Well, I don’t disagree with you that it’s a devastating situation from which it would be difficult, or well-nigh impossible, to extricate oneself with a shred of dignity.
I also think it’s entirely possible that the Walkers regret their response to the Observer story and now wish they’d either talked to CH and did a form of mea culpa then, and semi-killed the story, or, at the very least, came back with a statement that didn’t essentially say ‘You’re all meanies and I stand by my truth!’ with a few clunky metaphors about salt and paths.
SW could have chosen instead to say ‘We lied and obfuscated, and the success of the book meant I panicked and felt I had to keep going along with it, I’m thoroughly ashamed of my theft from the Hemmingses, I’m sorry to readers who feel hoodwinked, or who were given false hope about CBD, and I’m going to make a big donation to PSPA to attempt to make some reparation. I’m very sorry.’
But, on the other hand, SW isn’t most of us.
Most of us, if we’d been caught with our hand in the till by our employer to the tune of £64k, would have been utterly crushed then, cooperated with the police etc.
Not done a runner from police questioning, persuaded a relative to lend us £100k to pay off and silence the person we’d injured, gone on living locally for five more years, and then, when the lending relative’s business went bust, fought a deliberately time-wasting rearguard action through the courts for years, claiming that they didn’t owe ‘James’s’ creditors the money.
And then, to crown it all, wrote a self-justifying ‘pseudo-memoir’ in which the Walkers cosplay homelessness and appear as blameless, plucky victims and adorable underdogs, despite knowing that many people knew the truth about the theft and house repossession. (Leaving aside entirely the issue of TW’s illness.)
And it doesn’t end there.
The success of TSP gets them the offer of the cider farm tenancy from a fan, and, despite the fact that they became rich and famous while living there as TSP and its sequels sold, they monetised their ‘back to the land stuff’ in books, the press and on tv, explicitly claiming to be rewilding cider makers, while in fact lying to their landlord about TW’s imminent demise (possibly to excuse why they’d not made any cider despite pretending to for Rick Stein) and did another midnight flit, breaking their tenancy without telling him.
When the Observer story is published, again, TW’s possible condition is used to deflect criticism, and SW delivers another furious farrago of self-justification.
These are the repeated actions of people with brass necks and a deepseated set of assumptions about their own Teflon status.
TL;DR: I’m not sure the Walkers respond to disapproval, or to disapproval being the natural consequences of their actions, like most people. The sequence is always to do something criminal or unethical or both, run away to wriggle out of consequences, then come back fighting, self-justifying and blaming other people.
I don’t think they’ll be biting down on a cyanide tooth apiece any time soon.
And they’ve got lots of advice and protection on tap — SW’s agent and all the resources of the PR and legal teams at PRH. And they’ve got lots have money. They can pay for therapists, legal advice, reputational damage limitation, the best possible physical and mental health care, just as they’ve been able to buy privacy.