Page 77 of Captive Hearts
Ashley had done exactly as she’d vowed, turning in her notice within days of the holdup. She already had a plan by then, she said, but she didn’t explain it straight away. She was still nutting out the details. But she promised Gina would find out soon enough. And she did.
‘I’m starting up my own YouTube channel,’ Ashley eventually revealed.
‘Whoa, going maverick, are we?’ Gina asked. They were lying in bed, a few weeks into dating. It was going well. Better than well, actually; it was electric between them. They rowed, obviously. Ashley was still Ashley. But somehow, Gina felt like it was a good thing. Ashley was worth fighting for.
‘Yeah, I’m tired of the mainstream. So… you in?’ Ashley asked.
‘What, me?’ Gina asked.
‘I mean, not if you don’t want to. Go back to shooting fiction if you like, but… if you ask me…’
‘I didn’t,’ Gina said, knowing it wouldn’t stop Ashley from giving it to her straight.
‘The stuff you got that day with Pete, it was something else. You held your nerve like a seasoned pro. You’ve got talent. You’re wasting it on bad movies.’
Gina kind of knew that. In truth, shehadbeen leaning in the direction of shooting news for a living. She’d been fielding a lot of offers to work in that sector. Problem was, it all sounded quite boring compared to where she’d cut her teeth. Where the action was. She wanted something, well, not quite like that first day, but certainly beyond dry news.
Which was precisely what her new girlfriend was offering her. Which might be a hitch in an otherwise tempting offer. ‘I mean, it sounds… I admit it could be great. But what about you and me? Being in a relationship and working together? Could blow up in our faces,’ Gina said.
Ashley took her hand gently and smiled. ‘Look, we’re a good team. That’s all I know. Not only can you shoot great stuff, I think you bring out my human side. I might need that.’
Gina slipped closer to Ashley. ‘Wedomake a good team, don’t we?’
They went for it.
What they wanted was to make in-depth documentaries with a focus on investigative journalism. The first story was Pete. They even interviewed him in prison. Luckily, his desire for attention outweighed his hatred of Ashley and Gina, and he talked to them all about the holdup, his brand of bullshit undercut with Ashley’s probing and occasionally downright uncomfortable questions. He was crying by the end, and they were very real tears.
Gina cut the whole thing together, pretty much learning to edit on the fly. Once it was cut, they held hands, pressed upload, and waited. It blew up. A million views in just a few days. Trending on Twitter. The whole shebang. People were excited to get an insider’s view of such a famous story.
After that, they were off and running, Ashley finding small stories that no one else cared about that gave her spider sense a little buzz and going in to find out the truth. And fuck, was she good at it. She’d exposed a politician’s financial misappropriation and discovered a police cover-up in the first month alone. She just knew how to get to the truth, and it was Gina’s privilege to watch her do it through the eye of her lens. Needless to say, the channel grew quickly. A year in, they had twenty million subscribers and counting.
And the reason it blew up was absolutely obvious. People liked Ashley.Lovedher.They liked the way she seemed as if she was merely curious about this and that, and how she was gentle when needed, which she told Gina was only a recently acquired skill learnt in Pete’s accidental journalistic finishing school.But there was still plenty of the old Ashley in there. Because when the moment presented itself for one of Ashley’s truth bombs, you better stand back, hold on to your hat, duck for cover, because it was all coming out. Ashley was clutched to the heart of a truth-seeking audience.
Though Ashley said it was more than that that kept people watching. She reckoned what people loved was their relationship, hers and Gina’s. Because Gina wasn’t a passive camerawoman. She was nearly as much a part of the action as Ashley was, talking from behind the camera, in the thick of it with her. Telling Ashley when she thought she was onto something, as well as when she thought Ashley was being an arsehole.
Gina didn’t care what it was that people liked. All she knew was that she was doing something that mattered, and she was having a blast while she did it, working with the woman she loved.
But Gina wasn’t the only one to fall in love with Ashley. The mainstream wanted her. Wanted her bad. Though Gina had had to be talked into going in on this mad scheme, now she worried that there might be an offer from conventional media one day that was simply too big for Ashley to turn down. She loved this life with Ashley, travelling around, making docs all day, hotels at night. She didn’t want it to change.
‘You’re never tempted to take one of those news jobs? You would have snapped their hands off when we first met,’ Gina asked, trying to sound casual.
But Ashley shook her head confidently. ‘I like what I do. I do what I like. And I do it with you. Why change anything?’
Gina was relieved. ‘Why, indeed.’
Ashley kissed her on the cheek as she drove. ‘Oh, hold that thought. I just gotta check if that guy got in touch about letting me into his cult that worships the planet Hercules.’
Gina raised an eyebrow. ‘But there isn’t a planet Hercules.’
‘And that’s just the tip of the crazy. It’s gonna be brilliant,’ Ashley grinned, swiping down her phone. ‘Hey, this is interesting.’
‘What?’
Ashley started laughing. ‘Channel Seven has been in touch.’
‘That’s Kara Malone’s channel, right?’
‘Yeah. They want to buy the rights to show our docs. Primetime slot, apparently. Nine. After the news.’
