LIU WAI:
And maybe it came from the Facebook thing, but someone kept pranking our door relentlessly. Like, they’d buzz up from the ground-floor entrance and then when you answered, no one would say anything. Occasionally, people would play knock-a-door-run and stuff. It’s hard to tell what was sinister and what was the result of being surrounded by teenage boys. My main problem was more inside the flat, like a feeling of not knowing who was coming and going? It sounds like hindsight talking, but I’m telling you I could feel it. I have quite bad allergies, certain things really set me off. Every time I stuck my head inside Zoe’s room, I’d come away sneezing.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I didn’t live with Liu Wai for very long, but even just across those three months, she was quite sensitive to her surroundings, always noticing drafts or dust, quite often coughing or sick.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
If someone sneezed in Australia, Liu Wai caught a cold in Manchester.
LIU WAI:
I think it was because I grew up with just me and Mum, but men’s aftershave has always really stood out to me? It’s always just made my nose itch, and that was what I was getting from Zoe’s room. And as far as I knew, she hadn’t had any boys around at that time. When I mentioned it to her, she’d say she couldn’t smell it, but it was definitely, definitely there. Now, I want to go back and scream at her, at myself, like, “Get out!” I wondered if whoever had taken her underwear was returning to the scene of the crime or something.
Another thing that meant nothing to me then was how I’d always come into the flat after a day of no one being there and sort of find myself saying, “Wait, why is Lois’s door wide open?” Like, that room was supposed to be empty.
JAI MAHMOOD:
I never made it out on the night Andrew met Zoe. If I had, I might have realized what was going on before he did and changed the course of history.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, if I’m down on all fours in the confessional booth, then no, I cannot fully recall the night I met Zoe. If I’d known then that I’d end up having to discuss it for the rest of my life, I probably would have drunk some water or something. I can give you my movements, though, the vague sequence of events.
JAI MAHMOOD:
I was meant to meet him back at ours before he went out, but I never made it. At the time, I was working on this project where I’d document the multistory car parks of Manchester, all in black and white, then develop the pictures myself. I was starting with the ones nearest to us, yeah, Oxford Road, Salford, satellite towns, then thinking I’d work my way out, maybe even right to the airport. It came out of a story I’d read about the city’s population growing so massively. The census said it was up something like 20 percent in ten years, and I was buzzed off how that works. Where does everyone go? Where are their houses and rooms and cars? I wanted albums full of multistory car parks and apartment blocks and sublets and things. The idea was to build this kind of bible about the margins and where we cram all the stuff we don’t want seen. It probably would have ended with illegal squats and homeless shelters. That’s ironic now I think about it, because I never finished the project, but I did end up living in those places.
Anyway, I was in the car park on Grafton Street, basically finished for the day but just walking up to the roof to see if there was a view. I wish I could say I saw something or sensed it coming, but my head was all the way into what I was doing. I was on my last roll of film with some shots saved just in case. The advance lever on my SLR always stuck, so I think I’d stopped to jimmy it on when I heard footsteps, started to turn and got twatted on the back of the head. I hit the floor and a guy said, “So you like stealing white girls’ knickers eh, Sinbad?” I tried to say something but he hit me again. Ripped my camera out of my hands and smashed it on the floor. Then he just kicked me, my face, body and back until I passed out.
LIU WAI:
I personally don’t agree with violence in any circumstances, I think it usually says more about the attacker than the attacked. In an argument, anyone who has recourse to physicality automatically loses in my opinion. But I would also observe that sometimes those who live by the sword die by the sword.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Bruised ribs, two black eyes, sprained ankle, a dislocated knee and a bloody nose, but the only thing he actually broke was my camera. Things might have been better for me if he’d cracked my skull open instead, man, because that fucked me up. Maybe it was the hassle I’d been getting, the dirty looks around campus whenever I took a picture, but I think it was mainly that kicking. I’ve never owned a camera since. I just didn’t see the world in the same way. The woman who called the ambulance had to pull a pair of piss-stained boxer shorts out of my mouth.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I waited for Jai but he never showed, so I ended up on this misbegotten night out with our other flatmates, collectively known as One Direction, and yes, that’s the night I met Zoe.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
It was October 15—I can tell you the date because it was mine and Zoe’s birthday. The idea was this big night out, but as it got closer, as Liu Wai made more and more plans, I just found myself dreading it. Another night fielding no-brainer questions from boys about being a twin—“Can you feel it when your sister gets hurt?”—or watching them just walk straight past me to Zoe.
Sometimes it happens that way with me. I get this urge to cut and run. So I came down with a mystery illness and stayed in with Chihiro. I’ve often wondered if things would have been different if I’d gone.
LIU WAI:
I thought it said a lot about their relationship that Kim wouldn’t even spend their shared birthday together. Like, what kind of twin are you?
ANDREW FLOWERS:
We did the Great Central, the Deaf Institute, Font, and Trof. It was one of those nights that feels like it goes on for days. We finally ended up in a club called Heaven. Not the worst place in the world, but if you were forced to spend eternity there I think you’d lose your faith fairly fast. The idea was to blast your brains out with drum and bass, but through all the Day-Glo dickheads and denim dungarees, I saw this familiar face and thought, Hey, isn’t that the girl you met on your first night here?