It was five months since I was made redundant, from both my job and my life. It was five, long months since my family stopped looking towards me for support, I might as well be dead to them, maybe I was. My wife, I didn’t blame her, I loved her after all. She soon moved onto another man, my kids soon followed suit.

I looked out of the only window in my apartment, out into the courtyard it faced. Scum, that’s the kind of people that inhabited it. I fit in without so much as a second glance. I don’t think I saw the sun once while I lived in that place. I’d had enough, maybe I should’ve had enough sooner but it didn’t matter.

I needed money, no doubt about it and there was only one way I was going to get it. A gun wasn’t hard to find, not on this street. I found the perfect place, I could make it clean and nobody was going to be able to stop me. Now, if I’d been braver, I might have found the courage to go after that money but I wasn’t.

The gun rested against my temple. This life was beautiful.