Sarah Ferguson's secret support for Andrew: Sources claim former couple share an 'ongoing cordial and supportive relationship' while she's in exile

She stepped back into the spotlight last week at the memorial service for her former lover and long-time confidant, motor-racing figure Paddy McNally, after a year of staying away.Now, it's been reported that Sarah Ferguson, 67, is 'resettling' back into life in the UK and 'lying low while she looks at the next stage' - and has a 'cordial and supportive relationship' with her disgraced ex-husband Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.A spokesperson told PEOPLE magazine: 'She’s happy spending time with her family and focusing on her relocation.'The former Duchess of York is believed to be renting a £10,000-a-month, six-bed house in a gated community in the Home Counties, after months living abroad in Europe as she kept a low profile over the Epstein controversy.Sarah has been 'embracing her family life and seeing her grandchildren,' added the spokesperson. She has spent time with her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who also attended the thanksgiving service for Mr McNally last Thursday.It's unclear whether Sarah has seen her ex-husband, the former Prince Andrew, since her return to Britain, but the two are still in contact, the American publication reported.'They have an ongoing cordial and supportive relationship as co-parents and co-grandparents,' the ex Duchess' spokesperson said.The statement is a stark contrast to how Sarah once described her relationship with her ex. Despite their six-year marriage being plagued by scandal and infidelity, Fergie later said they were 'the happiest divorced couple in the world', noting their close bond as a family. Sarah Ferguson attends a memorial service for Paddy McNally at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, on October 29Fergie and Andrew are together grandparents to Eugenie’s newborn daughter Adelaide, who was born in August, and her two sons, August Philip Hawke, five, and Ernest George Ronnie, three, that she shares with husband Jack Brooksbank.Beatrice has daughters Sienna Elizabeth, five, and Athena Elizabeth Rose, 22 months, with her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. She is also stepmother to his son, Christopher 'Wolfie' Woolf, from a previous relationship. Sarah had avoided Mr McNally's funeral service in July, sending her daughter Princess Beatrice to represent her, however the service in Knightsbridge was the perfect opportunity to reacquaint herself with the public.It marked almost a year to the day since the world of privilege and comfort she had for so long taken for granted came crashing down. A year in which she lost both her position and her title as Duchess of York, her home and her purpose as charities and business rushed to sever all links.Unlike her ex-husband, who, although stripped by his brother the King of his princely title and HRH style and forced to vacate his home Royal Lodge, was given a home on the Sandringham estate, Fergie was offered no bolthole. Until Thursday, Sarah had only been seen once in 15 months – when she was discovered holed-up in a remote £2,000-a-night spa in the Austrian Alps, where friends loyally described her self-imposed solitude as 'recalibrating'.The former Duchess had a spectacular fall from grace last year when The Mail on Sunday published emails revealing the true depth of her relationship with the late US financier and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.Although she publicly disowned Epstein, in private she had called the businessman a 'supreme friend' and made a grovelling apology for criticising him.Her most damning dealings, which earned her considerable public opprobrium, involved her daughters. Sarah and former Prince Andrew attend day four of Royal Ascot at Ascot Racecourse on June 21, 2019Just days after Epstein was released from a 13-month sentence for soliciting an under-age girl for prostitution in 2009, Ferguson took Beatrice and Eugenie, then aged 20 and 19, to meet him, flying to the US on air tickets he had paid for.In response to this and other shocking emails uncovered by the MoS, the King stripped Ferguson and former husband Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of their titles and ejected them from Royal Lodge, the grace-and-favour mansion in Windsor Great Park that they shared.Soon afterwards, Sarah was dropped as a patron by charities including Julia's House, a children's hospice, Prevent Breast Cancer, The British Heart Foundation, The Teenage Cancer Trust and the National Foundation for Retired Service Animals.Fergie spent seven months living abroad and was spotted across Europe, including in Switzerland and Austria, as she kept a low profile over the Epstein controversy. Last month, a spokesperson for Sarah denied claims that she is close to agreeing a multimillion-pound deal for a tell-all book about the Royal Family.While Fergie is believed to be 'on a mission' to restore her tattered reputation and hopes she will be 'welcomed back' by the public, she has 'no plans to write any tell-all memoir', they said. The clarification came after The Sun claimed that a chapter-by-chapter plan for the book had already been completed, based on detailed notes covering several 'key' royal figures and subjects, including her ex-husband as well as King Charles, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Jeffrey Epstein.But Sarah denied the report in a rare statement. Before Andrew, Paddy McNally was the man at Sarah's side. They met after Fergie was recruited to look after Mr McNally's young sons Sean and Rollo after the death of his wife Anne in 1980. The two became lovers but he never asked her to marry him. Mr McNally was then on his way to amassing a fortune earned in partnership with F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone with whom he revolutionised corporate entertainment on the world's racetracks when he launched the Paddock Club.This enabled him to live in some splendour, often in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier where he owned no fewer than three chalets, one of which was euphemistically known as 'Cocaine Castle'. He had his own Scottish grouse moor, a Wiltshire spread – James Bond creator Ian Fleming's former country home – and a substantial villa in St Tropez.Over these past months, Mr McNally put both his homes in Switzerland and the South of France at Fergie's disposal as she flitted from safe house to safe house lying low. Some have wondered if his final gift was to bestow some of his £600million fortune on her too.'Paddy was my father figure, 22 years older than me,' Fergie once said. 'He taught me so much about life. Whenever I wanted advice, I turned to him because he was so worldly wise. He seemed to have seen and done everything.'After making her first public appearance back in her homeland, Fergie could do with that advice more than ever.