The Wrong Good News

He was big, strong, lean and handsome. Very handsome, as required for the mission he was on.

Dressed all in black, he stood on the edge of a tall, vertical cliff. Directly below him, tiny in the distance, lay a speedboat, tied up to an unseen jetty tucked under the cliff.

With a well-practised crooked smile, he tightened the straps of his backpack and stepped off the edge of the cliff, plunging downwards for a breathless time before hitting the water and going under in a seething welter of bubbles..

Clawing himself to the surface, he climbed aboard the speedboat, which conveniently had a key in the ignition, and sped off across the water, coming ashore on the private beach of an exclusive resort. He did not go to the door, but instead climbed up the abundance of wisteria against the wall and on to a second-floor balcony, listening carefully before using a special key to open the door.

The bedroom was in darkness, but he could hear the sound of a shower behind another closed door.

Opening his backpack, he withdrew a black attaché case, which he clicked open to reveal a rectangular purple box, which he laid reverently on the bedside table before extracting a calling card from a pocket of the attaché case and laying it on the box.

The shower stopped. The man quickly packed everything away and retraced his route back to the speedboat.

The shower room door opened and a young woman, wrapped in a towel walked into the room.

She could have been a movie star, a beauty queen or a top model; a tall, elegant, supremely confident female.

She noticed the box on the bedside table and examined the card, then picked up the box.

Her nose wrinkled. ‘What the…?’

Dismissively, she threw the box down on the bed before thinking aloud, ‘Diamonds? Yes. Champagne? OK. An invitation to Buckingham Palace? I’d take that.’

She snorted, ‘But what do I want with a box of chocolates? Far too many calories!’