LIU WAI:
I’ve been thinking about what you said Andrew told you, like how they’re still “technically” a couple. It got me going on all his weird abandonment issues. Like, his mum and his dad and his French ex or whatever. No matter what, his relationship with Zoe is permanent now. Nothing can ever break it off. When you think of it like that, it kind of makes you shudder, doesn’t it?
From: [email protected]
Sent: 2019-01-24 20:56
To: you
From Andrew’s Facebook.
FYI he says he wore this costume back to Zoe’s flat after falling out with his housemates and then lost track of it. Unfortunately, it’s reappeared in a bad way during one of the interviews I’m transcribing for part two…
E（！）
8.
“Self-Harm”
One month before Zoe’s disappearance, serious cracks emerge in her relationship with Andrew. Both Zoe and Kimberly begin acting wildly out of character.
LIU WAI:
I’ve found that a man’s quality has a kind of cataclysmic half-life from the first date to the second, then from the second to the third, and, frankly, kind of just endlessly after that. People always start out on their best behavior when you first meet them, then slide down into who they really are afterward. I thought after the note on Zoe’s laptop, everyone was acting weird, but now I look back and wonder if they were just showing their true colors? Alex really darkened on me, went from this quite nice influence to totally negative overnight. She started spending less time with Sam and more time with this awful wannabe poet she was seeing on the side. She’d met him at an Interpol concert, which probably tells you everything you need to know. Any time the frontman for a band sings like he’s phoning in sick, you can usually depend on his fans being pretentious. I can’t remember this boy’s name, but the one time I met him, he had a secondhand copy of The Stranger sticking out the back pocket of his skinny jeans…
Zoe was up and down like a seesaw, unpredictable and jumpy in ways she hadn’t been before. And I’m absolutely not one to judge in any way whatsoever, but Kim’s drinking was out-of-control crazy. You’d think she was more upset about the note on Zoe’s laptop than Zoe was.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
November was a rough time for me, I had my own stuff going on. Yes, I was upset about Zoe and Andrew, yes, I was stressed out by someone stalking my sister. But there was more. There was a night out I’m not really ready to talk about, but just believe me when I say it was bad. After it, I got panic attacks every time I turned the light off. I guess being drunk just seemed like the simplest way around some shitty nights and some shitty feelings. I’m sorry if that made Liu Wai uncomfortable.4
FINTAN MURPHY:
Zoe met me for a coffee and turned up with this Casio keyboard under her arm. She told me she was worried about Kimberly. Not only the drinking in isolation but everything that came with it. She’d started rolling in at all hours, sometimes in the company of strange men. Zoe said they didn’t know how to speak with one another anymore, which just seemed bizarre for twin sisters.
And one other thing I should mention…
Once we’d finished talking it through, she tried to give me this keyboard that she’d turned up with. I must have said to her in passing that I was dying to have something I could play in my room, and she knew I wasn’t worth a bean, so she wanted me to take it. I said I couldn’t accept, but she insisted. She said she saw Kimberly’s life of cheap thrills and no love, and she was afraid of that happening to her. I said, “Oh, Zoe, you don’t have to buy my friendship, not ever.” She became emotional—probably we both did—and in the end, I think I agreed to take it on loan. I said I’d give it back to her once I’d saved up for my own.
Of course, I’ve never had that chance.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Did Kim have a drinking problem? I think that’s what most people go to university for in the first place, isn’t it? I thought that stuff was always exaggerated by people afterward, but maybe, sure, who knows? From what I saw, she always spilled more than she actually drank. She certainly wasn’t the sloppy, loud, messy wreck that the press made her out to be. She was sort of insular, she had that unfortunate thing of appearing more drunk than she was. She’d take a sip of something and her whole body slurred afterward. I found it quite charming.
LIU WAI:
I remember one time we were going out to this nightclub, Fifth Avenue. It was a Tuesday, student night, maybe six or seven o’clock, and I think we were all just in our own rooms getting ready. Then a full-blown domestic kicks off. I mean, being next door, I couldn’t help but overhear that Andrew and Zoe were having this apocalyptic fight.
On one level, it was quite normal? It was the kind of thing Andrew would initiate quite often. He sort of seethed and regenerated, and then once his rage reached full capacity, it just got unloaded on whoever or whatever happened to be in front of him at the time. Unfortunately, that was usually Zoe. Like, I thought he could be a real bully? Laughing if she didn’t know where a certain country was or mispronounced a word. What was strange about this occasion was that she was the one shouting. I don’t think I even knew she could shout.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Oh, naturally Liu Wai couldn’t help but overhear. Conversations taking place in the next room are always so difficult to ignore when you’ve got your head pressed against the sodding wall listening to them. Look, you know what I was going through at the time. My mum did herself in, my dad was doing my ex, and I almost did time for nicking his car.
For all intents and purposes, I’d been disowned.
I freely admit that I shouldn’t have been dating at the time. I shouldn’t have been around people, full stop. They should have tied me to the mast of a ship and sent it out to sea for six months so I could scream it all off my chest. But I don’t accept that I was a bully. Not of anyone but myself. Who knows why we were arguing? If this was that time we went to Fifth Avenue, then it was probably because Zoe had invited Liu Wai on a night I’d thought was supposed to be about the two of us. In fact, yes, I think once I heard that her friend was coming, I insisted on bringing one along too.