Thread 3: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Thread One ^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?^

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

I just read her statement. She doesn’t deny stealing the money. So we can be pretty sure that she did in fact steal the money, and that paying back the stolen money resulted in them losing their house, and she’s hoping that all the extra BS about “Cooper” and a loan/investment will distract people from that fact. An innocent person wouldn’t offer to pay back missing money, they would say please investigate and work out what happened to it.

And those neurologist letters are all saying he has something weird, maybe CBD, but not a normal version of it. So in the books and all the follow up publicity she absolutely did lie about his illness. If she didn’t want to be accused of misleading people and cruelty towards people who do actually have that disease, she should have been more honest that what he had was something similar, but progressing in a way his neurologist had never seen. Confidently claiming in 3 separate books that his surprisingly good health is all down to walking rather than luck is what has made other people with neurological conditions so angry.

Many neurological conditions are unpredictable and people love to credit their own slow progression with some specific exercise they did, or something they stopped eating, or some miracle supplement they took. Maybe the thing they did helped, maybe they just got lucky. The more convincing they sound about it, the more people get caught up in it and latch on to false hope. I’m angry that I fell for this book, I had so many questions about things that sounded implausible as I read it but dismissed them all because I wanted to believe in it. I now feel stupid and naive.

The tone of the statement is all “poor me people are being mean” and not “I lied about some of the things in this book and I can understand why people are angry about that.”

I was hesitant to doubt TW condition, in line with The Observer's stance. However, looking purely at the medical letters SW presents as evidence of his terminal illness, these seem to show what MNers were expecting, medics at a bit of a loss, ascribing CBS as the closest possibility, and finding it unusual that it's progressed so slowly.

• 2025 refers only to a diagnosis in the past, which the current medic caveats with "whereby the clinical course has been extremely indolent". It also seems to record TW asking if new symptoms can be put down to CBS (corticobasal syndrome) and the doc saying a firm no.

• 2019 the medic says they thought it was an atypical form of CBD (corticobasal degeneration), then says the improvement suggests it's something else, "a more unusual disorder", with the main ongoing symptoms being a migraine and imbalance.

• 2015 says his symptoms most closely resemble CBS but that he's affected very mildly, to the extent that information and advice about the condition won't be relevant for him. Recommends more physio, a scan and that he's good to go ahead with a programme of academic study.

Obviously, when you hear bad medical news you can panic and assume the worse.

To look with a kind eye, perhaps the Walkers, in a state of stress that having the home they lived in repossessed would cause – even if it was the repercussion of a debt of 5 years arranged to avoid a criminal proceedings – and faced with convoluted medical terms DID just go to the PSP website and think all that was happening to TW.

That could explain away a couple of years of heightened anxiety, even. But to carry on for years? When doctors keep saying how amazingly he's doing?

Sadly, I do now think SW purposefully exaggerated her husband's medical condition for her career as a novelist. The letters underline that for me rather than ruling it out.

Given so many of us do care for terminally ill loved ones and cope with their deaths which cause immense sadness in our families, this doubling down doesn't do her any favours in my book.

Nothing in that statement refutes anything said in the observer. Those medical letters do not say he has cbd/cbs, in fact they query whether he has something more rare, which would surely be up there street.

The rest is woe is me, I’m such a lovely person and I pay people £1000s if they accuse me of anything because I’m just so lovely and unassuming I couldn’t possibly defend myself. And I only own property in France to stop the nwasty developers from snapping it up. And I’ve paid everyone back even though I’m just so lovely and perfect who would have thought I’d owe a penny and anyone who says different is a big meanie. Vom.

If she wanted to put the medical questions to bed, she could have released the follow-up letters after the two brain scans she describes in the book, one before the walk and one after the walk which was supposedly clear. Neurologists would have been fascinated by this and there would definitely have been letters to his GP copied to them discussing the findings.

Indeed.

And the timeline is confusing, with this first clinic letter dating from 2015; yet apparently he'd received a "terminal diagnosis" prior to their setting off on their first walk which was in 2013, IIRC.

Did i get that right? The doctors letters seem to suggest they suspect a genetic disorder rather than CBD and would like him to get tested?

Yes. Wouldn't that be the zinger to produce?

And also, as someone who doesn’t embezzle money, if my employer accused me of it, it’s not on me to prove I didn’t do it, it’s on them to prove I did. And if I didn’t there is no evidence. Why pay someone £65k for something you didn’t do? Bullshit.

THE COURT CASE - the two accounts

"Rebecca", widow of "James", a family member says that her husband was approached for a loan. He didn't want to see Sally Walker go to prison so loaned her £100,000 at 18% with a charge on the house.

His business fails shortly afterwards, and the loan is taken on by "two men". Walker tries to argue that the loan is from a business but "James" signs a statement saying it is a personal loan.

The men eventually call in the loan.

Sally Walker says that her husband invested in a friend's property portfolio. She calls this man Cooper. They asked for their money back in 2008. He did not have the money but he could offer them a loan which they took out. They trusted this friend. Then his business failed and the loan was called in.

Their home began to be reposessed. They set up the publishing company and the raffle. The liquidators said the loan was a company loan and shouldn't have been called in.

She didn't submit the paperwork correctly and the judge wouldn't accept it and refused their appeal. So they lost their home.

I think it might be possible that "James" lied because he needed the money to pay his own creditors and that it was a business loan, and I think Sally Walker is possibly counting on his widow not wanting that pursued.

He talks about the possibility of a "monogenetic disorder" - ie a defect carried on a single gene - there's a possibility that this could be tested for, yes. I am no geneticist though!

TW has however declined testing.

Personally I'd test in that situation as I'd want to know if I could have passed anything on to my children (who could then also get tested if they so chose), but genetic testing for incurable diseases is a real can of worms and many people choose not to have testing.

I worked for Martin Hemmings 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 Hemmings 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 Hemmings because I did not have the evidence required to support what happened. The terms of the settlement were willingly agreed by both parties; Mr Hemmings was as keen to reach a private resolution as I was. A part of that settlement was that I would pay money to Mr Hemmings on a ‘non-admissions basis’. This is why we needed the money back from Cooper that we invested and I come on to that next.

So fricking disingenuous. More obfuscation and dancing around the truth. She does not say, at any point, "I did not embezzle steal that money".

My DM was a bookkeeper until she retired in 2016, she left school at 15 with no qualifications. DM started out in purchase ledger and self taught the rest, double entry bookkeeping on paper in ledgers for most of her working life, only moving to computers towards the end. So Sally Walker could have got that type of job with no qualifications, especially in a small firm, and if she was the only person doing sales ledger, purchase ledger, wages etc (extremely likely in a small family firm) could very easily have stolen money that wasn't noticed for ages.

I reckon they set off on the walk after the house was lost and added this info on when writing the book to make it all sound worse.

Thanks @mauvishagain
I think I'd want to test, too. After all he has already been given a terminal diagnosis

Bonkers, isn't it. You don't take out a loan for £100,000 to pay someone you don't actually owe any money to!

He hasn't really though, has he.

I hadn't occurred to me before but I have a "rare neurological disorder". I would like to stress that it is in no way the same as anything like CBD or other life changing conditions people have, including some on this thread (()).

It is post migranous aura without infaction. It came on very suddenly and basically is like a 90s rave taking place in the peripheral half of the vision in my right eye, zig zags, flashing strobing lights, all the time. I saw the very well respected opthalmologist who had treated my cataracts and he diagnosed it based on the fact he is so eminent he gets sent "all the weird stuff" (his words) and said I might want an MRI but they probably wouldn't find anything and if they did there would be little they could do by that point. Several years later, still here, eye flashing away (I do forget it for days on end at times, strange what you get used to)

Saying this because I accept weirdness exists. What I don't believe is that brain scans taken at one point showing evidence of the sort of condition Tim has-any variant of it- will be miraculously cured and "clear" after walking a long way. That just does not happen.

ETA I did ask said consultant if there was any treatment. He said "only drugs you really wouldn't want to take and they don't work anyway".

I bet she's released those letters because they've got a lot of medically jargonny language, and hopes that people will think "There! He really was terminally ill!" - even though that's not what the letters say.

That makes a lot more sense than the timeline in the book. They went on the run after she was caught stealing and ran out of credit locally and then he got ill after living on noodles and fresh air for months on end. One of my many questions as I read it was surely someone with such a serious illness would need much better nutrition than this to thrive?

But putting the diagnosis at the beginning added some pathos to the story and made for a more dramatic cover blurb, so they went with that.

There's definitely more to come. Hopefully some of their cash will be used to pay the debts they seemed to leave behind them when they make quick decisionsto move on. Especially small local businesses. And I will think before ever saying 'they don't look ill' as many posts have said, how people look in public isn't always a good indicator of general health and well being. Apologies to anyone I have ever said that to.
They are portrayed as making life afirming decisions quickly and bravely when it's increasingly looking like these decisions were made to avoid consequences.

This is such a weird sentence:

I reached a settlement with Martin Hemmings because I did not have the evidence required to support what happened.

It literally makes no sense.

• "Hey lady, you took loads of money from us! We can prove it!"

• "I do not have the evidence required to support what happened."

🤔

That's exactly what I think.

Potentially followed up with, it's so confusing, we didn't understand, we thought he was terminally ill with CBD.

I'd just like to reiterate what another poster said - the first letter is from 2015, two years after the walk which they supposedly went on following his diagnosis...

I cannot fathom how any manner of innocent bookkeeping 'mistakes' could result in tens of thousands of pounds of an employer's money being redirected to an employee's personal account.

She would have been better saying she hadn’t been entirely truthful but she thought the walk itself was the important part of the book and didn’t want to detract from it and she’s very sorry for misleading people

Exactly. If you’re accused of something you didn’t do, you don’t need to provide any evidence. The accuser needs to provide the evidence, or the police need to investigate if they can’t easily prove it. If there is missing money and you’re innocent, you would welcome a police investigation, you wouldn’t go to any lengths to avoid one.