China Wife Read Free Page B

again.
    â€˜Susie! Lunch!’
    â€˜OK,’ she said. ‘Lunch, if Poundbury can boast a decent restaurant.’
    It could and did, and they were back on the A35 heading on towards Honiton and Exeter after a lunch that satisfied Susie’s delicate vegetarian tastes as well as David’s appetite for red meat.
    Being an alpha male, and having the added attraction of a colourful and exciting professional life, made David Hutchinson attractive to women generally. But taking up with the erst-while Student Union President was as much a surprise to him as it was to her. She simply wasn’t his type. But as the relationship grew, it became as much gastronomic and alcoholic as sexual, and seemed to give Susie a vicarioussatisfaction that David found hard to understand. But then his uncle wasn’t an earl.
    It was after they had had that session in London in 2003. David had met her in the street, literally. In Whitehall. She was a high-flying Foreign Office Assistant Secretary. With only his university experience to draw on at that point, she had still seemed the arrogant upper-class tart he had always characterised her as. She, in her turn, obviously still thought that he was somehow beneath her but was happy to know that he was off to the O2 Arena for a photo-shoot with her favourite pop star.
    â€˜We’ll take the coast road rather than the main road. Burton Bradstock. You can see the famous “Jurassic Coastline”. More to the point, we can stretch our legs and walk along the cliffs.’
    â€˜OK. You’re the boss of this expedition.’
    The mockery was replaced by affection. Despite her inability to express the thought, Susie was clearly enjoying herself.
    Parking at the National Trust car park at Burton Bradstock and making their way along and up the more tortuous first part of the cliff-top walk stalled any conversation. Not that that bothered either of them. One of the deeper attractions between them was their relaxed tolerance of each other’s silence.
    The grandeur of the scenery put any thoughts of the show that Susie had put on at the O2 Arena out of his mind. Her sudden and unexpected grab at him, in a storeroom backstage, took David so much by surprise that it almost inhibited his ability to give satisfaction. But satisfied Susie was, and to his further amazement anxious to have more at a later date.
    â€˜Jesus, David!’
    They were now very much back in the present.
    As freelance journalist-photographer, in a whole variety of locations around the world, David Hutchinson had seen plenty of dead bodies.
    From the moment that he realised that what Susie waspointing at was a body floating in the sea about a hundred metres offshore, they both dropped instinctively into professional mode. Hutchinson immediately unshipped his Black-Berry and began to make notes in the Notebook application but soon stopped. They were on holiday and it had been a clear decision to leave the tools of their trade at home; if you don’t count the multi-capabilities of a Black-Berry mobile phone as a tool of trade. Susie used hers to call the emergency services.
    â€˜Stay where you are – we’ll get someone over to you.’
    The instruction from the police was clear, and, in any event, neither of them was very keen to make their way back down to the shingle beach since all they would be able to do was stand and stare while others did the work. And standing and staring wasn’t something that either of them was very good at.
    â€˜Ms Peveral?’
    The conversation with the police officer was brief and confirmatory. She could see for herself what they could see and knew as well as they did that the next actions would involve neither them nor her. They both very readily dropped out of professional mode again.
    An inshore lifeboat was quickly launched from the beach. With two police divers in lieu of the normal crew, it didn’t take them long to recover the body and to do an