JACK: Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand.

ANNA-LENA: Do you know what the worst thing about being retired is?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: That you get too much time to think. People need a project, so Roger and I became sharks, and if we didn’t keep moving, our marriage wouldn’t get any oxygen. So we buy and renovate and sell, buy and renovate and sell. I did suggest that we try golf instead, but Roger doesn’t like golf.

JACK: Sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if we might be getting a little off the point here? You only have to tell me about the hostage situation. Not about you and your husband.

ANNA-LENA: But that’s the problem.

JACK: What is?

ANNA-LENA: I don’t think he wants to be my husband anymore.

JACK: What makes you say that?

ANNA-LENA: Do you know how many IKEA stores there are in Sweden?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: Twenty. Do you know how many Roger and I have been to?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: All of them. Every single one. We went to the last one fairly recently, and I didn’t think Roger had been keeping count, but when we were in the cafeteria having lunch Roger suddenly said we should each have a piece of cake as well. We never have cake in IKEA. We always have lunch, but never cake. And that was when I knew that he’d been keeping count. I know Roger doesn’t seem romantic, but sometimes he can be the most romantic man on the planet, you know.

JACK: That certainly sounds romantic.

ANNA-LENA: He can seem hard on the surface, but he doesn’t hate children.

JACK: What?

ANNA-LENA: Everyone thinks he hates children because he gets so angry when real estate agents put “children’s room” on the plans. But he only gets angry because he says children push the price up like you wouldn’t believe. He doesn’t hate children. He loves children. That’s why I have to distract him when we’re walking through the children’s section in IKEA.

JACK: I’m sorry.

ANNA-LENA: Why?

JACK: Sorry, I took that to mean that you couldn’t have children. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry.

ANNA-LENA: We’ve got two children!

JACK: I apologize. I misunderstood.

ANNA-LENA: Have you got children?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: Our two are about your age, but they don’t want kids of their own. Our son says he’d rather focus on his career, and our daughter says the world’s already overpopulated.

JACK: Oh.

ANNA-LENA: Can you imagine what a bad parent you must have been for your children not to want to be parents?

JACK: I’ve never thought about that.

ANNA-LENA: Roger would have been such a good grandfather, you know. But now he doesn’t even want to be my husband.

JACK: I’m sure things will work out between you, no matter what’s happened.

ANNA-LENA: You don’t know what’s happened. You don’t know what I’ve done, it was all my fault. But I just wanted to stop, it’s been nothing but one apartment after the other for years now, and in the end I’ve had enough. I’m looking for a home, too. But I had no right to do what I did to Roger. I should never have paid for that darn rabbit.

30

It’s harder than you might think to take people hostage when they’re idiots.

* * *

The bank robber hesitated, the ski mask was itching, everyone was staring. The bank robber tried to think of something to say, but was forestalled by Roger holding one hand up and saying: “We haven’t got any cash!”

Anna-Lena was standing just behind him, and immediately repeated over his shoulder: “We haven’t got any money, understand?” She rubbed her fingertips together in illustration, because Anna-Lena always seemed to think that Roger spoke a language that only she understood, as if he were a horse and Anna-Lena some kind of equine translator, so she was always trying to interpret what he said to the rest of the world. When they were in a restaurant and Roger asked for the check, Anna-Lena would always turn to the waiter and mouth the words “Check, please” while simultaneously pretending to write on the palm of her hand. Roger would no doubt have found this incredibly irritating if he ever bothered to pay attention to what Anna-Lena did.

“I don’t want your money… please, just be quiet… I’m trying to hear if…,” the bank robber said, listening out toward the door of the apartment in an attempt to figure out if the stairwell was already full of police.

“What are you doing here if you don’t want money? If you’re going to take us hostage, you might want to be a bit more specific in your demands,” Zara snorted from over by the balcony door, giving the distinct impression that she thought the bank robber was underperforming.

“Can you just give me a minute to think?” the bank robber asked.

Sadly it appeared that the people in this particular apartment weren’t at all prepared to grant the bank robber that. You might think that if someone has a pistol, then people would be willing to do exactly as they’ve been asked, but some people who’ve never seen a pistol before simply take it for granted that it’s so unlikely to happen that even when it is happening, they can’t quite take it seriously.

Roger had barely ever seen a pistol before, even on television, because Roger prefers documentaries about sharks, so he held his hand up again (the other one this time, to show that he was serious) and demanded to know, loudly and clearly: “Is this a robbery or not? Or is this now some sort of hostage situation? Which way do you want it?”

Anna-Lena looked rather uncomfortable when Roger switched hands, because nothing good ever came of Roger gesturing with both hands within the space of a few minutes, so she stage-whispered: “Might it be better not to be provocative, Roger?”

“For God’s sake, darling, surely we have a right to accurate information?” Roger replied, insulted, then turned to the bank robber once more and repeated: “Is this a robbery or not?”

Anna-Lena stretched to see over his shoulder, and stuck out her thumb and forefinger, then waved them about in illustration while mouthing the words “Bang?” twice, then adding one helpful “Robbery?”

The bank robber took several deep breaths, eyes closed, the way you do when the children are fighting in the back of the car and you’re getting stressed and lose your temper and shout at them rather more loudly than you intended, and they suddenly get so scared that they shut up altogether, and you end up hating yourself. Because you don’t want to be that sort of parent. And the tone you use after that, when you apologize and explain that you love them but that you just have to concentrate on driving for a little while, that was the tone the bank robber used to address everyone in the apartment: “Can you… can I ask you all to just lie down on the floor and be quiet for a little while? So I can just… do some thinking?”

No one lay down. Roger refused point-blank, saying: “Not until we know what’s going on!” Zara didn’t want to, because: “Have you seen the state of the floor? This is why everyday people have pets, because it makes literally no difference to them!” Julia demanded to be exempt, because: “Look, if you sit me in an armchair it’ll take me twenty minutes to get up, so I’m not going to lie down anywhere.”