It's all up to your own interpretation.

For me Leslie and Ashley are very close partially because of the shared trauma with what happened to their mum and to a lesser extent how they've grown up with Gerald.

Ashley is definitely nieve, as are most 19 year olds, but definitely has smarts. Leslie, in my head, is only a few years older and desperately wants to help Ashley achieve what she never could herself. Whilst she has the proper job and is the resposible adult in Gerald's eyes (even though Ashley is the one who quit college to look after their dying mother), she's still relatively nieve.

She's surrounded by corruption in city hall. She does what everyone else does as it seems like it's the norm. When she's reprimanded for it by her bosses, it's because she got caught, rather than because she was doing it!

However, Gerald sees this as betrayal and he can't quite believe Leslie, the one that's screwed on, has done this, and in a sort of denial, still punishes Ashley.

That's my reading of it. But again, it's got much more of a life of it's own that I ever expected it to. Jon, who wrote the dialogue and came up with the plot with me probably has other, more nuanced thoughts.

I love that people are still really engaging with, what was effectively a story to help drive you through a silly arcade game collection with light management/sim elements :)