Who Trolled Amber? - The Missing Money | The Walkers Ep1

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In a small town in north Wales, an alleged theft at a local estate agents plants the seeds for a global blockbuster.Subscribe to Observer+ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to binge listen to the entire series on Tuesday 13th January.To find out more about The Observer:Subscribe to TheObserver+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free contentHead to our website observer.co.uk Credits:Reporter - Chloe HadjimatheouAdditional reporting - James UrquhartProducer - Matt RussellMusic supervision & sound design - Karla PatellaScript editor - Gary MarshallExecutive Producer - Jasper Corbett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Observer. You've entered the car park for your destination. 2025 was a weird year for me. Most of it was spent following one tip-off. I get a lot of these tip-offs working in investigations, and I can tell you they rarely lead to a story. They hardly ever pan out. But this one, the one that came to me last spring, was different.

It's taken me from Wales to Cornwall. to France. And then a few months ago. On a sunny October afternoon, I found myself parking up a few hours dry from London. So we've just pulled in to a service station off the motorway in Gloucester. It all feels very deep throat and secret squirrel. I was there to meet a source. They are extremely nervous about talking to me. So at the moment, this is all on background and completely off the record.

and I can't even say who they are. All this secrecy for a story about a book. The tip-off that started the ball rolling on this whole thing was from a stranger who messaged me on Instagram. They told me they had some information about a memoir called The Salt Path. Arts stories really aren't my thing. I'm more a sort of disinformation, Middle East, true crime kind of journalist.

so I was about to reply that this wasn't one for me. But then they messaged again and said, I should take a closer look at the author because they suspected she might have lied in her books. I mean, I'm a pretty voracious reader, but I'd never come across the salt path and I'd never even heard of its author Rainer Wynne. Turns out, I must have been living under a rock

because the minute I started looking around, I realised she was everywhere. on TV chat show sofas, splashed across magazine spreads, and on the stage of every literary festival in the country. I'm Sophie Rayworth and I'm talking to you from the BBC Newsroom, and it is a great honour to join you this evening, to talk to Raina Wynne. Thank you, so much for coming. Can I welcome to the stage, Raina Wynne.

So please everyone, give another warm welcome to Rainer Wyn. Rainer Wyn and her husband, Moth, the main subject of her book, have become national treasures. It is a proper phenomenon. I mean, one of the big sort of ten books over the last five years or so. It's like this huge thing. Spent more than 90 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller lists

and changed thousands of lives. For the last seven years, readers all around the world have been deeply moved by this couple's true story. But, you know, anybody who's read the book, I mean, you can't fail to be touched by it. I think a lot of people in terms of having hope. But the real gift is this book. will change your life.

...people in the worst of times, finding the best of themselves. It's a heartbreaking story that Raina Winn has told countless times about how deeply unfair life has been to her and Moth. And it starts with their house. I've been living in this place in Wales that I've bought with my husband, Moth. It was our dream home, a place we'd thought about for probably a decade before we actually bought it. But someone they thought was a friend manages to trick them into a dodgy business deal

that ends with their house being repossessed. Saw has been served with an eviction notice from that place, that place that we'd put a heart and soul into, that had been so central to our lives. In one week that changed our lives utterly and indelibly forever. Then Moth is told by a doctor that he's dying. In that week, Mousb Moth had a hospital appointment and he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that had no treatment.

CBD is a very lonely existence. Terminal condition, no cure. Nobody gets it. Faced with destitution and a terminal illness, the couple make an extraordinary decision. They're going to walk the 630 miles around the southwest coastal path while they're thinking of what to do next with the little time Moth has left. That moment when we said, yes, let's walk, I think it was just the idea of following a line on the map. They sleep rough in a tent and survive on less than £50 a week. People they meet along the way scorn them for being homeless.

But in the end, the healing power of nature and of walking helps Moth overcome his illness. And it helps Rainer realise the only home she really needs is Moth. At its heart, this is a love story between two people who overcome anything and everything for one another. Just the idea, the idea of letting go of that seemed utterly impossible. Reconnecting with that path, I know that this place holds a sense of home, that I didn't think I'd feel again. Rainer Wynne won and were shortlisted for prestigious literary awards.

And then, last summer, Hollywood came knocking. You're walking the path? Yes, we are. That's a long old hike. Yeah, retired, are you? Open up, Mr. Bayless? Hello. Homeless, actually.

We lost everything. Look me in the eye. Coward. Our home. No livelihood. Maybe we should just follow a line around the coast. We just walk. Jillian Anderson went full Raina Wynn with wild frizzy hair.

I fell in love with the book. I thought it was extraordinary. I think it's an amazing story. And Jason Isaacs was playing The Sick and Limping Moth. They are amazing people. They describe themselves as very ordinary. Well, certainly something extraordinary happened to them. And it's real. In July, I published an article based on some of the initial findings I'd made from that tip-off. It highlighted some of the ways Rainer Wynne had misled her reading. about her origin story, how they'd lost their home, how and when they'd walked the coastal path and her husband's illness.

The next day, every newspaper in the country and many around the world had latched onto it. It's the continuing controversy around the hit novel, The Salt Path, the supposed real-life story of Rainer and Law. When the Observer came out by journalist Chloe Hadimittame. Within hours of publishing, I had a two-ne-year-old. army of emails and social media messages from members of the public. In the more than 20 years I've worked as a journalist, I've definitely broken more important stories, but none has had the impact

this one has. After the article, I was being inundated with fresh leads, and suddenly I found myself trying to piece together a sprawling mystery. Who really were Moth and Raina Wyn? And what happened on that walk. Did we know them though? Did we honestly know them for what they were? She used that to create divides and I don't think it will ever be the same again. That someone who's so dishonest and so horrible is getting so much. That's my aunt and she's a liar. Mocked and humiliated for it and lied about. For a fleeting few days I had a little bit of hope and then it's gone. All of which brings me back to that motorway service station. I'd suspected how important that meeting might be

because the person I was hoping to talk to that day was a family member of Rainer Wins. I feel like the public persona that they've put on, the image that they've shown their readers, that's not really them. I don't know who they are yet. And I really hope that the person I'm about to me has the key and might agree to share it.

I remember willing this woman to somehow find the courage to show up. It's the beginning of a conversation, but if I can get this person to go on the record, essentially I think it will blow the whole story open. So here goes. Listening back now, I can actually hear that I suspected I was about to uncover something big. It turns out I had no idea what was coming. Inside that cafe I sat across from this very ordinary-looking, middle-aged blonde lady,

but it quickly became clear that what she wanted to share with me was really quite extraordinary. I watched her reach into her bag and pull out a clear plastic folder. As she slid it towards me, I could see that inside was a letter, written by row. rain a win. I sat there reading it with my mouth hanging open. I've written this to make some sense of it. If I tried 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 to say, and I'd do anything for you. This is life to end here. I can hear you saying, how could she have done this to us? It's of no consolation to you, but this morning writing this, I feel better than I have for years because I know it's over. There was one thing

I knew for sure. It definitely wasn't over. This is a story about one of the biggest celebrity deceptions in modern times, about a couple who persuaded the world they were victims when they were nothing of the sort. And like the Emperor's new clothes, looking back now, the signs were always there. Because this is a love story, not the one Rainer about love-conquering illness and destitution, but about the lengths people will go to to cover up for one another. A story about an industry willing to look the other way, and crucially, about how desperate we all are to buy into hope. I'm Chloe Hedermotho, and from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer, this is The Walkers. Episode 1, The Missing Money.

Good morning, Sean. Hello, how are you? I'm all right. Do you? No, fine, thank you. This is the man that took a sofa. Hi, nice to meet you. This story starts months before the motorway service station

in a small wind-swept town in North Wales. The place where Rainer Wynn would be made and broken. It's about as far as you get from the bright lights of multi-million-pound book deals and Hollywood film adaptations. But this is where my investigation starts. I'm here to meet a woman who was a witness to the first, first chapter of the salt path as it really happened. Now I love this place. I'm very much part of this place. It's lovely. It is lovely. As long as your family don't want to go out and do city

things. So is this what it looked like when you were here? No. No, Sean's got it looking lovely. Rose Hemings is very connected to Paul Heli, the place where Raina Wyn and Moth were living at the beginning of the salt path. It's a market town of just over 4,000 people. raising a family there meant a quaint country life by the sea nestled in the shadows of Snowdonia National Park Ros and her husband Martin had two daughters who enjoyed the freedom there they wouldn't have had in a big city

You know from quite an early age They could be put on the bus in the village And go to town and go and come back and say Did you buy something? Yes, I've got a pencil and a rubber And I went on the pick and mixing walls As there was then and that was it really It was safe.

It was safe, utterly safe. Roz has short, curly salt and pepper hair and a warm, humorous glint in her eye. She looks like someone who enjoys life and spends most of her time in a pretty jolly mood. In many ways, this story, or my telling of it, at least, starts with Ros. And with her friend.

I knew Tim Walker first. I worked for the National Trust at a property there. have on the Thune and he was the gardener there. So Tim Walker's going to end up a key character in this story. But back then, he was just some guy Ros happened to work with. So he would come and tell me about some of the plants. And I just became friends by talking plants, really.

Did you like him? Yes, he was very pleasant, very pleasant. Very chatty. You could keep him talking for hours and not gardening. And what did he look like? He was always extremely well dressed. A man always with a cravat. He wore very nice sort of gardening smocks.

And I always remember I admired them and he said his wife made them for him. Tim was married to Sally, a shy woman with wild frizzy hair. She'd grown up in a hardworking family of farmers. The couple had come to Wales from Staffordshire in the early 90s and brought a very old, rickety but charming farmhouse, a 20-minute drive from Portheli. In 2001, this is a few years. years after Ross and Tim started working together, he tells Ros that his wife Sally's looking for work.

She'd been made redundant where she worked at a hotel in Abbassoch and I think they were going into financial difficulties. And it was at the same time as my husband's bookkeeper had retired. Ross's husband Martin ran a property surveyor's and estate agent in Polcheli. It was more of a family business really. Roz helped out there whenever she wasn't working at the National Trust site. So I thought, well, this is great. We know the walkers and she came to work for us. She only ever worked on a part-time basis,

but we only employed people on part-time basis. It felt like a family. Janice worked in Martin Hemings' estate agents for years. Did Sally fit into the office quite easily? Was she quickly sort of one of the team? Oh yeah, she was always pleasant and quiet. She kept to herself. But then she would pass pleasantries and talked about a family,

children mainly. Everything costing so much and no money to do this, that or the other. As a part-time bookkeeper, Sally couldn't have been making much and Tim was on a tiny salary as a gardener at the National Trust site. Which is why an announcement Sally made at the office all of of a sudden, really stuck with Janice. So then when she came in one day and said, oh, guess what I did last night?

She said, we've gone and bought a chateau in France. Wow. Well, I was just totally gobsmacked at this. I mean, you know, you just couldn't quite believe what she was saying. Did you think she was making it up at the beginning? Well, it was just a little bit believable because she think, oh, where have you had the money from? You know, but you didn't ask that question.

Both Martin and myself were just thinking, wow, that's very nice for you. And it was around this time that Roz came into the National Trust site one day and noticed that Tim had made an expensive purchase. He turned up in this. Landrever, I think it was a defender. This was towards the end of the time. And it was new? It looked pretty new. But they're not cheap.

Were you surprised? Well, I was surprised, but I just thought it was family money. By this point, Debbie, Roz's daughter, had started working for Tim Walker in the National Trust Gardens. I mean, he taught me a lot. I mean, this is why I'm still a gardener now. I was 15, so it's the summer before I left school. Debbie's in her 40s and has the same sparkly, smiley eyes as her mum. And she remembers the same unusually well-dressed. man that her mum does.

But he always wore a red cravat, quite a designer shirt, mullskin trousers, walking boots. Very stylish. He was always very stylish even in the gardens. You know, the rest of us would turn up in holy trousers and holy jumpers, but he always looked tidy, iron sweater, you know, jacket on occasion. Worked with Tim for two or three days depending on what was needed. He was good fun.

And Libby and Tim were spending a lot of time together. So these two families were quite entwined. I'd go in the office and Dad would like, oh yes, Sally's upstairs. So go up and say hi. Martin had given Sally her own room on the top floor where she could take care of the books in silence. Tell me a bit about your dad. Oh, he was a card. He was good fun.

He was good fun as a dad. He was firm, you know, kept us in line. But he was a good laugh. And he was always working. You know, we wouldn't see him from dawn till dusk. Ah, continuous. That's his second home, the office. Yeah, I mean, the most time I spent with Dad was doing surveys on houses.

Come with me, my sauce, we've got a full structural to do. And so we'd head out. You know, I'd go around with the damp meter, and we'd sit in the van and eat sandwiches and drink a flask, and he'd write up his reports. And if Martin Hemming's office was his home, his staff were an extended family. It was a family business. Well, Martin was famous always. His business was next door to a chip shop.

So on cold days, you know, the chips became irresistible. And he would buy them all chips if they wanted them. Hot weather, everybody who ever worked for him always remembers the enormous numbers of ice creams that they ate. But behind the scenes there were difficulties. Despite being a workaholic, Martin's business didn't seem to be making that much money. I mean, he was a one-man band, so it was never ever going to get massive, you know,

and he was good to local people. He had an empathy towards people in the area because it's a very low-wage place, so the bills weren't always sent out promptly. I am afraid I would blame him and say, well, you haven't sent the bills out. So he'd sent out a few and then nothing. And this went on and on and on, really, that he was rubbish at actually making people pay for anything. He often didn't let people pay for things.

Some months, the Heming's only source of income was Rosse's National Trust wages, which were extremely modest, barely minimum wage. The family operated on a shoestring. The walkers seemed to be doing okay though, with new cars and holiday homes. But by 2008, Martin Hemings was in serious trouble. He wasn't even sure he could pay Sally and the rest of the small team their salaries. Rose remembers how stressed he was. He rang me up sometime just before Easter in 2008.

and he said, I was paid cash this morning, and I gave Sally the cash to go and pay in because otherwise we would not be able to pay the wages. It wasn't a lot, but the £600 would at least ensure the staff got paid. But sometime later, when Martin tried to access the money in his business account, he couldn't find it. He rang me and he said, there's no money. I don't know what to do.

can't pay the ladies. And I said, well, it's got to be there somewhere, but he said it isn't. It's just not there. He blamed the bank. He said, I'm going to, you know, got and sort it out with the bank now. The bank was at the end of the street. I can imagine him walking up the street. Oh, he'd set off when he was very fast walker. He really struggled to keep up with him. And I can imagine him heading up to HSBC or Midland Bank as it was probably back then. The bank manager knew Martin well and she could see how distressed he was. So the two of them sat down together and the money had never been paid in. Is it this one here? This one? Yes. Yeah.

When Martin Hemings died in 2012, Roze sold that estate agents and it was taken over by someone else. And it's still operating as an estate agent's today. Martin loved this place. He was married to this place and I was the other woman. It's been refurbished in recent years, but the layout of the old shop hasn't changed all that much. Well, Janice sort of sat there, and then there was someone else would sit here. And then where would Sally work?

Sally worked on the top floor. Was that because she needed quiet to sort of do the books? Was that the idea? I think that was the idea, yes. Walking around Pultelli, I feel like such a Londoner. People greet Rodney. as she walks down the street in a way that you'd never get in my neighbourhood.

It's clearly a tight-knit community, which is why I think what happened to the Hemings family business was all the more shocking. Because people in this working-class Welsh village aren't particularly well off, and they certainly weren't well off in 2008. £600 was quite a bit of money to go missing.

So up the road here is the bank. Right. So how often would... Sally take this walk to the bank to think? I would think when there was any quantity of cheques to pay in, clearly when we had this dollop of cash, sometimes we would save cash, but we were so short, it had to be paid in.

And thank goodness it did, because that quarter, I mean Martin, he just didn't think that people would do things like that. And sadly, they do. He was too trusting. Sally Walker had been given the cash, but she hadn't paid it into the business account. So the bank manager suggested they take a closer look

at what was being paid in and out of Martin's business over the last few months. They started looking backwards through the accounts. And in those days, of course, every cheque was sort of kept in the bank. And he said, well, I didn't, that's not my signature, that's not my signature, that's not my signature, that's not my. signature and that was the point when she looked out of the window the bank manager and she said I see that solicitor over the road has not gone home yet you go over there and take him on

because you need him before this person who is a criminal gets him because he's very good she said and I will ring the police he found out there was £9,000 missing initially and that was a lot of money. I mean, it's a small business, so any amount of money is a loss, isn't it? Poor mum and dad back then. It must have been horrible for them to have to go through all of this.

Thousands of pounds had been taken out of the business in forged checks. And there was only one suspect. The bookkeeper, Sally Walker. Martin's new solicitor suggests this is serious enough that Martin needs to go to the authorities. The police came in the next morning. They said, well, you know, just tell her not to come in to work

and we'll call in and see you in the morning. So he said, you know, there were just problems and don't come in today. And so do you think Sally would have had an inkling at that point? Well, she did because within a couple of days, she called on me after Martin had gone to work and offered me money. She brought a check.

And she sort of cried and said, oh, well, We haven't any money and I'd only borrowed it. And this is all, you know, and I've sold some of my mother's things. And here's the check. And what did you say? I said, no, no, I can't take that. You'll have to go and give it to Martin. When Sally shows up at his office offering to pay back the missing £9,000,

Martin accepts the money and he tells the police the losses have been made good. But that's not the end of the story. Because the missing £9,000 was from the last few months. months. What about before that? Sally had worked for the Hemings for around seven years. So every evening after work, Martin and Ros would sit together at the kitchen table, late into the night, looking through years of financial ledgers. And eventually, as Ros remembers it, they worked out that £64,000 had been taken out of Martin's business. If £9,000 was a lot of money back then, than you can imagine this was a fortune.

I think it was a feeling of disbelief from all of us. Because, you know, I'd known Tim. We'd known Tim for years. We entrusted Sally into coming into our business to help out with the books. You can't believe somebody can do that to you. Early on Wednesday, the 8th of October 2008, the Walker family is awoken by banging on the door. It's the police. They arrest Sally for fraud and theft.

She's taken into custody for questioning and her house is searched. And after a day of refusing to answer questions, they let her go home on the agreement that she'll return another day for follow-up questions. But Sally Walker never shows up. When they go round to her house, it's clear her family have no idea where she's gone. They went there and Tim sobbed and said she's gone Sky. The Isle of Sky in Scotland, a favourite haunted Tim and Sally's. It's where the couple got married.

The police in Wales call the local Isle of Sky Police and they go and investigate. Roz doesn't really remember what the police did next. She only remembers that the woman who the family had trusted and thought of as a friend had betrayed them by stealing tens of thousands of pounds and then wasn't prepared to face up to it. She'd done a runner. She's gone about two weeks. Because I remember talking to mum and dad and saying,

what happens if she never comes back? And mum and dad were like, well, she's gone then, doesn't she? But Sally hadn't gone for good? This quiet, unassuming woman had a plan. She'd fled to London to visit a very wealthy relative of her husbands, a man she called Cooper. Moth would later tell this man and his family that Sally had also secretly taken out credit cards in both their names and maxed them out. But Cooper was on hand to help. He lent Sally £100,000, and with that money she hired a lawyer.

She was contacted by some London solicitors who said that an unnamed client wanted to pay back all the legal fees and everything she owed Martin on the understanding that he would sign an agreement that he wouldn't disclose this. Sally Walker's solicitor made Ross and Martin Hemings an offer. Sally would pay them back all the missing money

on a no admissions basis, And in return, Martin had to promise not to pursue criminal charges and not to talk about the matter publicly again. Ross says in the end they decided against a long legal case which might mean they wouldn't see a penny. No criminal charges were ever brought against Sally Walker in relation to the missing money. The walkers had solved their problems, but only temporarily.

Because Cooper had lent them 100,000. to pay back the Hemmings and pay the expensive lawyers, but it was on the understanding that they'd sell their house in Wales and pay them back soon. So now they had a second private mortgage on their home at a high interest rate of 18% per annum, and it was payable at the demand of the lender. At that point, it's probably safe to say Sally and Tim Walker weren't too worried because Cooper was a relative and a friend. But just a few months later, Cooper's business went bust,

and the loan he'd given the Walkers passed from Cooper to two businessmen he owed money to. And almost immediately, those businessmen called in the debt. I've seen solicitor's letters from Sally and Tim Walker to the men who wanted their money, assuring them that they will get paid soon. And it's clear the Walkers were trying to sell their property. Their house appears in an episode of the BBC property programme Escape to the Country.

On the market of £435,000, this 16... This is the main farmstead. It's a traditional Welsh farmstead. It dates back to the 1730s, although it is a lot older than that. Ready to step inside? Yes, yes, looking forward to it. In 2011, more than a year after the debt had been called in, the house still wasn't sold.

Cooper, who at this point was still pretty close to Tim Walker, wrote to one of the businessmen who were owed the money. I have now spoken to Tim twice at length and he has been at very great pains to emphasise his efforts to sell their house. Speaking of pain, unbeknown to me, Tim's developed a degenerative and quite debilitating muscle disease and he's been in hospital with it. He didn't make a particular point of it,

and I'm certainly not trying to either, but we both know Bloke's fortunes, ebb and flow. But at some point that same year, the walkers just stopped responding to the businessman, who in the end felt they had no choice but to go to court to get their money back. By now, the interest on the loan had racked up, and the walkers now owed more than £150,000. In July 2013, having failed to pay back any of the loan, the Walker's house was repossessed. Years went by and the Hemmings had tried hard to forget the walkers.

Martin died, the estate agency was sold, and Ross started working for the local lifeboat charity. Debbie carried on gardening as a profession and eventually started her own family. And she really thought she'd moved on. Do you remember when you first found out about the Salt Pass book? Yeah, I'd gone in for a meeting. was my boss in his office.

Got this beautiful coffee table and he's always got really interesting books on there. I picked up this book, Salt Path, and I was like, oh, it's quite nice, nice cover, pretty, like this. And he goes, oh, it's a really good read, that is? And I was like, is it? He goes, yeah, and I turned the picture over. He gives a picture of her on the back, and I was like,

vaguely recognise her. And of course, it wasn't her name on the front, was it? And it took me about 15 minutes to work out where I'd seen that face from. And this is where our stories intersect. The Walker's small and provincial story about a local woman embezzling money from a small family business. Nothing like the true story Raina Wynne has told in the Salt Path about a couple beset by terrible bad luck. Sounds totally different. But this is what really happened.

Because in case you hadn't already worked it out, Sally and Tim Walker are Rainer and Moth. This is how the real story of the salt path begins. And in this version, a version backed by legal documents and by so many witnesses, Rainer and Moth are not victims at all. The mess is of their own making. I thought, why should she lie? Why can't she just say she'd done this terrible thing? stolen the money, had to borrow it back, lost it because she hadn't sold her, you know, lost her house.

Why doesn't she just be honest? Lots of people do commit crimes and then go on to be really good people. And that made me angry. How did you feel? Hurt and heartbroken, really. You know, my husband, who was lovely, had been destroyed because it did shatter his confidence in people. Ross says the saving grace has been that Martin never had to suffer the humiliation of seeing the walkers use the story to profit from their embezzlement. How'd you square it all with the Sally and Tim that you knew when you were young? Did we know them though? Did we honestly know them? As for the walkers or the winds as they're now known, this was the start of a whole new chapter.

By the time they reappear in Ros Hemming's life in 2018 with the publication of the salt path, the tale they tell is even more jaw-dropping than Ros could ever have imagined. And at this point, I can't help wondering if their origin stories are lie, then what about the extraordinary walk? 630 miles undertaken in desperation and destitution, moth dragging himself along horribly ill and with a death sentence hanging over him. What in this true story about a walk is really true? Coming up in episode two.

You'd think that she might at least, having gone through this terrible situation she went through, have some of the humility to now be more reflective. All I wanted from that was an apology for the family. I thought to myself, hmm, that sounds rather like there are some skeletons in the cupboard. Raina Wynne 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, Raina goes on to say, I worked for Martin Hemings in the years before the economic crash of 2008. For me, it was a pressured time. It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret and I am truly sorry. Mr Hemings made an allegation against me to the police, accusing me of taking money from the company. I was questioned, I was not charged, nor did I face criminal sanctions. I reached a settlement with Martin Hemings because I did not have the evidence required to support what happened.

The terms of the settlement were willingly agreed by both parties. Mr Hemings was as keen to reach a private resolution as I was. A part of that settlement was that I would pay money to Mr Hemings on a non-admissions basis. This is why we needed the money back from Cooper that we invested. As with most people's lives, there will always be someone willing to criticise you. That is 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. Thanks for listening to The Walkers, The Real Salt Path. It was reported by me, Chloe Hagemotho, with additional reporting by James Urquhart. The series producer was Matt Russell, music supervision and sound design was by Carla Patella, series artwork by Lola Williams. The script editor was Gary Marshall. The editor was Jasper Corbett. Thank you for listening to The Walkers. We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far.

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