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Because that hat this letter implied What a way to find out

She felt her storandfather Why hadn’t he contacted her when he was alive? Why wait until he was dead? It almost seemed pointless And it was certainly pointless for her father

Her fingers flew over her keyboard, pulling up a search engine and typing frantically He wasn’t hard to find Angus McLean, died aged ninety-seven, one o Never married And apparently no children

She let out a stream of words into the air Really?

She scanned the letter again How uy have? And had any of the others actually been acknowledged?

The phone rang and she ignored it Whatever it was it would have to wait She typed again

A picture appeared before her and she took a sharp breath, her headcloser to the screen Annick Castle On the west coast of Scotland

Only, it didn’t really look like a castle More like a beautiful stately ho gardens and a swan pond It was stunning, made of sand-coloured stone, with drum towers at either end and co the sea

She looked at the photo credit The picture was taken twenty years before Did Annick Castle still look like that?

Her curiosity was definitely piqued What kind of a man stayed in a place like that? And ould he have family that he never made contact with?

She scanned the letter again In her haste to read she’d raph

You are invited to attend Annick Castle to take part in a Murder Mystery Weekend along with eleven other identified faus McLean’s Last Will and Testament The winner of the Murder Mystery Weekend shall inherit Annick Castle, fa

It didn’t say that It couldn’t say that

Lawyers all over the world would be throwing up their hands in horror

She screwed up her eyes and pinched her nose, then looked from side to side This was a joke This was an elaborate hoax Somewhere, in this room, there must be a hidden camera

She stood up and walked around First to the bookshelves on the wall, then to filing cabinets next to the door She couldn’t see anything But weren’t cameras so small now that they could be virtually invisible?

She opened her door and looked outside Everyone was going about their business No one was paying her the slightest bit of attention It was a normal day at Bertram and Bain, one of the busiest solicitors’ in London Twenty partners with another thirty associates, specialising in employment law, partnership law and discri around seven in the ht

Organised chaos

The tiny hairs on her ar breeze had just fluttered over her skin She closed the door and leaned against it

What if this wasn’t a joke? Eleven other family members Who were they?

She was an only child, and as far as she’d been aware her father had been an only child too After he’d died, herin the sun in Portugal with a little help from Laurie

She walked back to the desk and ran her finger over the thick paper of the letter

Family

She’d felt totally lost since her dad had died She didn’t have a million relatives scattered around the world There was just her, and her mum

And now this

What if she did have relatives she’d never met?

She tried to s the lued back down into her chair Dad would have been so intrigued to receive some

thing like this He’d always been curious about his father Itto find out the things he’d never known Who was Angus McLean? Why did he live in a castle? And why on earth hadn’t he made contact with his potential family members while he’d still been alive?

She was trying not to be angry She really was

She read the letter once more Property laasn’t her forte, but could this even be legal? There were solish and Scots law, but she wasn’t sure if this was one of them

A Murder Mystery Weekend to decide who inherited the castle?

There was no getting away fro mad

She blinked A bit like how she’d been feeling lately

Maybe it was a faht didn’t really fill her with pleasure—only fear

She watched as people lass in her office wall, all with a purpose, all with not a minute to spare

Exactly as she felt

How many holidays was she overdue now?

She straightened in her chair, the thick paper between her fingers

Her father had been a grocer, her mother a shop assistant No one had been more surprised than Laurie when she’d excelled at school She liked learning She liked finding out things And she’d got swept along with the potential and expectations of her exam results The careers advisor who’d pushed her towards university The teachers who’d encouraged her to excel Her father had cried the day she’d been accepted at Cae to study law

And it had only taken her two months to realise that she hated it

But, by then it was too late She couldn’t disappoint her dad Not when he’d spent every waking hour working to help her achieve what he thought was her ‘goal’ And especially not when she could hear the pride in his voice every ti to be a lawyer Turning her back on laould be like trarave