What is it about a particular story that grips and doesn't let go? I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as I come up to the seven year anniversary of digging into the research behind The Low Road. I have always had to juggle journalism and research with book writing, to earn a living, so a story really has to mean something for me to put aside time to write. 

There's a feeling I get, when a story needs to be told, which is quite visceral. I can remember reading about Mary Turrell in my parents' house in Harleston and just wanting to know more - the "insatiable curiosity" that Rudyard Kipling writes about in The Elephant's Child. I couldn't help following the trail, and even though it was very hard to fund myself to keep writing, I'm so glad I did. On that note, I'm so grateful for all your support - I'm now at two-thirds funded. When my dad used to take us hill-walking in Scotland and Wales, I would always look up at the mountain and wonder how we would ever get to the top. He got us there by scaling it, ridge by ridge. It feels a bit like that now - I wish he was here to scale the ridges with me. This time next year I hope that The Low Road - Annie and Hannah's story of a friendship that kindled into love - will be out in the world and the history of young women like them in Georgian times is hidden no longer. 

That sense of a story that needed to be told has been the same with other stories in different genres. My daughter came home from primary school one day and asked me why she had to eat worms at school. I found out she was being fed Turkey Twizzlers - and that led to a big investiation with the Guardian - still one of my proudest moments, to get a front page and more importantly, to be part of the campaign to improve school food. 

There was the run up to the eviction of the largest Traveller site in Europe, Dale Farm, which has led to me writing numerous articles and a book - and I'm still investigating where sites are located today. On that note, I took part in BBC Radio 4's The Reunion programme this week, looking back at ten years since the eviction recently - which you can listen to here (not sure if it's available outside the UK, I'm afraid, due to the licence fee). That's been a story that I've been honoured to tell and to return to in a week when trespass is about to be criminalised and Britain's nomads and their way of life transformed forever. 

Stories grip in all sorts of ways, in different genres and in different places. I close my eyes and I can feel my way back to visiting Rwanda, three years after the genocide, as part of a BBC investigative team. I can see the trauma etched on the faces of survivors, hear the crack of bones beneath my feet and see the tall trees waving in the wind over a clearing where murdered children were buried. Hidden stories need to be told and justice done - The Low Road is one of them.