‘Fair enough.’ Iqbal returned to serious mode. ‘But even if you do have Winter to protect you, keep a lookout. I don’t think my supervisor would believe me if I told him my best friend had died again and I had to go to the funeral instead of writing my next section.’

Wait a minute. ‘Have you told him I’ve died before? As well as your grandmother?’

‘Got to go Ivy! Bye!’ He hung up.

I rolled my eyes and returned the phone to Gareth, murmuring a thank you. It was definite now: Belinda Battenapple had just become the prime suspect.

Chapter Fifteen

When I got back to the cabin, I ignored the fact that Barry had reappeared and was throwing me suspicious looks at my prolonged absence. The others were up and ready. Harriet was clutching an envelope and looking more animated than I’d ever seen her. ‘We have our first challenge!’ she cried.

Despite the gravity of all that was going on, I still felt a small thrill ripple through me. This might be the new improved Highland Survival edition, but Enchantment still followed a set course. Teams. Tasks. Challenges. Voting. And the challenges were where it was really at. They almost always involved magic in some form or another and were completed by pairs or individuals. The winner was automatically protected from being voted out. Everyone else, regardless of their team, then decided who deserved to go.

The genius of it was that if you tried hard and won, you were safe. If you tried hard and only almost won, there was a great big target on your back. As the teams changed between every challenge, however, it wasn’t always wise to get rid of the strongest contestants because you might want them on your side for the next round. Everything was a gamble. But, hey, so is life. Besides, this was the one time when I could be sure that everyone was present – not just the contestants and Armstrong and Trevor Bellows. Belinda would be there too. And Winter.

At that moment, I wasn’t sure what pleased me more. Did I want a torrid love affair or did I want to catch an evil murderer? Both, of course, but given the choice between the two it was a tough call.

We were transported upstream, past the spot where Lou and I had ‘borrowed’ the boat, and on until the river became too narrow to navigate. There was no further sign of Gareth so I assumed that, despite his assertions regarding rights of way, he’d decided the safest way to retrieve yet another lost sheep was to avoid the camera crews and anyone related to Enchantment. Frankly, those animals seemed considerably more trouble than they were worth.

For my own part, I took advantage of the journey to work on my people skills. I sat at the front, next to Harriet. If I could bring her round to my side, my life would get a whole lot easier. I’d probably find it easy to inveigle my way back into Mike’s good books simply by flashing some more cleavage at him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I still have some standards, even if they were slipping considerably with all this work I kept having to do.