Who Trolled Amber? - The Letters | The Walkers Ep6

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

At a motorway service station, Chloe meets someone close to Raynor Winn who’s nervous about coming forward. It turns out she’s another character from The Salt Path…and she’s Raynor Winn’s niece. And she’s not turned up empty handed…Credits:Reporter - Chloe HadjimatheouProducer - Matt RussellArtwork - Observer design with acknowledgements to Angela HardingMusic supervision and sound design - Karla PatellaExecutive Producer - Jasper Corbett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Observer. Can I ask a very, very trivial question? Why is moth called moth? Ah, moth. Which is probably the question that everybody wanted to ask but didn't dare. At the Edinburgh Book Festival back in 2021, the host, Sally Magnuson, veers closer to a secret than perhaps she realises at the time.

Well, it's a nickname, it's an abbreviation. It's what I've always known him as. It's what his friends used to call him. What's it an abbreviation of? Well, I'm going to leave that one with you to work out. You can't say that. I can. People are a gog.

I can. Just have to think about it. It's so, so simple when you think about it, but I'll leave it with you. So why are you reluctant to? Because I just amused myself, but so few people have realised what his name is when it's so obvious. In all the interviews I've listened to and read, Raina wins only a couple of times been asked what seems to me a strikingly obvious question.

Unusual names, Rainer and Moth. Surely they're not their given names. And if not, what are their real names? But as soon as anyone's asked about this, Rainer's always shut the question down. Surely M-N-H isn't his real name. M-O-T-H. It's what most of his teenage friends have always called him. So M-O-T-E.

What's his real name? Here she is being asked on an Australian podcast, conversations with Kornsey. And again, she refuses to answer. Is it a secret? Well, that's an abbreviation of his real name. So, you know, it's what we've always known as. So that's who he is to us. I know.

Now, you can't, you have to tell us his real name. No, I don't. Yes, you do. Ollie's got one with you. Oh, he's got one with you. Moth, what can that be short for, Moth? Math. No.

Morris. Anyway, it was great to see Jason on the screen. Because right up until I published my initial revelations, her and her husband's real names weren't anywhere in the public domain. Had she put their names out there, then the people she still owed money to would have caught up with her, as they did after my initial article was published. At the end of last year, Rana was forced to pay back

150,000 pounds, capital plus interest. Ode in order to get out of criminal charges brought against her by her former employer back in Wales in 2008. Sally Walker's pen names being constructed from her mother's maiden name, Rainer and her own maiden name, Wynne. Moth, it seems, is the middle letters of his real name, Timothy. And like Madonna or Prince, Moth comes without a surname. Reina and Moth, she claims, are nicknames that they and their friends have always used for each other.

But I haven't been able to find anyone who's ever heard them call each other that. And on the wall in their old house is that inscription in the plaster work. Tim Hart-South. I've got to stick my neck out and go, everything is wrong. All of this is a lie. This isn't the person she depicts sat on the one show sofa. you know, she sold three, four books and a movie on the back of lies. For weeks, I'd been trying to speak to Raina Wyn's niece.

I'm calling her Anne because, like Cecil, Tim's niece, Anne's worried about being hounded by the media. Rainer Wyn and Moth will know who she is, and so it's taken a lot of courage for her to come forward. Anne knows there are literary agents and publishers and film producers, all of whom have made a lot of money from Rainer Wynne's story, which is why when Anne first agreed to meet me, it all felt very deep throat. There's always that overtones and elements of fear of recrimination. And I don't know what they could do. How were you feeling the day that you came to meet me at the motorway service station? Terrified. I needed someone to find me who I trusted enough to speak to. And if just someone had rocked up on the front door, would I have spoken to them? No, I probably wouldn't have done.

but you know you've kind of had to prove that we can trust you and I know you found me very late on within all of this but I hope I can only add weight to the fact that all these people who've said it's lies and this is what they've done I can only try and back that up Anne and her side Raina Wynne's side of the family have helped put the last piece of the puzzle in place it feels like now gaps have been filled in

and mysteries solved about the names about a walk and a couple bound together by desperation and deceit and a family torn apart. I'm Chloe Hajimuthé and from Tortus Investigates and The Observer, this is The Walkers, the Real Salt Path. Episode 6, The Letters Sally was the person I wanted to be when I was young. She had the life, she was fun, she was everything else. She was just, she was the apple of grandma's eye.

and just alive. Anne has really fond memories from when she was a little girl of her mother's sister, Aunt Sal. You know, she was always, you know, wearing a scarf with her hair floating loose, brushed back off her face, and Tim would wear a hazily print bandana

of various colours wrapped carefully around his neck and thick cotton jackets and an extra blazer and worn jeans and perfectly polished boots. And, you know, it was always almost a brand. It was who they were. Sally was the favourite, the gem of the family, says Anne. Her parents had high hopes for her.

At one point, soon after she graduated from college, she seemed to be destined for a career in law. She said that she was doing something in Burton Law Courts. It all ended very abruptly and my grandparents, so Sally's mum and dad wouldn't talk about it with a family. Anne's grandparents were tenant farmers in. Staffordshire. They had two children, the oldest Anne's mum, Sue, and then Sally. And apparently their mum doted on Sally. She was everything, and she'd been so close, Sally would take her up to

per mice and she'd buy stuff with her and grandma would always be buying Sal stuff. Anne visited her aunt in Wales a few times as a kid, but she was an adult, almost 30 and starting her own family, when The Thing happened. The thing that... shook them all and would ultimately change the dynamics in her family forever. It was Christmas, Anne doesn't remember the year precisely. It would have been between 2011, 2012. And it was an unusual year because instead of going to stay with Sally, Anne's grandmother was staying with Anne's mum, Sue.

So she would normally have gone to stop with Tim and Sally over Christmas. She would stay in the barn, which is like a holiday let thing. It was very nicely done. But she didn't that year because Tim's parents were in the barn. Tim's parents were renting their own place nearby in Wales, so there wouldn't have been an obvious reason for them to stay over with Sally and Tim. But Anne didn't think much about it at the time. The point was that that year, Anne's grandmother was staying with Anne's mum, Sue,

and the two of them had gone shopping at the local supermarket. When Grandma's card was refused in the co-op in Kingston, you know, insufficient funds or whatever it used to come up with. Panic, panic, panic. So mum managed to pay for the groceries, came out, go back home, sought Grandma around. Bearing mind, she was getting older at the time. She would have been in her 70s.

Anne's grandmother was getting stressed. She'd lost money from her account once before, and that time Sally had sorted things out with the bank and made sure the money went back into the account. Grandma had got worried that she was missing stuff on the statement, so Sally took over looking after grandma's finances, you know, keeping an eye on it. The statements were then redirected, and that was the point that when grandma would see Sally, Sally would show her these statements or show her things.

Given that Sally was a bookkeeper for an estate agent, it seemed like a sensible arrangement. But now, money was missing again. And so Anne's grandmother told her oldest daughter, Sue, to call her sister. Sue, get a hold of Sally, because Sally always deals with the finances and everything, couldn't get a hold of Sally. Everything's shutting down for Christmas, trying to get a hold of banks. But the long and the short of it was the money had gone. and the statements which Grandma thought she'd had weren't right. And when they printed out the statements from the bank and they got those,

it was quite plainly obvious that it hadn't been fraud. Someone had been taking the money out of the account consistently and regularly over a certain amount of time to pay for things. Very close. This is someone I'm calling Mary. She's another relative of Anne's. She was very close to Anne's grandmother, who she called Auntie. I saw her every week or every fortnight.

What was she like? Wonderful. She was the most wonderful person. If I put it like this, very hard working, country person, farming person. Got very little, they lived off the land, as you call it, and brought up the family. Mary also remembers that Sally was the favourite daughter. I was always Sally this Sally hat. and if ever when I used to take auntie shopping

after uncle died it was always to buy stuff for Sally Anyway, that year Mary had gone round to visit the old lady soon after Christmas And the first thing she met me with When I went through the door was Somebody's had my money And I said, what do you mean? Somebody's had your money

And I said, have you, well, have you wrong, Sally? and she said I can't get all of her and I said have you wrong Sue she says yes and Sue's got in touch with the bank and she's been asking for the back statements of where everything's gone to really really upset her

because she'd got nothing left in the bank do you know how much had gone it had all gone how much do you think it was I'm not quite sure because bearing in mind they never earned very much. You know what I mean? They didn't.

But I would think I don't know 12,000, 13,000. And that to her would delight being a millionaire, if you know what I mean. It was absolutely devastating. Mary called Sue to ask what she'd found out from the bank. It looked like Sally had been spending her mother's money. And Sue said she was going over all the statements. And I said, well, what, she spent the money on? You know what? Where's it gone?

Did they ever find out? Well, I've had gone luxuries and things like that. The money, Sue told her, had been transferred out of the account by Sally without ever asking permission. Sue said to me that it said like they were going to get in touch with the police and that about it. And of course, then Sally wrote this letter. begging them like not to do it

because it was her that had had the money. Anne says Sally had been avoiding their calls but finally she sent an email to Sue to explain everything. As soon as the typed written email had gone to mum and dad and they've got it, they showed all of us. This was Sally admitting this, you know,

I've taken it, please don't look any further. But please don't go to the police because I already have a record and I'll do time. I've seen a copy of this apparent confession email. There's no date or signature. It's essentially a piece of paper with typed words and Sally Walker denies writing it.

She also denies stealing any money from either family. But so much of the contents of the email has been corroborated by witnesses. I have the accounts of four people from Sally's side of the family and four people from Tim's side. That's eight people from Tim's side. two families who haven't been in touch for decades. So given all of those accounts, I think it's worth hearing the email.

It isn't addressed to anyone, but Anne says it was sent to her mum, Sue, days after the empty bank account was discovered. Please don't look any further for the money. I've taken it. All of it. The figures the bank are giving you are correct. I have written this to make some sense of it. If I try to talk to you about it, the words won't come out.

Or at least not those that need to be said. I've tried so hard to tell someone over the years, but no one even notices anything's wrong. I have to ask you not to take things any further with the bank, but tell them it was just a mistake. I have to ask that, as I have a police record, and should this go any further, I will go to prison this time. I can attempt to explain the why, not as an excuse, there is none, but to give this some context,

and because the first thing I can hear you say is why. After we sold Forrest Row, Tim met up with someone who dealt in property. He trusted him implicitly, and against my better judgment, invested half our capital in a project with him on the promise of a doubled return in two years. It fell through and we lost all the money. We then came to Wales as we could afford little else. Tim began seven years of attempting to get the money back, unsuccessfully, but in the process drove himself to the edge of a few. sanity over what he had done. I became desperate to hold him out of it and keep some of the real Tim alive. I took over the finances completely. Tim worked for the National Trust on wages that were

less than dull money, but he was happier. So I juggled the money. I began work in an office in town. But the backlog of debt was drowning us. When I wrote that, that first check to myself, I felt sick that I'd done it. But after a year, I did it without even knowing it was happening. It became almost an addiction, something I was doing almost unconsciously. I just took the money and paid the bills with it. If you'd asked me how much I'd have taken, I would have said maybe £10,000. So when I was arrested on the 8th of October 2008 for the theft of £67,000, I was stunned. The duty solicitor said I was looking at six years for systematic fraud. I was bailed to Friday the 10th. Tim had no idea what was going on, but on the morning of the 10th I left

Tim a note, skipped bail and ran. I had £40. I couldn't take any plastic or a mobile as I would have been immediately traceable. I crisscrossed the country, dodging police and CCTV. I slept rough for four days, during which I ate two sandwiches and a sausage. When I got to London, I found the man who had caused all of this, and because I had so much information about him and his dealings,

he had no choice, but to pay back the money I had taken. And as I had never admitted it and stuck to no comment throughout, But on November the 26th, the charges were dropped and it was over. So when you finish with this, please get rid of it. At this point, the email seems to be faithfully chronicling the story I uncovered from Wales and from the Hemmings. Except, Ros Hemings had remembered the final count of what was missing as £64,000.

Here, Sally seems to be saying the full amount was around $67,000. close enough, I guess. The email goes on. But something in my head wasn't over, the shock of everything that happened. During this time, in a mad panic, when the mortgage was threatening to foreclose, I transferred 25,000 from Tim's mum and dad's account, Tim's, unaware that they had lent a huge amount to his brother. I left them with very little to pay their rent.

Hence, they were spending the winter in the barn. before going back to France. This could explain why Tim's parents were staying in the barn that Christmas as Anne remembers because they couldn't afford their own rent. This seems to back everything Cecil remembers too. The email continues. Somehow, somewhere amongst this living nightmare,

I started taking money from my mum. Any statement she has had over the eight years, 18 months. They're fake. I've forged them. Tim is now a little better, but being told he may have Parkinson's hasn't helped. I've been alone in all of this. There's never been anyone to talk to, but I think it's over. This happening with mum feels like I've just had a splash of cold water and woken up from a bad dream.

I can't tell Tim about mum. I just don't know how much more he could take. But this week, I'm getting the accounts out on the table because it has to end here. I can hear you saying, how could she have done this to us? That's what everyone has said. But it's not like that. I love my family, all of you, and I would do anything for you. This is something outside of me.

The house is on the market. We need to release the funds to pay our debts, but also we need a fresh start. I will repay the money to mum as soon as I can get anything to her. There won't be anything before the end of January, but I will send something as soon as I can. I can apologise endlessly, but it won't put it right. There's no point coming to see you. I'm just a mess. I've been so desperate.

I can't be coherent. All I can do is get everyone their money back and hope that one day, in time, they'll stop hating me. It's of no consolation to you, but this morning, writing this, I feel better than what I have for in years because I know it's over. Anne remembers that when Sally's email came, her grandmother was quite emotional. A lot of crying and she couldn't believe it and she didn't know how she was going to afford to pay for her heating oil

or her bit of rent that went out that wasn't covered or, you know, her insurance and everything else and she was really in a mess about this. Was it shocking? That's a difficult one. Yes, it was shocking. Do I think she had it in her? Yeah, that point it probably did.

Did you ever read the letter? Absolutely dreadful. My aunt was never the same. It was absolutely devastating. She was a very proud person, a very proud person. In that letter, Sally promises to pay the money back. Do you know if she ever did?

I want to step out of this story for a second to address a kind of mystery in the salt path, one that Raina Wynne has always skimmed over, but that she refers to in that email. It's about the lifetime friend that she claims conned her and her husband out of their house in Wales. It's something she's doubled down on

since my revelations about how she had her house repossessed. I've read what Raina Wynne wrote on her website over and over again, but it doesn't make sense to me. The man she'd taken the loan from, who she calls Cooper in her book, was a relative and close friend of Tim's. I can remember Dad speaking about Tim having invested money because he knew the gentleman who he'd invested it with through school

because they were in school roughly the same time. So, you know, you heard whispered conversations about all of this. And, you know, they didn't have to work because, you know, they'd invested money cleverly. It was very much that this money had basically lost. It was an investment that had gone wrong. Only, there was always this feeling that it was never quite understood by Tim and Sal, that if you invest money, you can lose it.

Cooper died almost a decade ago, so I couldn't check any of this with him. But I did speak to business associates of his who told me he was someone who made a lot of money and lost a lot of money. At one point, he had a house in Chelsea and a yacht. But when he died, he left behind only enough possessions to fit in a suitcase. When Sally ran from the police down to London and begged Cooper to lend her money, he'd just taken out a £500,000 mortgage against his home in order to pump it into his already failing business.

That's why he had that kind of cash to hand to lend Sally £100,000. The suggestion that we owed money had crept in insidiously. At first we ignored it. But over time, Cooper became insistent that, owing to a structure of the agreement, we were liable to make payments towards those debts. Initially, Moth was more devastated by the breakdown in a friendship than by the financial claim. And the dispute rumbled on between them for years.

It's possible that Sally and Tim really believed that Cooper still owed the money that they'd invested with him. But they certainly didn't say that to the men that took over their debt, or to the judge who ordered for their house to be repossessed. I've seen court documents and lawyers' letters that show that Tim and Sally accepted that they'd borrowed and owed money against their home. The letter that Rayna Wynn says she showed the judge proving that they weren't liable for the debt, the judge looked at me accusingly. Is this new evidence?

Well, yes, we only received it four days ago. New evidence cannot be proffered at this late. stage, I cannot accept it. But it proves everything we've said for the last three years. It proves that we don't owe a claimant anything. It's the truth. I knew what was coming. I've seen legal documents that show that in reality, that letter Sally refers to, argued that they owed money to Cooper's bankrupt company not to him directly. It seems to have been a delaying tactic and it was one that was rejected by the judging court. Whoever they owed money to, they would have had to pay it back anyway, and if they couldn't,

their home was on the line. It seems that Sally has somehow framed this differently in her own version of events, and still believes that she and Moth lost their home because they were conned out of it. After the apparent theft, Sally's relationship with her mum was damaged, and for a while her mother wouldn't talk to her. But it's clear from letters I've seen addressed to her mother that, seemed to be in Sally's handwriting that some months later their contact resumed. Dear mum, thank you for the letter. It meant a lot to hear from you. Sue said you didn't want

to talk but would write when you were ready. So it was lovely to get your letter. I can't apologise enough for what I've done and there's nothing I can do that will make it better. I'm sorry I've hurt you. I never wanted that. We're in a very bad, financial hole at the moment. This was 2013 when Tim and Sally were still in the process of having their house repossessed. Losing a home is distressing whatever the circumstances. And the family rallied around Sally in spite of what they believed she'd done the previous year. I spent a long time talking with mum and grandmas to whether they should or they shouldn't come there.

And grandma said, yes, please, please put a roof over my daughter's head. You know, and mum's like, well, you know, you've got to do it. what you've got to do. So Anne drove to Wales in a van and she helped transport most of their belongings to a storage facility. First of all, they went to Tim's brother in North Wales for a couple of weeks.

Then they must have gone for a walking holiday for another few weeks. And after that, they stayed with Tim's sister near Bristol for a while. Then they moved to Anne's mother's house. Then they went down to mum and dads. How long were they there your mum and dads? Two or three weeks?

Four weeks? Three weeks? and they went there because Dad was really hoping they'd sort themselves out and find another option. And I spoke to mum and I said, look, what do we do? We do have this room, this building that is empty. Yeah, it's not exactly the Hilton, but it's a building that'll put a roof over their head until they get on their feet again. Yeah, it's not luxury. Why was it not luxury?

It was the ex-cutting room, but all of that had gone. There was white plastic sheeting on the wall. But they could move straight in. It's carpeted living room. It was a pantry. It was a hallway. bathroom, it was a warm double bedroom and it's, you know,

French doors out onto a yard bit and by the garden and they could reassess their life and refocus their life ready to take the next step. The plan was that Sally would apply for bankruptcy to clear her debts and that the couple

would find work and knuckle down to pull their lives back together. I've seen emails from the time that show that there was still some distrust but the family bond was the most important thing to Anne and her mum. Not that you'd necessarily get that impression from reading Raina Wyn's memoir, because Anne appears in the salt path. She's the character Polly,

an old school friend who offers the homeless couple Rainer and Moth shelter in a cold, uninhabitable shed in return for the couple agreeing to fix the place up for free. I was now an unpaid employee. a tenant, a recipient of her brand of philanthropy, grateful, obedient, and always aware of my position. She was a landlady with a tenant who paid no rent, an employer of a worker who earned no wages, possessor of a life that represented everything her friend had lost. She was in control. Slowly, painstakingly, moth-plasterboarded her shed walls. Working four hours a day was as much as he could managing, finding every movement harder and harder.

When darkness came, going back to the shed, moth lying on the floor crippled in pain. That wasn't what it was. That wasn't how it is. And that has been so twisted. It's ridiculous. And he'd done stuff to improve the house he was living in because it wasn't what they wanted. They always suggested the refurbishments to the sort of granny cottage. They suggested all the refurbishments to that.

Yes. And it was perfectly habitable and fine beforehand. If you think Anne's making a big deal out of Raina's depiction of her, it's worth saying that fans of the salt path have on more than one occasion commented online that whoever Polly is, she should be prosecuted for modern-day slavery for her use of moth and reina as free labour. Anne says the truth is she and her mother went out of their way for the couple, offering them stability, a rent-free place to recover from the shock of losing their home,

and time to rebuild their lives and work out what they wanted to do next. None of us would see them homeless, homeless. And this is the whole thing. There was a huge difference between homeless, homeless, living on a street somewhere, which must be horrific. And homeless within the fact that they haven't got their name on anything that is theirs, that they pay a mortgage on or they pay a rent on, They always had the option of a proper roof over their head at every point.

Another central promise of the salt path, the idea that the couple were destitute, doesn't seem to have been true. When they arrived in her place in the autumn of 2013, Anne says her aunt Sally and Uncle Tim seemed grateful. They offered to help around the farm along with the rest of the family. You know, bearing in mind my husband recovering from quite a severe brain injury at the time. Anne's husband wasn't able to do much around the farm or anything to help raise their young children,

so Anne was juggling a lot. Mum and younger brother were working with us and around us trying to hold the farm together. But Sal had helped on the holiday lodges if I asked her, and I'd give her some cash. Now, it wasn't a lot. You know, 20, 30 quid from morning's work, because it's all I got. But also these evenings were spent then sat in the very old second-hand hot tub

I had on our deck in drinking cups of tea with Sally in the hot tub chatting and talking. That's the other side of it. You know, she sat in there drinking wine with us, looking at the stars, talking, you know. It wasn't anything that's been portrayed in the book. To the point where that Christmas, Anne says she went the extra mile for the entire family. We made an extra bedroom in a separate building specifically for their son to spend that time with them.

And then their daughter would stop with them in the house on the sofa. And so you had four individuals at that. and points living there. Yeah. She says there was definitely the sense that the couple were keeping a low profile and hiding out at her place. I knew that there was still bailiffs looking for them

because I was always worried they were going to turn up on the door. Did they tell you that? Yeah. I knew there was bailiffs and there was debt collectors still looking for them, but they were very open about the fact that they would never find them where they were. Anne had kept her ear to the ground to see if she could find them any local work. And at some point she pulled in a favour with a guy who was running a shearing gang. Sally went wool wrapping. It's hard work.

But she's also a farmer's daughter. She knows what hard work is supposedly and what wool wrapping is. Early on a May morning, Polly rushed into the shed. Found you some work if you wanted. Of course I wanted it. The shearing team need a wrapper. Do you think you can do it? I stood in the shower as green lannoling slime washed down the drain. I ate a bowl of soup and was asleep by nine.

I woke in the night, my arms pulsing in pain, got up and took a handful of ibuprofen, and then went back to sleep, lying on my back with my arms propped on pillows, until the alarm blasted out at 5.30. Repeat. In the salt path, Rainer works the whole season, But Anne says the reality was quite different.

She got a couple of weeks in, a few days of wrapping over those few weeks, needed the money for it. Then they disappeared off on a walk for however many weeks, which made me feel awful because I kind of put her forward and recommended her for the shearing gang. During the roughly 18 months that Sally and Tim lived with her, Anne says the couple went on walking holidays twice. Once using the money Anne made from a few days shearing,

And again, when Tim's PIP or disability payment came through. Tim's illness was always alluded to, says Anne. Remember this was 2013, after Tim and Sally claim he received his diagnosis of CBD. The months slipped by and then a year. Around 18 months after they first came to stay, Anne found herself losing patients. Sally hadn't applied for bankruptcy and neither she nor Tim had found a job. And even more frustrating, they weren't even pulling their weight around the farm with the rest of the family. It all went sour because they refused to do what they said they were going to do from a financial point of view,

but also from just moving their life along and not just, you know, be left there with us almost as my responsibility. At this point, it felt to Anne like this might be turning into a permanent situation, that she might have Sally and Tim and at times their kids all living on her farm without them, chipping in in any way. It wasn't just me and my children and my husband. It was an entire other family that I was financially responsible and how do I square that away when, you know, I'm struggling to make as much income as I possibly can to keep a roof over mine and my kids' heads. In the salt path, Polly kicks Moth and Rainer out while Moth's health is at its lowest in months. She makes it clear she wants the extra income from renting out the flat where they're staying.

so they graciously leave. And the couple head back for the coastal path to walk the second half. But I've seen contemporaneous emails from the time in which Anne's dad is warning her that she's being taken advantage of and that if she doesn't do something soon, she'll end up with Sally and Tim living there forever. I think it was dad who pretty much led the charge with that one, so to speak. My marriage at the time was also falling to pieces with three children.

My father could see that. It was like you need to reduce some of the pressures, the stress and everything. And to still have Tim and Sally living there seemingly with no intentions of ever truly helping, which, let's face it was never going to happen, I was delusional. I had asked them to leave the farm for a multitude of reasons. Did you say to them you've got to go now? I said it was time they needed to look somewhere else, yes. This was early 2015 and Sally Walker's mother, Anne's grandmother, had just died.

So Anne and her mum Sue recommended that the couple go and stay in the grandmother's empty house. This house is available. You know, they're not wanting to do anything with it until the spring. You've got a good six months here that you can have it at a very, very, very reduced rent. You can get benefit to help towards the rent. You know, you can get your feet under you. Come on, it's time to get from the farm. So Sally and Tim moved there until the summer of 2015, when they left to go on another walking holiday,

which is when they met the Australian couple, the Parsons. Then towards the end of that year or early 2016, they moved to Polruin, Cornwall. This is at least 18 months after they claim they moved there in the salt path. After Anne had asked her aunt Sally to move on, their relationship soured a little. We'd stop communication at this point. So they stopped talking to you or you stop talking to them? Both ways. The first Anne heard about the salt path was from one of her friends

who'd read it and recognised her as the character Polly. A friend contacted me and said, do you realise that this is you? And that was mortifying? It's like, well, it's not me. And then I read some of it. And it's like, I'm not reading any further. Because this isn't true.

None of this is true. This is just making out like everybody has always battered them down and stabbed them in the back and hurt them and upset them and done wrong by them when actually a lot of the time it was the other way. Ang was hurt but there didn't see much she could do. Then around a year and a half ago

Anne's mum Sue was diagnosed with late stage cancer. Anne called her aunt to let her know and Sally rushed to the hospital. The two sisters spent some time together, and there seems to have been a reconciliation of sorts. But after Sally left the hospital, Anne says her mum spoke to her and reminded her about the letters. Well, we'd always known about them.

They'd always been there. They were always in the pink file in the one cupboard. She said Sally's a pathological liar. My sister is a pathological liar. Keep them. You may need... them down the line. Anne says she instinctively knew her mum was right. How else do I prove that how she's depicted herself is fiction? And how she's depicted

everybody and everything that's happened with her being perceived as a victim is quite the opposite. By the time I met her, Anne had already tried to alert the authorities and publishers to the confession letter and the thefts. I rang two or three police stations earlier this year when your first article came out and nobody's interested. You know, Penguin, I got through the first time I couldn't even get back

to the first reception, but they weren't interested. Penguin has said that no one has ever raised any concerns about Rainer Wing with them, but it's possible that there wasn't really a mechanism for someone like Anne to do that. Sally and Tim had left their old life behind and if their families are to be believed it was a life that Sally had made a mess of

she skirted close to being charged with serious crimes not just once but possibly three times but why what had led to that desperation Sally claims to have felt in her email a desperation that trumped any responsibility she had towards her employer her in-laws and even her

her own mother. Anne's thought long and hard about all this and she believes that in the end theirs is a kind of love story. I idolised him. They were together from really young. She idolises him? Oh yeah. Is that reciprocated? Do you think Tim loves her or needs her or what's the other half of the equation? Tim obviously don'ts on her but it's a very flamboyant returned love almost over the top. But Sally is Tim's protector, so Tim can create the persona he's created. What is that persona?

That persona is the bandana wearing turned up collar, brown boots, slightly worn jeans, hand on heart, turned up hair, attitude of, you know, bumbling through life. And Sally facilitates that. You know, Sally can be on her knees totally and utterly financially and Tim will sit in the corner polishing his boots. But there's the other side of that, which Tim must surely have been aware that there was money coming in from somewhere.

Because surely he must have known over the £100,000,000 that there's money coming in. And it's a symbiotic relationship that not necessarily brings out the worst in one another, but it's created them into the situation they're in now. Anne has a theory that when their finances hit the fan, perhaps when they lost their investment, all Sally cared about was, What's the phrase she used in her email? Holding Tim out of it and trying to keep some of the real Tim alive.

It's like he has no comprehension of money. He has no comprehension of fact that it has to actually come from somewhere and there isn't always somebody with a safety net to make it right. It would be Sally trying to make the world right for the kids and Sally trying to make the world right for Tim, but making it right to a level and a standard in which Tim would want it, even if that meant putting herself out there and fundamentally doing illegal staff. Anne believes that the salt path was a final act by Sally to somehow reinvent their lives.

What you have to understand is these books are just four books and a film of a long love letter of her love and devotion to Tim and how she wants to try and make the world right and rewrite history for him. because that makes it safe and makes it right and justifies everything that's happened or done. Anne mentioned four books there, because there was another book Raina had written too, almost five years before the Salt Path trilogy. I haven't mentioned it here before, but this one was a fiction, a novel. She and Tim had published it themselves back in 2012 when they were still living in Wales. As far as I can tell, only around 250 copies.

were ever printed, and I've been looking for it for months. I'd almost given up hope until I got a call from a freelance journalist who'd been helping me with the investigation. Hi, James. Hello. Hi. How are you? I am good.

I'm finally in Cornwall. I am hoping to speak to some people who rain around. Sorry, can I interrupt you quickly because I'm really glad you called. I've got a bit of news myself. and I wanted to tell you that we found the book. No. You're kidding. You're kidding me.

You're kidding me. You're kidding me. No, we found it. The book James helped me find was sold as fiction. But what I was about to find out is that it's far closer to Raina Wyn's true story than any of her memoirs. Coming up in the final episode.

It seems like she's created this fictional version of how she wants to be. the reality to be. To keep on doing it is a big deception to pull off. But I think publishing must stand for truth in order to survive. Raine Arwen responded to the observer's investigation with the following statement. The salt path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey. On her website, Reina goes on to say, as with most people's lives, there will always be someone willing to

criticise you. That's part of life. However, it is a great source of sadness that Tortus Media's observer is now seeking to drive a wedge between our family members. The family have always been able to share their concerns privately and they still can. I did not steal from family as others can confirm, nor have I confessed to doing so and I did not write the letter suggesting I did. We are accused of hiding behind pseudonyms. This is blatantly untrue. Like most, we use these nicknames alongside our legal names. The legal names we use on our bank records, our utility bills, etc. Our friends and neighbours use Sal and Tim interchangeably with Ray and Moth. There is nothing hiding in our names. Thanks for listening to The Walkers, The Real Salt Path. It was reported by me,

Chloe Hageimuthéo with additional reporting by James Urquhart. The series producer was Matt Russell, additional production by Amalia Sautland. Music, supervision and sound design was by Carla Patela. The editor was Jasper Corbett. Thank you for listening to The Walkers. We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far. You can listen to all seven episodes today by subscribing to The Observer. By subscribing, not only do you get all our podcast before anyone else,

you also get access to our premium food and puzzles newsletter, exclusive offers from our partner Mooby, free tickets to our events and much, much more. Subscribe today at observer.com.uk slash subscribe, or via the link in the show notes.