True Crime Story(4)
Ex
* Evelyn never intended for her email correspondence to be made public. As a result, some small redactions have been made to protect her privacy. –J.K.
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“Exposed Foundations”
November 8, 2011—forty days before Zoe’s disappearance
In late 2018, Kimberly Nolan, Zoe’s twin sister, claimed in a rare interview given to the Mail on Sunday that she had herself once been kidnapped. She claimed that this kidnapping occurred roughly one month prior to Zoe’s disappearance, while on a night out with her sister and three other friends.
KIMBERLY NOLAN, Zoe’s sister:
I feel like my Mail interview covered all this. There are just more interesting things we could talk about. We could go back into Zoe as a little girl, work out if there were any warning signs we all missed. Or we could cut right back to the good stuff, our move out to Manchester. First time in a new city, first time doing a lot of things. We could even rehash the night Zoe went missing, I mean, that’s why we’re here. I can take you through all that with my eyes closed. Midnight fire alarms, people I shouldn’t have slept with, psychotic men standing in the shadows…
I know all of it, all of that, by heart.
But here you are asking me about my weakest subject, Kimberly Nolan. What can I tell you? I hardly know the girl.
FINTAN MURPHY, Zoe’s course mate and friend:
Right, Kimberly’s kidnapping, this sad story. Would you like my opinion? I mean, let’s put ourselves in poor Kimberly’s position for a moment. Born a girl, an almost identical twin, but with a sister who was simply more attractive than she was, simply more intelligent. A sister who was outgoing and prodigiously gifted musically. Someone who effortlessly charmed everyone she met. I think we all might struggle if we were up against that.
Okay, so, remaining in Kimberly’s shoes. You go away to university to get out from under your sister’s shadow, but owing to an unfortunate series of events, you end up studying at the same place, living in the same flat even. Your physical resemblance is such that people routinely doubletake at you around town, seem visibly disappointed when they realize you’re Kimberly and not Zoe.
So you lose a load of weight and start wearing black. You cut your hair short and go goth. Your sister is reserved in some senses, so you act out and start sleeping around. She drinks sensibly, so you drink like an open hole in the floor. She goes missing and becomes front-page news, so you generate this harrowing, incredible tale of how you were kidnapped once too. I’d say in some senses that’s perfectly understandable. It’s one of the few things about Kimberly that really is.
JAI MAHMOOD, Zoe’s friend:
I don’t remember much, but I’m fairly sure Fintan wasn’t even there that night.
LIU WAI, Zoe’s flatmate and friend:
I think what probably happened was that Zoe and I decided to go out? I know it was a Tuesday, which is like a big student night in Manchester. Kim always tried to involve herself in mine and Zoe’s plans, so I generally expected her to try and tag along. And she did, in that kind of dour way where it’s clear she thinks she’s doing you a massive favor. This was before she dyed her hair black and stuff, but she always had that kind of personality. And then, because it was the three of us, the boys ended up coming too. So that made for an eventful evening…
JAI MAHMOOD:
Y’know how some people drink so much of something they can never go near it again? They have to hold their nose while your Jim Beam’s being poured because of that night they drank a whole bottle of the stuff and spent six hours blowing it out both ends? [Laughs] That’s basically how I got sober, bro. One brand at a time, pushing everything so far over the line that I could never touch it again. I think the only thing I haven’t had a bad night on by now’s hard seltzer, and being honest, that’s just so I’ve got something saved for the deathbed.
ANDREW FLOWERS, Zoe’s boyfriend:
The Kimnapping? I mean, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but we did go to Fifth Avenue. If you don’t know it, it’s the ten or eleventh circle of hell, this grotesque indie disco warehouse where girls are generally assured of a cheap night out. That’s because they order one drink and some pale-faced northern boy called Gaz or Trev or something spikes it with Rohypnol. The girls are legless before they can even request Adele from the DJ. From some angles, that’s the only good thing about the place.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Point being, I was fully in that phase of my life back then, yeah? Not just embracing disaster, but taking it home and really giving it one. I’d had my head kicked in a few weeks before, so I thought I had a good excuse for being a fuckup. It was only over the next few years I started running low on excuses. So anyway, I know it’s criminal to say, but I don’t remember much about that night. It’s not one where I can scroll through the viewfinder and see some stills or shaky handheld footage, it’s just not there at all. Like, file missing, y’know? But if Fintan’s saying he was there, then he’s full of it.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Looking back, I’m Bruce Springsteen. I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face. Just please not the dress I was wearing that night. I was starting to experiment, trying to put some of my real self on display. I’d found this cool kind of Wednesday Addams outfit at Affleck’s Palace, and it made me feel more like myself than I had before, less like a second-rate Zoe and something more like Kim. It was the only time we ever went out as a group, which is strange when you read the papers from back then. You’d think we were thick as thieves when really we were just thick as kids. And everyone was acting invincible, no idea what was coming around the corner.