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time for my departure drew closer we’d been bickering more than usual. Why hadn’t I realized that my mother was going to miss me, too? For the past forty years I’d practically lived in her back pocket.
    â€œI suppose Alfred could sleep on the sofa in the sitting room,” she said.
    â€œIt’s still more comfortable than a jail cell,” I said. “Edith mentioned Alfred could have William’s flat in the stable yard.”
    â€œI’m not sure if he’ll agree to that,” she said darkly.
    â€œCome here.”
    â€œWhy?”
    I pulled Mum into my arms and said, “I’m going to miss you, too, but I’m not going to the moon.”
    â€œYou smell.” Mum wriggled free.
    I looked down at the clothes I had been wearing all day. I sported manure stains on my jeans and the cuffs of my sweater were brown with mud from our tumble in Coffin Mire.
    â€œWait! I’ve had a brilliant idea!” Mum broke into a smile that had devious written all over it. “You can be our spy!”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œYes! You must meet Valentine, tonight. I’ll bet he’s privy—”
    â€œPrivy?” I snorted.
    â€œStop snorting. Yes, privy, to all sorts of confidential information that we can pass along to Mr. Scroope. You are going undercover!”
    Mum retrieved a Dictaphone from the kitchen drawer. “Here, put this in your handbag.”
    â€œI think it’s a terrible idea,” but I took it all the same.
    â€œBut don’t put on that awful patterned skirt. It makes you look so frumpy.”
    It had been exactly what I’d planned to wear.
    â€œI won’t wait up,” said Mum with a knowing wink.

 
    Chapter Six
    One hour later, dressed in the patterned skirt that Mum thought frumpy, I drove the mile and a half from Honeychurch Hall to the village of Little Dipperton. It was a typical chocolate-box Devonshire village consisting of whitewashed, thatched, and slate-roofed cottages with a handful of shops and a seventeenth-century pub. There was also an abandoned forge, a greengrocer, a tearoom, and a general store that doubled up as a post office.
    At one time the Honeychurch estate owned the entire village of Little Dipperton but now only a handful of cottages were tenant-occupied with their doors and window frames painted a distinctive dark blue.
    Mum and I had walked to the village many times for a lunchtime drink at the Hare & Hounds or stopped in the tea shop for a cup of tea and homemade cake.
    My initial six weeks of helping my mother out with her broken hand had turned into eight. Dad had been right to ask me to keep an eye on her and I had to admit I was conflicted about our upcoming separation. It was only now that I was beginning to really get to know my own mother.
    Dad and I would groan at her constant “headaches,” which kept her in her bedroom for hours. Neither of us had known about her secret writing life and I definitely had had no knowledge of her colorful past on the road with the traveling boxing emporium. For whatever reason, my parents had kept me in the dark about the latter, and far from being intrigued and excited, I felt as if my childhood had all been a lie. Why couldn’t they have told me? I had asked my mother many times and her answer was always the same. “We didn’t want the neighbors to find out. It was a different time. There was a stigma attached to fairground folk.”
    As I drove down the hill toward Bridge Cottage, my thoughts turned to HS3. I found it hard to believe that one day this area could be an ugly railway cutting. I still hadn’t given up hope that Mum would move back to London and stick to our original plan of working together.
    Only this morning I’d heard from my estate agent in London that a shop with a two-bedroom flat above had come up for sale just off Brick Lane in Shoreditch close to Spitalfields Market. I was excited