I think that was really hard for her.
You’d see her constantly picking up her phone, checking the screen, then putting it back down again disappointed. Music people falling away, I guess. I tried to be there for her, but in a way, we were like strangers by then. And I couldn’t hide my excitement either. I’d been accepted for English at MU. I wanted to strike out on my own and find out who I could be without my sister.
SALLY NOLAN:
The doctors agreed it was a cry for help. We thought she’d stay home, recuperate, work out what she wanted to do while Kim went away to do English. She didn’t like it, though. I think she started to see how Kim had it all those years, feeling second best. We’d made her think she couldn’t be weak, so she forced herself to go.
ROBERT NOLAN:
They were both growing up, both needing their own space, like, but at the same time, they were still just kids. They didn’t know what they wanted. So when Zoe was turned down by the Royal Northern, when they were both accepted into Manchester, it seemed meant to be. I called student housing and explained my situation. You know, “One of my girls is struggling, and I want them close together. Can you do anything?” I suppose I thought whoever I spoke to might put them in in the same area, but they ended up in the same block, same flat even.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
When you grow up in Stoke, Manchester might as well be New York. It’s Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths, you know. It’s that Oasis album, Definitely Maybe. It’s bookshops and Anthony Burgess and bars and boys and cafés.
It’s culture and life.
But like that, this dream I’d been holding on to of stepping out from under Zoe’s shadow just fizzled and died. Except it was worse now. I was expected to be her minder as well. It felt like everything was ending before it had even started. And once we moved into residence as well, we just snapped back to our old dynamic. She made friends and met boys, and I didn’t. There were two of us, and one version was more smiley and outgoing, so what did I expect? Neither of us had even had a boyfriend before, not properly, so when she struck up with Andrew, who I actually met first, who I’d really liked, it was hard for me.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, I won’t sit here and insult Zoe’s memory by pretending that we were particularly close. If she hadn’t gone missing, I doubt I’d have given her much thought in the intervening years. But she was a person, a kid really, when she went missing, and of course it’s a tragedy. She never got the chance to let her childhood and her pretensions fall away. And you could argue that’s useful for the role that she’s been cast in by the likes of her father, the likes of Fintan Murphy and Liu Wai. A victim is apparently the best thing you can be in this day and age, so they just built their own. This eternal spotless victim. I suppose they must look back and see her that way, sort of immaculate, guileless and pure. Unfortunately, some of us actually knew her and can more easily locate the artifice in all that. The girl ate and shat, she slept and dreamed, she had sex and laughed at inappropriate things. She also trotted out dull, reheated opinions from her parents, she lacked identity, she faked that pained smile you see in all her pictures. In short, she was just like everyone else at that age. I’m not saying all the above is necessarily who she was. I’m not saying it’s necessarily who she always would have been. I’m saying she never got the chance to grow out of it. She certainly wasn’t some saint, and it erases her, erases the messy, real-life truth of Zoe Nolan to suggest otherwise.
How did I get into all this?
Yes, right, the music. I mean, there’s the fundamental rose-tinted example in my view, because quite honestly, Zoe was no great shakes when it came to singing. Mannered, over-rehearsed, nothing real going on at all. She might make you cry in the pub after five pints, but in the cold light of day? Nothing special. She’d always sing “Ombra mai fu”—that was her party piece after the music stopped—and I just found it intensely embarrassing. She couldn’t even speak Italian. The song might have been about raw sewage for all she knew, but her dad had her believing it was the zenith of class and refinement. Perhaps in Stoke-on-Trent, that was true. To me, I’m afraid, it was as tiresome as an open-mic rendition of fucking “Wonderwall” or something.
LIU WAI:
I’d never heard that, about Zoe’s suicide attempt, I mean, obviously I met her after. It explains some things, though, and I suppose it makes others a lot sadder. You start to understand some of Kim’s resentment too.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Oh, fucking Liu Wai. I didn’t resent her. I just felt like my life was being put on hold. Like, “Okay, well, now my life won’t start at eighteen either. I guess it won’t start until Zoe and me go our separate ways somehow.”
From: [email protected]
Sent: 2019-01-17 10:17
To: you
on Thu, Jan 17, 2019, Joseph Knox [email protected] wrote:
Evelyn. Sorry this took me so long to get to, and that I missed your messages from earlier. Haven’t read the whole first part yet but did just rattle through the first chapter.
Strange calls: check.
Overbearing father: check.
Thwarted dreams: check.
“Go our separate ways somehow”
Murderous sisterly resentment
…？ J
# # #
That check’s in the mail. I told you, that’s the whole story. You’re just getting to Manchester and all the good stuff.
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXXX XX
Are you still into it?
Ex
2.
“Relationship Status”
Some of the people who would become vital to the investigation into Zoe’s disappearance were new in her life, with many of them having met her only recently, as they began their first term of university.
JAI MAHMOOD: