I think it’s fair, and a bit of an understatement, to say that I didn’t have a happy marriage. In truth we should have split up at least a year before the wedding which would have been at least seven months before we met.

He was slightly useful in that he drank far more than I ever could and it was easy to hide my drinking behind his but he was also a liability and that tended to cancel out the former.

He wasn’t an aggressive drinker (apart from the time he threatened me with an axe when he had the DT’s) whereas I was always angry, always on the tipping point.

Some people felt sorry for me after I married him and almost forgot that they were scared of me. Almost.

For five years we cycled from gloriously drunk to anger at each other to physical violence and round again. Year six of our marriage found us running a pub and that’s when he really let go. He was living in paradise and and was in a circle of hell that Dante didn’t know existed.

While we were there I spent most of my time with my boys; Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and occasionally Old Grand-dad. They soothed me but also whispered in my ear that I didn’t have to put up with him. There was a solution if I cared to think about it.

So I decided to murder him.

The catalyst, I suppose, was the morning I opened his wardrobe door one morning and found it stashed with empty cider bottles and stuffed between them, to stop them rattling I suppose, were old copies of Sadie Stern.

I saw white. If I see red don’t worry, all I do is shout. If I see white I become icy inside and go quiet. If that happens run.

On this occasion Dave couldn’t run. He was in the living room on his back on the sofa with cider dribbling from his mouth and was defenceless. 

I knelt beside him having half decided to make him stand up so I could humiliate him but decided not to bother. I was a bit on the shaky side as time with the boys that morning was beginning to take its toll.

A statuette of Leonardo’s David that Dave had inherited from his dad was a few inches from my hand and I picked it up by the head with the intention of using it to cave Dave’s skull in. I lifted it above my head and the torso of the statuette dropped to the floor with a bang. The bloody thing had broken at the neck.

For a moment I felt like the biggest failure that ever lived. I couldn’t even kill a helpless drunk.

I suppose the (a)moral of the story is, choose your weapons wisely and maybe just divorce your husband instead.