The Blueprint

A group of university students try their hand at armed robbery. It goes badly.I used to have a family. I used to have friends.I used to have a girlfriend. I used to have a future.I used to attend a reasonably well-regarded university. I was once on course for an upper-second class honours degree, then - with a little help from my father, or one of his friends - a half-decent entry-level graduate position at a London IT company. With a little effort I’d have found myself on £35k a year by the time I reached my mid-to-late twenties. Thirty-five grand is nothing to sniff at. That’s a second-hand Audi kind of a salary.I used to have freedom, in the strictly legal sense of the word.I don’t have any of those things any more. I traded them for the chance to try my hand at armed robbery. It sounds like kind of a stupid idea, now that I see it written down; especially when one considers that the place I pulled my heist on was a Marks & Spencer mini-market. Perhaps I should’ve written it down before I went through with it.Why did I do it? I don’t really know, to be honest. I’ve always suspected that Hollywood might be partly to blame. Maybe I’m just easily led. Or maybe, just maybe, it was all about a girl.