ANDREW FLOWERS:
Which I suppose is how I ended up in this fetid fucking police station, free to leave at any time, just with three or four shitkickers between me and the door, explaining my sex life on a hangover and no sleep. More to the point, how I ended up hearing every word I’d ever spoken in Liu Wai’s presence recited back to me verbatim but now helpfully context free. So I’m racist, I’m sexist, I fucking hate Zoe, blah, blah. It was no surprise to me that Liu Wai memorized every word I ever said around her, because her issues with Zoe were as profound as anyone else’s. She had no life of her own whatsoever, no social skills whatsoever, and her only pleasures were attained vicariously. She was then and is now a leech, and that’s far more destructive in my book than a boyfriend who’s only after one thing. Most importantly, returning to the matter at hand, when Zoe attacked me, she never said anything about the damned tape, and there’s a room full of people to back that up.
LIU WAI:
I’d say Zoe’s reaction to the tape was pretty clear.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
The truth was, not only had I never seen the fucking thing, but I didn’t even have a copy of it. I didn’t have a file. I didn’t have anything. Not on my phone, not on my laptop, not anywhere.
LIU WAI:
Let’s meet Andrew halfway and say, hypothetically, that he didn’t leak the tape. Let’s say someone else did. Dozens of people saw Zoe more or less rip his face off seconds after seeing it. Does he expect us to believe that those two things are unrelated? She wasn’t thick, however much it might suit Andrew Flowers to keep suggesting she was.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I’ve never once suggested that Zoe was any less intelligent than me, and certainly not thick. I resent those words being put into my mouth. Am I glib? Yes. Cynical? Sign me up. But don’t call me a fucking snob just because I reject this somber procession of grief that we’re all supposed to lockstep into out of some misplaced notion of etiquette. We react—we think and we feel—in different ways. I wouldn’t think to delegitimize however Liu Wai wants to grieve, fucking incense and lanterns, Hello Kitty coffins, whatever, fine by me. But while her grotesque Saint Zoe shit might make her feel morally superior, it’s been scientifically proven not to bring people back from the dead.
Oh, where was I?
Yes, well, I suppose the police considered the text important because they perceived some causality between the sex tape and it. They thought whoever leaked the tape was the intended recipient of Zoe’s text. Once I agreed to hand over my phone, my laptop, my university log-in for forensics—all of which came back clean I might add—I thought they eased up on the idea of it being me. But of course their next questions were, “Well, who do you think leaked the tape, then? Who do you think the text might have been intended for?”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
We reached a point where I thought the questioning was over. They’d moved on to me, what I was going through. I thought they were sympathizing. They said that kind of responsibility, my sister’s well-being, was a lot for someone my age, and I agreed. Then they started to turn it, said, “You’d probably rather spend Christmas doing things you want to do, not babysitting your sister,” at which point I looked up. James leaned in and put his hand over mine. He said, “Wouldn’t your life be a lot easier if Zoe wasn’t around?”
HARRY FOWLES:
When the police were doing their door-to-door stuff the morning she went missing, we all said how Andrew talked about Zoe. Basically, he didn’t like her very much. He’d say stuff like, “Has anyone seen my earplugs? I’m going over to the tower.” One of us asked once why he was with her, since he seemed to have such a problem. He said, and I promise this is true, he said, “I won’t be with her for much longer. Count on it.”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
That’s right. Harry, my housemate, told them I disliked Zoe. That I wanted to split up with her a month before but didn’t have the balls to go through with it. They started to suggest that my life might be a lot easier if she just went out one day and never came back. I thought, Right, that makes sense, doesn’t it? I perceived some social awkwardness in splitting up with a girl who was being stalked, so obviously the simplest solution was to stove her head in and incinerate the body. I said something like, “Let’s hope I don’t get bored by these questions, or I might have to murder my way out of the station, since that’s apparently how I solve all my fucking problems.”
SARAH MANNING:
Andrew definitely didn’t endear himself to the investigating officers.
LIU WAI:
Of course I’d mentioned that the police had been called out in September when items of Zoe’s underwear were stolen. And that they’d then been found in Jai’s pockets all this time later at the party. So they started asking me if Zoe’s text could have been meant for Jai? Maybe because of the thong thing, maybe because Zoe thought he’d leaked the tape.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
When they moved on to Jai, I was relieved. “What about your other flatmate, the one who kept stealing her underpants? Could she have been texting him?”
LIU WAI:
Jai? I thought it wasn’t the craziest idea in the world. He seemed to have some kind of one-sided obsession with her, and I thought maybe he could have even gotten the video from Andrew somehow? Like, he obviously enjoyed stealing from Zoe.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I thought about it, then sort of explained that Jai and Zoe didn’t really know each other.
LIU WAI:
I said, no, actually, hang on. Zoe and Jai weren’t really that close. How could you do this to me? That’s something you’d say to a person who’s in your life, I think.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I said, no, Jai was more like a friend of a friend to Zoe. I wasn’t sure they’d ever even spoken.
LIU WAI:
I said how we’d only ever had one night out with Jai, and he’d been so wasted he got kicked out of the club. They were interested in that, like, “Why did he get kicked out?” So I said, “Oh, you know—he got into a fight.” And I saw that they were super interested in that, so I said, “You know, he didn’t start the fight.” “Oh, who did?” And I said, “Well, Jai was flirting with some guy’s girlfriend on the dance floor.” “And the guy got annoyed?” Well, I told them Jai actually blew smoke into the guy’s face. Their eyes were getting wider and wider, and I kind of wanted to back up. I kind of reiterated that Jai and Zoe didn’t really know each other. As far as I knew, they’d never properly spoken.