The first rule of murder is to create the least amount of mess possible.

She stood over the body of her latest husband, knife in hand. He was sagged like a marionette on the bathroom floor, richer than a pavlova and now twice as white.

"You really need to stop doing this," I groaned, holding my head in my hands, exhausted.

She ignored me, admiring her location choices. She'd done well; it was almost impossible to stain those checked bathroom tiles. She'd always prided herself on being a domestic goddess.

"Foresight and organization skills," she beamed. "I really am the perfect wife."

"Except for the murder," I sighed.

"Well, yes, but they're usually too dead to find out about that by the time it's happened."

I perched giddily on the edge of the bathtub, careful to stay as far from her husband as I could. I did the same sort of thing he was alive; we never really got along.

 "How are we going to..." I trailed off. I didn't want to say it. "You know." I made a quick shovelling mime.

"Bury the dead guy?" She placed the knife down carefully in the sink and leant back.

"Your husband, yes." My voice was pitchy.

She paused for a short while, rapping her purple nails against the sink. The sound echoed through the bathroom.

"It's not like we have any coffins just lying around, is it?" I pressed.

She shrugged. "Use a sunbed."

I would have protested, but there was no arguing with Lucile. She was slouched back on the bathroom counter, her lips tugging into a crude smirk.

"I don't think they have sunbeds in hotel rooms," I pointed out, watching her pick herself up to walk over to the minibar and fish out some red wine. The heavy sound of the wine filling the glass was the only thing breaking the tense silence.

 "Do you think I should call the cops?" she asked eventually. "Fill up the bath, tell them he drowned himself?"

I thought maybe the twenty-three stab wounds to the chest would have given her away. I just said, "Perhaps."

She gazed down at the body, her glass held loosely in her long fingers. "Huh." She let her eyebrows rise and fall. "Worked for husband number five."

"Yeah, but he was a sucker."

This was true. He was a film producer, if I remember correctly. He had met Lucile on a summers day – the girl who danced through life like a wavering soprano, all candy hearts lips and diamond eyes. I was like a tinny car radio song, lost on the wind.

"Such a sucker," she echoed. "May he rest in peace."

We stared down at her husband. He stared at the ceiling, just as gormless as when he was alive. It would have been sweet save for the red pool blossoming still around him.

"Shouldn't that have stopped?" I remarked.

"Who knows," she sighed. "Maybe he's still alive. Shall I stick another one in?"

"I think twenty-three's good."

Her mouth was swept into a smile. Suddenly her cartoon eyes lit up and she grabbed me by the tie. Her fingers were coiled round it the same way she had been gripping that knife. "We should dance."

I began to protest, but Lucile just shrugged it off.

"We don't need his blessing." She nodded quickly over to her husband, and a piece of her perfect hair fell loose. "He's dead."

She made a fair point.

A gentle string melody began to bloom from her phone. I tried to back away from her as it began its first early crescendo.

"Do we have to do this with him here?" I gave a sharp nod in her husband's direction.

He just stared up with his glassy eyes.

"You're right, this is all sorts of unsanitary."

She stepped over his body lithely, pulling me with her. We stumbled out of the bathroom, and shut the door behind us. The smell of blood faded hazily into the scent of expensive alcohol and designer perfume, and she smiled up at me. It was so rare that those darting eyes ever stayed still, and it threw my mind into a drunken stumble of dangerous thoughts.

I could change her.

The music blossomed as we danced, cheap and metallic as it flowed from her phone's speakers. She was crazy and untouchable, but as we swayed clumsily she was just Lucile.

But there was no such thing as just Lucile.

"How much was he worth?" I murmured.

"A million," she grinned. "What did you expect?"

"Not a penny less."

I didn't see her smile but I felt it against my shoulder. She was perfect.

"You've always been here for me." Her voice was sharp yet fuzzy around the edges like an old radio.

I chuckled, suddenly aware of all my movements. "Oh, well, that's what I'm paid for, right? Driving you and your husbands round places. Right?"

She said nothing.

"So what was this one?" I asked, my eyes travelling to the closed door of the bathroom. "How'd he make his million?"

"Gangs," she shrugged loosely. "I don't know. Drug cartels?"

I tensed. "They'll come for you. When they find out he's dead, they'll be here."

Lucile yawned, stepping back from me and stretching luxuriously.

I shook my head, tripping over my feet as I moved back from her. "No, Lucile, they'll come for you. It's not safe – we should run."

Her eyebrows rose at the word 'we', and I flinched. "They won't know he's dead yet." She was crazy.

I could fix her. "Let's get out of here – I'll drive us some place safe."

"That's your job, right?" Then she winced, silently cursing herself, then she put on her best smile. "We'll run away together. Leave him here, we'll drive so fast the cops won't catch us."

A startled smile stumbled onto my face. "Really? Together?"

"Together." She took a step closer. "Just check on my husband. I mean, running away with the driver? It'd break his little cholesterol-clogged heart. Again."

I laughed. She was perfect.

Lucile smiled coyly and a strange sincerity coloured her features. "Good luck."

I grinned, and jogged to the bathroom. The most appalling stench slammed into my face the second I opened the door. It was weird looking at the dead man now. It wasn't as real as it had been before; it felt like a hazy, stumbling dream. He was just propped up on the bathtub, bleeding still, clutching his broken heart.

Propped up on the bathtub.

He had been lying on the floor when we'd left him.

His hideous, bulging eyes stabbed into me, and his pale hand curled tighter around his mobile phone.

I staggered back like I'd been shot. He was alive.

I seized the bloodied knife from the sink and turned to him, but he was too limp to look like he'd put up a fight. One last, triumphant smile stretched his cold lips and his eyes travelled to his phone. He'd called for someone – the police, maybe even back-up.

My heart dropped straight to the floor.

"Lucile!" I yelled, falling over my feet as I burst out of the bathroom. "Lucile, he's called someone, I think it's –" My voice trailed off into silence.

The room was empty. The window was open, the curtains billowing with the wind that came flooding in. The silence ripped through me, and I dashed to the window, cursing myself.

There, on the pavement two floors down was Lucile, barefoot, placing a note into the hands of a young taxi driver. She smiled charmingly at him and stepped into the backseat of his car, not looking up at the window once.

She'd left me nothing, not even a glance.

A dry, cracked sob tore through my chest and I backed away from the window, watching the black car roll out onto the road. Her heels were left, discarded, in front of me. She'd dropped anything that might have held her back, and jumped.

I stared after the car, and I would have watched it disappear, but I didn't have the chance. A woman's scream from the hallway forced me to spin round. Three men burst through the hotel room door. Armed.

They must have seen me, standing there with the knife in my hand, and jumped to their own conclusions. God, Lucile was smart. She'd made me the murderer. She'd weep at his funeral, the perfect picture of a distraught widow, and then she'd earn her fortune.

She was invincible and unfixable.

I closed my eyes and played back the images of her under my eyelids like a film reel. I hoped she'd found her fortune. I knew, as I watched us dance, that I had found mine.

Her whispered words took me by the hand, and in my mind she stood with me. Good luck.

They opened fire.

___

[A/N]

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