There must be fifty ways to kill your mother

The scene: A courtroom, with you as the jury.
The charge: Matricide

Emma: Your Honor, if I may say, in my defence, that the appearance of my mother's body in my tulip bed on Tuesday morning was simply the end result of an unfortunate sequence of events.

She arrived from Vienna on Wednesday and talked non stop in a piercing Germanic accent, so that by Saturday, my headache was such that my ears were like a clanging pair of cymbals crashing into my frazzled brain.

On Sunday, while I was out, she rifled through all my sex outfits, swiped and then lost the keys to my handcuffs, and cut up all my shoe boxes to make crafts for the kids. You can see the pressure I was under, Your Honor? But you must understand, I didn't kill her on purpose.

On Monday morning, my nerves were jangling and I had a row with my husband. When he looked through the guest list for a party I was throwing, he said not to invite his colleagues because, he said, he couldn't predict that I wouldn't get drunk and make a tit of myself in front of them. I said if he'd wanted a boring Stepford wife why hadn't he married one? I burst into tears and my husband caved, saying I could invite his colleagues after all, if I promised to lay off the booze, to which I agreed.

Later that day, my mother forced me to dig my garden for four hours and plant bulbs. In my defence, Your Honor, I did not know that leaning on the rotten tree in the garden would tip it over, accidentally killing my mother in one fell swoop. I was, of course, appalled at this tragic accident, however, I did not fancy paying the $20,000 to have her body shipped back to Austria, so I rolled her into the freshly dug flower bed and covered her in earth. How was I to know that those pesky squirrels would dig her up overnight to get to some peanut M&Ms she'd hidden in her pockets, and that my insomniac neighbour Ms. P would see the corpse from her window and call the police?


It was a most unfortunate set of circumstances, your Honor, and I can assure you, I am entirely blameless.

And to you, the Jury, I say, don't do it... don't have house guests who won't stop talking, who go through your drawers and put an unbearable strain on your marriage. And if you do find me guilty of this charge, please do not judge me too harshly.