True Crime Story(38)

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

When I saw Andrew wasn’t going to say or do anything, wasn’t even going to defend Jai, I saw what a two-faced fucking coward he could be. I went outside for some air.

Like I said, Fintan’s not my cup of tea, but at least he has the strength of his convictions. He threw himself on these guys and just started scattering them around. I couldn’t believe it, this wiry, white Irish kid. And they actually backed off, they actually shit it. They were laughing at him and taking the piss, but they backed off.

LIU WAI:

I mean, teenage boys, am I right? The moment passed, people dispersed, and I think Zoe wanted to get the music back on. Then the next thing I know, all these lads are looking at their phones, pointing at Zoe. This time, it wasn’t like with the underwear, where she was kind of the victim and in on it. It was cruel, they were all laughing at her. One of them came over with his phone and showed us what they were cracking up over. My mouth just fell open. I didn’t know what to say.

SAM LIMMOND:

I’d already left and gone home for Christmas before the party, but Alex called and told me what happened. She said, “That fucking girl, that fucking laptop.” She was drunk, ranting. I said, “What girl?” She told me the sex video of Zoe and Andrew that she walked in on had leaked, that it must have come from the laptop Zoe gave to Liu Wai.

LIU WAI:

Look, Zoe clearly didn’t think I’d put it out there. When Andrew finally emerged from the bathroom, she fully lost it with him. I’d never once seen that girl lose so much as her temper, but here she was, scratching his face, and I mean badly. Slapping him, kicking him, calling him names, ripping his shirt. You wanted to stop it, but he just stood there and took it, very un-Andrew. Almost like the guilty man he so clearly was. In the end, I grabbed her arm, like, for Zoe’s sake as much as anything. I was scared she might kill him.

ANDREW FLOWERS:

Why did I stand there and take it if I didn’t leak the video? Well, what should I have done? Hit her back?

LIU WAI:

I said, “Zoe, let’s go somewhere and talk.” She looked around, dizzy, like she didn’t remember where she was, then said she needed a minute. There were people everywhere, all through our flat, everyone staring at her, all laughing. She said, “Meet me on the roof in five minutes.” I offered to go with her, but she just said, “Five minutes,” and walked up the stairs. That was the last time I ever saw her.

FINTAN MURPHY:

I guess I was helping Jai down the stairs while all this was going on. He lived in Owens Park, but I lived outside it, down Wilmslow Road. He was upset, annoyed with Andrew and insisting he wouldn’t stay in their flat, so he asked me to wait a second while he got his stuff to go and stay with a friend. When he came back out, he seemed shaken by something. He hardly seemed to notice I was there. We walked out, down the road together, but when I asked what was wrong, he kind of shrugged it off. I don’t think we even said good night when I got to mine. He just kept walking.

JAI MAHMOOD:

Man, I was too out of it to even notice Fintan. I went to my room for the only thing I had worth keeping, yeah, my stash, which had been hidden under the bed. It was an empty Ben & Jerry’s tub filled with Xanax and Oxy, and it was gone. And just like that, man, I owed Vlad the Inhaler a grand I didn’t have. He’d always been sound with me, but he was still built like a brick shithouse. They said he’d been a bank robber, like a safecracker back home, and if you saw him, you’d believe it. If Fintan says we walked out together, I’ve got to take his word for it. I just remember looking back at the tower. All those lit windows, all those lives behind them. I felt banished. Not just from the building, man, from something way bigger. That night was the end of something for me.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

When I got back up to fifteenth, everything felt different. The Christmas music had stopped and people were leaving, still rowdy but leaving. Some of the boys were looking at me, so I could tell something was wrong. They were crowding around the lift to get out or just tramping down the stairwell. Almost all of them laughing at something on their phones. Some guy came up to me like, “Have you seen what your sister’s getting up to?” That was when I saw the video.

LIU WAI:

I only saw it once, when I was standing there with Zoe. Even that felt like a betrayal.

SAM LIMMOND:

I asked Alex what was on the tape. She said it was five seconds long, if that. It just showed Andrew and Zoe having sex on a sofa. He kept saying her name, like, “Zoe, Zoe, Zoe,” and apparently all the boys were doing impressions of him.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

While I was watching it, trying to work out what I was being shown, the fire alarm went off, right on cue. I didn’t know what to do, so I followed everyone else down into the stairwell, kind of in shock. It was full of people, boys all dicking around and jostling each other, the girls with fingers in their ears against the alarm. It took us forever, like, ten minutes to get down, so it was only once we all got out there that I could actually look for Zoe. Liu Wai was standing by the door gossiping with a group of girls. They all went quiet when I walked past.

LIU WAI:

Erm, I was waiting for Zoe? Like, maybe I was asking people if they’d seen her? I was hoping she’d heard the alarm on the roof and was coming down with everyone else.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

I’d been through the crowd, I’d called her a few times, I’d asked people if they’d seen her. Everyone was just laughing, trying to show me the fucking video while I was just feeling sick. In the end, I went back to Liu, who was still standing by the door. The girls she’d been talking to were doing vodka shots by this point. I asked if she’d seen Zoe, if she’d come out, and she told me she’d been standing there for twenty-five minutes, that as far as she could tell, Zoe still hadn’t left.