Blood Money

Illustrated by Mara Wiedner

I love my husband. I really do. I just hate the jewellery he gives me.

He used to serve me well, but recently he started buying me the cheapest jewellery he can find. He can’t help it, I suppose, being the way he is. Broke. But alas – I love him, and I must suffer along with his pitiful story of not being able to afford to buy his beautiful wife the beautiful jewellery she so rightfully deserves.

As I sit brushing through my hair, he is droning on and on about how he feels sorry he cannot afford to buy me the most exquisite ring I have ever seen. If he truly felt sorry, he’d go and work another job to provide for me!

I love him, but his voice is one of the most single-handedly annoying things about him (imagine nails scratching a chalkboard, and it sounds almost identical). His constant whinging about our financial situation. He’s lucky I still love him, or I’d leave him.

I’d had enough of his excuses. He used to have money, but no longer did. No longer could spoil me the way he should.

His refusal to buy me a Cartier ring was the day I consolidated my plan to dispose of him. Therefore, my dear reader, I must kill him. He has clearly long outlived his purpose, and so should be disposed of.

I wasn’t going to do anything too grand – just a simple shove down the staircase. So, as he comes home tonight and opens his bank statement and weeps, I pull him upstairs with a distraction of the sheets.

As he thumps his way down the stairs, I smile, watching as the villain’s life dribbles away. The red ooze forms a penny around his head. I love him, but thank god he’s gone.

I step over his body and stride into the living room, where I know he has left his latest bank statement. I almost faint as the numbers register before my eyes. £2.7 million. In a bank account I can never reach.