I climbed over the fence and stood on the other side with my back to it for a few seconds, just shaking, like, shivering all over with fear. Then I thought about those men marching me toward the foundations and forced myself forward one step at a time. I got right to the edge of the pit and wavered there. I didn’t have a flashlight, so it was just this big, black, wide open space. And I could feel this magnetism, this thing inside pulling me down, like it was where I was meant to be. I shouted out for her, moved around the edges, listened back, but all I could hear was myself. Then I saw her, this pale, haunted face looking back at me from inside the foundations. She looked horrible, awful, in pain. When I shouted to her, I realized it was just a puddle at the edge of the pit, I was just talking to myself. I slid down the bank to it anyway, down on my hands and knees until I was in it, rainwater up to my waist. I think I just cried and said I was sorry, either to my reflection or to Zoe, probably to us both. Then there were sounds and flashlights. I don’t remember the police or security or whoever it was finding me there. That night was like getting hit by the car when I was a kid or getting taken from outside Fifth. It felt like it was all happening in the same moment.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I’d had this huge blowout with my friend, this screaming row with the girl I was seeing, and—I don’t know. It was like catching my reflection in a mirror and not liking what I saw. And I mean that literally as well as metaphorically—my face was still bleeding well into the next day from Zoe’s attack. So I suppose I decided to go into this self-imposed exile for the night, I decided to walk it all off or something. I seem to recall Christmas lights but… Look, I went over it and over it with the police afterward. “No, I didn’t see anyone who could confirm my whereabouts. No, I don’t particularly remember where I went. Yes, I have some idea of how that might sound.”
JAI MAHMOOD:
Once I clocked that the stuff had gone missing from under my bed, I knew I had to get the fuck out, man. Questions about how and why just had to wait. I still had stitches from getting decked in the car park, so they’d ripped open in my fall down the stairs and the kicking I got at the bottom. I was a sight, hurting all over, and I mean inside as much as out. And yeah, I felt guilty as well, even of these things I hadn’t done. All I had were the pills in my pocket, so I decided I’d spend as long as possible out of my head. If I was careful, I thought they’d last me a few days. My friend Tariq lived in a flat on Oxford Road, and he’d gone home for Christmas. I knew where he kept his spare key, so I crashed there. I thought I’d get my head down, work out where I could get a grand to pay Vlad back with.
I turned my phone on once or twice to see a million and one missed calls from Andrew, but I thought, Stuff him. Part of me wondered if he’d nicked the pills as some kind of revenge for his watch. Everyone was going home for Christmas, which my family didn’t celebrate, so I thought I’d stay put until I was sure the others had left Owens Park. I thought I’d let them worry about me for a week and then have it all blow over in the New Year. I didn’t know Zoe was missing, man.
SALLY NOLAN:
When they brought Kim back to Owens Park that morning, I didn’t recognize her. Stick thin and screwed up and black-and-white, this soaking wet wraith getting out of a police car. She was all makeup-streaked and dead-eyed. I thought she looked like a murder victim.
LIU WAI:
In all this, I hadn’t realized that Mr. and Mrs. Nolan were yet to see Kim’s new look, and I didn’t properly prepare them for it. Her dad, who I think is kind of a bit old school, looked at her and said, “What the fuck have you done to yourself?” I couldn’t tell if he meant the way that she looked or the fact that she’d been arrested. It kind of covered both.
SARAH MANNING:
I reported for duty at nine o’clock that morning, and I’d been assigned by ten. They told me the parents were already on the scene and understandably distressed, so I arrived at Owens Park roughly the same time that Kimberly did, around noon. Honestly, I thought she looked like she was in shock. Maybe people thought it was the makeup making her look so pale. But her pupils were huge, her breathing was irregular, her lips were blue. I couldn’t believe the arresting officers had booked her at the station, then brought her to the scene. She should have been in the hospital. She was barefoot, bleeding, out of breath, shivering. We’re talking about December in Manchester, cold as ice.
I remember thinking something else was wrong, though.
A family member going missing has to be the height of trauma, and I’d say especially so when it’s your twin sister. But I felt like Kim was carrying more than that on her shoulders—and that’s certainly the opinion I expressed to Detective Inspector James, who was on-site that day and went on to take the lead in the investigation. There was no body, no ransom note, no threat. No reason to suspect foul play so few hours after her disappearance. So why was Kim so agitated? Why was she so aggrieved? It felt like she wasn’t telling us everything.
The other thing wrong was the scene itself. I can’t point fingers, because there were only a handful of officers on-site at that time. No one could have known how things would develop, but the tower was bad for us. We had eyewitnesses saying Zoe had never left the building, but it still hadn’t been locked down twelve hours later. There were something like a thousand students all being collected by parents that day for the Christmas break, all leaving the building at the same time, all carrying large suitcases, holdalls, backpacks. It was a disaster.
Detective Inspector Gregory James declined to be interviewed for this book, reiterating Greater Manchester Police’s statement that to do so could prejudice the ongoing investigation into Zoe’s disappearance.
FINTAN MURPHY:
Kimberly arrived looking freezing cold. I think she had one of the police officers’ UV jackets draped over her shoulders. DC Manning, Sarah, the liaison officer, the person we dealt with most, said that the police had spoken to security at the site where she was found, that given the circumstances, everyone had decided to let Kimberly’s trespassing misadventure go. Somehow, that had the strange effect of driving home the seriousness of Zoe’s disappearance for me. Round my way, kids aren’t just taxied about by the cops and let off with a warning.
SARAH MANNING:
I offered to help Kim, to get her inside, maybe find her a hot drink and a shower. I’d only just introduced myself to her parents, so that might be why they resisted the idea. They were still being briefed and after all, they’d lost one daughter already that day. On the other hand, I thought they seemed worried by the prospect of Kim speaking to the police. I remember Sally pulling the high-vis jacket off her immediately, putting her own jacket around Kim’s shoulders instead. It’s not that I thought Kim had something to do with her sister’s disappearance. It’s more that her parents seemed to think it.