, vain man without self-awareness, someone who you expect this sort of thing from. Kimberly was Zoe’s sister.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
He told me that I could, quote, “Get fucked,” since that’s clearly what I was so good at.