next to each other. ‘Wait,’ said one of the bros as Gina and Ashley walked in, ‘Didn’t you leave with an old lady? How have you come back with two different women?’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Rick said casually.
‘I’m just… Is Sandra alright?’ the guy asked nervously.
‘What did I just say?’ Rick asked sharply.
‘She’s fine,’ Gina told him.
‘Hey!’ Rick cried. He held up his gun. ‘Did everyone forget about this? No unauthorised… chitchat!’
No one said anything else.
‘You two, get those vests off,’ Rick said.
Gina and Ashley took off their Kevlar. Rick took the vests, throwing aside one, slipping the other onto himself quickly. ‘Now, join that lot.’ He gestured for Gina and Ashley to plonk down with the rest while he headed for the fridge. While he was rustling about, Ashley looked around at everyone. ‘Hi, Ashley Quick for KTN,’ she whispered.
Gina rolled her eyes.
‘Is everyone alright?’ Ashley asked.
‘We’re OK,’ said the woman with the birthday badge.
‘So, what happened?’ Ashley asked.
‘Is this really the time for interviews?’ Gina asked quietly.
‘I’m not interviewing. I’m just trying to get an overview of the situation.’
‘For your report?’ Gina asked. ‘I wouldn’t be counting any chickens on getting this story on the TV news today. I don’t even know if we’ll be alive for teatime.’
The teenage girl turned to them, shocked. ‘What?’
‘Oh, bloody nice one!’ muttered her dad angrily at Gina, sliding an arm around his daughter. ‘It’s gonna be alright.’ She shrugged him off. ‘Get off, Dad! I’m not a kid.’ Her father took his arm back with a world-weary sigh.
‘Oi, you lot aren’t talking, are you?’ Rick said, mouth full, the rest of the sandwich in his gun-free hand. Everyone shook their heads. ‘Good. Because you’ve got nothing to say to each other, you got it?’ Everyone nodded.
Rick sat down on a stool and silently ate his sandwich. Once finished, he washed his hands and said to Ashley, ‘Right. I’m ready.’
‘For…’
‘That interview.’
‘Oh. Right. OK,’ Ashley said. She turned to Gina. ‘Get your gear ready.’
Gina was confused. They really were going to interview Rick after all? What the hell was the point? But as with basically every other moment of this day, despite not understanding what the hell was going on, she rolled with it and switched on her camera.
Eleven
Ashley was doing the only thing she knew how to do. Stay on the job. Observe and record the facts. She was placing all this knowledge into her memory banks, for want of access to her notebook, which sat in her pocket. Somehow, she didn’t think Rick would take kindly to her scribbling away, so she simply kept slotting observations into her mind palace. She was memorising the layout of the kitchen. She was retaining all her fellow hostages’ faces, along with all the obvious facts about them. She was trying to keep everything Rick said stored up for later transcription.
Why was she doing all this? To avoid her own guilt. To avoid the singular and sickening fact that Ashley might have just bought a ticket to an early grave for her and Gina so that she might be in with a shot at a slightly better job. She couldn’t believe her own stupidity.
Nor could she believe she’d gotten so caught up in this big story that she’d forgotten something more important than her work. That she liked living. As difficult as it was sometimes to grind through the days, she wanted to keep doing it. Yet she’d gotten herself to this point, running as fast as she could, pushed on by her Achilles’ heel, her ambition. Once she’d heard that first police siren, beckoning her toward danger, what could she do but sail towards it, right towards the danger of the jagged rocks.
Ashley didn’t want to look at Gina. She couldn’t begin to imagine how angry the poor woman must be, dragged kicking and screaming into this restaurant, doing a job she didn’t even care about. If Ashley survived Rick, Gina would probably be next in line to kill her.
Rick, his sandwich done, turned to Ashley, breaking into her remorseful thoughts. ‘Right. I’m ready.’
‘For…’
‘That interview.’
‘Oh. Right. OK,’ Ashley said. She turned to Gina, avoiding direct eye contact. ‘Get your gear ready.’
Gina paused, and Ashley felt like she was about to be told to quite squarely fuck herself. But Gina just stood up, switched her camera on, and slipped it onto her shoulder, fiddling with the focus for a moment. ‘Ready.’
‘You’re set?’
‘I’m not an amateur,’ Gina told her, pressing her eye to the viewfinder.
‘No, you’re