I feel very lucky that I’ve been given such an incredible opportunity; how many people can say that they’re a private investigator at 18! And I’m not just the kid in the office anymore (although the others do still manage to find reasons for me to act 15 again!) I have new responsibilities and I’ve dealt with my own clients- something I’m really proud of and never knew would feel so rewarding. It’s been a VERY busy last few months and I’ve got countless stories to tell, but I don’t think I have the time or the space to write them all down!

We were working on a big case recently- including all types of investigation- we carried out surveillance for six weeks on the same person and even managed to survive the snow whilst sitting outside for 8 hours a day! We didn’t manage to stay inconspicuous for the whole six weeks, however we put together a great cover story which even had the locals coming over every day and giving us what they believed were career tips, never knowing the discreet operation that was going on

That case also included some computer forensics. Going through the contents of someone’s hard drive (some 180,000 files), is both utterly absorbing and possibly the most tedious thing you can ever do, but tremendously important. Losing a weekend at 4.30pm on the Friday sucks, but after 15 hours of searching through deleted files on a Sunday- when you find the key piece of evidence; everything seems worthwhile

I’ve also been involved in a fantastic undercover job for a European client recently- I can’t give away all the details of course (its “if I told you I’d have to silence you kind of stuff”!) but lets just say it involved me acting as a young teenager (a school pupil - again!) and trying to start a ‘relationship’ with a certain person. It was nerve racking but thrilling all at the same time- approaching a perfect stranger and manouvering them to ask me out is scary enough when you know what they are capable of in reality. I knew it was okay because I just kept thinking how the guy would feel if he knew that 50% of the other people in the venue were working for us and keeping me safe! Remembering the good that was coming of it and the fact that exposing this person is keeping our client safe helped