Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[AWanderingFool]

Thread Two for The Salt Path and Raynor Winn/Sally Walker/Sally Winn discussions.

Thread One is here: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

I'm not sure, although I do think it's a possibility.

However I think you're 100% correct that she doesn't think she's done anything wrong. Even the embezzlement will have a justification in her mind.

I wonder if the bit about the loan is where the grey area is. Maybe there really was a misunderstanding between them and the friend/distant relative. Maybe the friend did make a bad investment which caused his business to tank. Maybe they did think the loan was from his company not his personal account, whatever he said in court (and that's what the mysterious letter 'proved'). Maybe the loan terms he imposed were harsh and the relationship soured.

BUT that's all besides the point when held up next to the embezzlement isn't it. The reason for the loan in the first place. Also, I doubt he offered. More like they asked him for the money!

From The Spectator article:

Unless Sally Walker is quick with a fully convincing explanation of why her books, marketed as ‘unflinchingly honest’, appear to be anything but, I think publishers and the reading public will be entitled to ask her to, well, take a hike.

😁

Agree. I expect there will be a lot of people either didn't think they would be believed, or who hadn't made the connection, who will be coming forward now.

I’m not suggesting it was similar, only as an example of someone in the public eye falsifying (or so it seems) an aspect of their past, or concocting a narrative about themselves at odds with the public record, that they’ve recounted in various forms so often it’s possible they’ve come to believe it themselves.

I imagine the Walkers’ mental processes would be ‘Why we were homeless isn’t important — the walk itself, which we really did, is the real meat of the book.’ Tell the story with the fictional ‘Cooper’ often enough in interviews and you could probably pass a lie detector test.

Of course, there’s the same issue as with Jason Isaacs and skateboarding. Knowledgeable nerds get together via the power of the internet and share their doubts. It’s like being able to freezeframe films and tv and check out every little detail in a way you couldn’t in the past. Look how much stuff about the Walkers DOB, their adult children’s identities etc people found out and posted on Mn since yesterday.

Absolutely.
I wonder if they've told the story about the dodgy friend stealing their money and the rest of it so many times that they've convinced themselves that it's true.

The interest rate on the loan is really odd.

It’s not clear how they were supposed to be able to repay the loan from income.

There was no mysterious letter. They didn't invest in a friend's enterprise. A judge did not disallow evidence.

The relative could impose any terms he liked and he did because she could have gone to jail otherwise.

I thought it made sense, as loans often have extremely high interest rates. It does sound painfully high though.

Completely agree

Maybe it wasn't the first time that Sally and Tim Walker had asked to borrow money from friends and family. Maybe they had been slow to pay back previous loans. That would explain why the terms of this loan were not very favourable to them.

I didn't say any of that. I'm trying to work out how she might have used grains of truth to create her own version of events. I suggested the friend who loaned them money's business which failed, might have failed because he made a bad investment. So that's where she could have picked up the idea.
I'm sure one of the observer pieces says she claimed the loan was from his business, but he testified it was personal. And she thought she had a letter to prove it.
The loan thing is the only bit where I could see there might be another version of events.

But the reason for tbe homelessness was important to the narrative - the idea that it was out of their control and that they were victims.

Jason Isaac’s exaggerated skateboarding past doesn’t affect his portrayal of Lucius Malfoy.

ETA: I do agree that they probably believe that they are victims.

It isn't high if you take into account that this is a relative who knows them, and there is no evidence either of them had any collateral or income. The relatives business may have subsequently failed, but one might assume that they at least had some financial nouse. There is no way a legitimate lender would touch them with a bargepole, and even for small amounts, the riskier you are as a bet for repayment, the higher the interest rate. 18% is tiny compared to the nearly 100% and more that some lenders have charged for risky loans. Or look at credit cards - even safe bets have high interest if they don't pay them off every month. I assume the relative had no idea that they also owed a large amount on the mortgage.

Haven't read the book but: why couldn't they just live in their house in france?

One of the podcast interviews I heard Jason Isaacs give about the film he said that no friends or family would put them up but then really quickly amended it to that they were embarrassed and too proud to ask anyway.

It stuck in my head because I found it a odd turn of phrase but later on he was also saying that when he meets people who he's going to portray they always end up telling him things they would never tell their family or a journalist. So who knows who knew what!

I'm curious about the fact that they still had a mortgage of £230,000 on their property in 2012/13 which they had supposedly owned for 20 years. This would mean they bought it in early/mid 1990's after a huge property market crash (so prices low) in a very cheap (at the time) area, so why still owing so much?

Probably because woman embezzled money, has to pay back money, gets into debt and then buggers off to live in second home in France wouldn't catch the publics sentiments in the same way as an against all odds, power of love work.of fiction story.

It suggests they took out atleast a second mortgage.

I suspect there would have been significant maintenance costs, and repairing the property in France would have been £££ - but they may just have overestimated their potential business revenue over the years and used it for living costs.

Perhaps it’s a mercy that we have been spared the story of their move to France.

Maybe they got an interest-only mortgage, so were only paying off the interest and not the capital? Don’t know!

particularly high for the period after the crash.

I don’t think 18% is that bad considering the circumstance tbh. It’s risky lending to a fraudster after all

I doubt they had any intention of paying it back anyway - hence the shock at losing in court!

They borrowed a lot more from the relative than they needed to pay back the embezzled money. I think it's safe to guess that they were probably in what we might delicately term a "tight spot", financially.

And as for losing their "forever home", that would be the one that they were trying to give away in a raffle? So not a forever home at all!

I don’t think I’ve ever been in any house or flat where it was literally impossible to see the sky from any window! However this flat also had a sunbathing spot right outside the window. Notwithstanding it was supposedly also the oddly weak roof of a shop, that’s not cut off from the light is it?

Literal-minded people like me are hopeless with this kind of confusion and guff-peddling. Good job I wasn’t her editor or there’d have been nothing left.

I’ve noticed Raynor Winn has disabled the comments in her Instagram page.