HARRY FOWLES:
That was when we had our one and only flat meeting. I know it was November 1, because Andrew was still hungover, still wearing the black gown from his Halloween costume, letting us all know how seriously he took it. None of us wanted to call the police, but stuff was going missing. Still. And not just from the fridge or the kitchen either. Someone was going into our rooms and ripping us off left and right. And what was weird was that you never heard Andrew or Jai talk about it. We weren’t blaming anyone, just trying to have the conversation.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Money had been tight for me, yeah. The rest of them had rich parents, but mine couldn’t help me out like that. I’d always had to work. When I first moved to Manchester, I transferred from the Caffè Nero I’d been working at in Birmingham but got fired a few weeks in. I was never employee of the month, but the last straw was when this tweaker came through demanding the code for the toilet. There were people using it to shoot up in all the time, and I’d spent my whole morning cleaning up this modern art installation of diarrhea. So I said, “Sorry, man, paying customers only.” While I was talking to the next person in line, the guy got a chair, climbed up onto the counter and shit on it. They fired me the same day.
HARRY FOWLES:
It was impossible to talk to Andrew about money. He’s the classic example of someone who’d believe a pint of milk costs a tenner. He was in our flat meeting wearing Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, which he wouldn’t take off. Jai was still bloodied and bruised. He’d been really wary of us ever since he got beat up, like it was us who’d done it or something. He was locking his bedroom door, cutting himself off. Anyway, at some point, Andrew asked what time it was and then realized he couldn’t find his ridiculous gold Rolex anywhere. There was this second where you could tell he wanted to ask Jai if he’d seen it, like, he’d just been lecturing us, saying we were all imagining things going missing, but he clearly suspected Jai of taking his watch. And who the fuck even has a gold Rolex at eighteen anyway? In the end, he just muttered something like, “I must have left it at Zoe’s,” and slunk out. He put the mask back on with his costume to walk over there.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, if their things were going missing, then I’m sure some of mine were too. I simply wasn’t there a lot of the time. And I guess I didn’t really care about my property either. The only thing that had any value to me whatsoever was my shitty gold Rolex, and only because it had been my grandfather’s, because it was given to me by my mother. My fidelity to that watch was a way of being close to her, it was literally the last surviving relic of my grandfather’s largesse. Jai wasn’t the last person to have it or anything, but he’d expressed interest in it from the off. He’d even taken it for a short period, an hour or so, to photograph.
JAI MAHMOOD:
I thought that watch was fucking hideous, man. Tasteless, tacky, bougie bling. It just went well with my portfolio of ugly objects. Course I said it looked cool. Why would I tell him the truth?
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I just sensed something strange in Jai’s interest. This half smile would creep on to his face whenever he handled it. Anyway, I asked if he’d seen it and he said no, so I left to go and look at Zoe’s.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Yeah, the boy band we were living with became convinced that either me or Andrew, or maybe me and Andrew, were stealing shit. I can’t speak for him, but I’d grab stuff out of the fridge at worst. At worst. And I had money by then anyway. It just wasn’t strictly legal. After I got fired and after I got beat up, when I really was shitting it about the rent, I went limping into the Great Central, this Wetherspoon’s pub in Fallowfield. I’d been taking my CV around bars and coffee shops, hoping to scare something up. So I get there and find this fucking great Russian standing outside smoking, yeah, looking meaner than death. He makes some joke about me being Aladdin, says I must have fallen off my magic carpet midflight, and I just lose it. For a start, the guy was in worse nick than me. Someone had cut both his nostrils open, like with scissors or a knife or something. They’d healed up, but you could tell it had happened—he’d lived this knockabout life and he was giving me shit. So I’m just like, “Suck me off, Igor. I hope those Marlboros turn your lungs black.” He must of been about three times my size, but instead of killing me, he doubled up laughing. When he saw I’d really meant it, like, how pissed off and on edge I was, he offered to buy me a drink. I thought it might be all the nutrition I’d get that day, so I said, “Sure.”
He introduced himself as Vladimir but said that wasn’t his real name. People just called him that because he’d snort anything, Vlad the Inhaler. He asked what had happened to me and I told him, then he asked if my bruises hurt, and I told him that too. Then he dug around in his pockets and found this vial of pills, alprazolam, and said they might help me. I thought alprazolam sounded like something Harry Potter might say. Told him I was grateful, but I didn’t take stuff I couldn’t pronounce, and anyway, I couldn’t pay him, I was on my arse. He asked if I could pronounce Xanax, which was the brand name, and I said I could. It wasn’t around as much then, but I’d heard of it. Then he asked where I lived, and when I told him I was over the road in Owens Park, he offered me a job. Said he had a booming market for pills on campus. Nothing evil, just uppers for students doing late-night cram sessions, downers for ones who couldn’t switch off, painkillers for people like me. That’s what he called those Xans, painkillers—said they’d solve all my problems. He couldn’t really walk around campus himself—he looked like a taller, fatter, more fucked Joe Stalin—but I could. He said all I’d be doing was making some deliveries, maybe fielding some phone calls. It paid more than Caffè Nero, and cash in hand. My phone wasn’t exactly ringing with offers, so I said yes.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I started spending more time at the tower just to get out of our home situation. One unintended consequence of the note on Zoe’s laptop was that I didn’t feel like I could break up with her. I knew if I did, people would think I’d been the one harassing her all that time, so strangely, the whole thing pushed us closer together. Physically at least. She was a person who liked me when I was incapable of liking myself, and that was appealing, but there wasn’t really an emotional connection.
It was already November by this point, so my plan was to limp on until the holidays and break up with her once we got back, to let her have a good Christmas and allow her to start the New Year fresh. I just never got the chance. Technically, I suppose we’re still together.