Page 29 of The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair

RUTH: Sounds challenging.

DAPHNE: You probably don’t feel that bad for me. I understand. When I was younger, I would have killed for this kind of rich person problem. In fact, I did! But I just want you to know that I did try. Killing David was never more than my Plan B.

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So we’ve got a red floral Dolce he’d grown up wealthy in a quiet little town where everyone knew and liked him.

Yes, it had taken him a little while longer to get married but it’s universally acknowledged that if you have enough money, someone will marry you eventually.

Especially if you’re a man. You could have a second nose growing out of your forehead and some busty twenty-five-year-old would still wax poetic about your gentle soul and sly sense of humor.

“I just don’t like Leosville,” I muttered. “It grates on my nerves. I thought my life was going to be . . . special.”

“My darling, things will get easier,” David said, slipping his arms around my waist. “Your life has changed, and you just need time to adjust.”

“I don’t want to adjust,” I muttered, stepping out of his grip.

He looked hurt and I resisted the urge to slap his face.

David was just too nice. I should have liked that after all the bad men I’d dated, but it doesn’t matter how much a woman’s been through, if she describes a man as ‘safe’ then he’s destined for the scrap heap.

“Give it time; you just have to settle in,” David said, ambling out of the room.

I rested my forehead on the cupboard door in front of me, staring down at the potato peels floating in the soapy sink.

The phrase ‘settle in’ echoed in my head and I had a sudden image of a rock sinking down to the bottom of a pond.

That night I lay in bed next to my husband.

He was sleeping peacefully and that made me resent him.

Didn’t he care that I was unhappy? Why wasn’t he tossing and turning, his mind racing with ideas for how he could help?

David was just so grateful to have me but all that gratitude, well it annoyed me.

I was used to having something to push against, a hatred that would fill me with drive and energy.

I was like a mangy dog who bit the hand that fed it because I only knew how to fight.

It’s wrong to kill. I know that. Sure, I didn’t go to church anymore (that tends to happen once you’ve been attacked by a preacher) but ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ is pretty much Christianity 101.

But killing never made me feel bad; living did.

Living in a world that didn’t give a shit about me and what I wanted.

Killing was a release from all that. It was my declaration of independence (after all, I was American now!) and it was always a thrill, the feeling that you were the master of the world.

I didn’t feel ashamed of what I did, only what was done to me.

I stared at the black ceiling and watched the starbursts tingle in the darkness.

My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt as if I was going to explode out of my skin if something didn’t change.

I could just leave David, but I only had enough money in savings to cover six months of expenses in New York.

I could live differently of course, but the only place I really felt like me was in the city.

Without the money, I was just the same old farmgirl with shit on her shoes.

A shadowy certainty crept over me, propelled by my racing thoughts and his gentle snores.

I had done it before and, now, I was going to do it again.

David was going to have to lose his life so I didn’t lose myself .