I’m only in the first episode, and lots of hints of new voices and intriguing stuff to come (and wondrous nuggets like SW apparently making the stylish gardening smocks the smartly-dressed, cravat-wearing TW wore to work at the NT gardens they both worked at, according to Ros Hemmings, and TW showing up to work one day driving a new-looking Land Rover Defender) but there have already been two references to SW’s ‘wild, frizzy hair’. (Am I alone in thinking that SW’s do is hardly Brian May territory?)
Lots more detail on exactly how things happened at the Hemmingses. That SW had been working for them for about 7 years before they discovered the thefts, that the business ran on such a shoestring that at times MH relied on Ros H’s tiny NT salary to pay SW and his other staff, that SW had a room to herself upstairs, so she could concentrate on doing the books, that after SW failed to pay in the £600 cash and he sat down with the bank manager, the bank manager told MH to cross the street and engage the services of the good local solicitor before SW did.
And the bank manager was the one to bring in the police, when it was still thought to be ‘only’ a matter of £9k.
That SW clearly knew what was in the wind, after she’d been told not to come into work the next morning (just given an excuse, as suggested by the police), because it was then, before she was charged, that she showed up at the Hemmingses’ home after MH had gone to work, offering RH a cheque and crying about how she’d just borrowed it because they had no money, and she’d sold her mother’s things. MH accepts the money, tells the police it’s been made good, but then realises the 9k is only the tip of the iceberg.
SW is arrested at home and the house searched, and refuses to answer police questions all day before they let her go home overnight, wrongly thinking she’s not a flight risk. When the police go to the house to find her , Tim sobs and says she’s gone to Skye (when she’d gone to London to see ‘Cooper’).
This bit I hadn’t understood before— that the agreement with ‘Cooper’ was that the Walkers would sell their house immediately to repay the loan. And that they put it up for sale immediately (hence its appearance in Escape to the Country).
When it doesn’t sell, and ‘Cooper’s’ business fails and he sells on the debt, ‘Cooper’ is still ‘close to’ and in contact with TW, and writes to the creditors saying that TW is actively trying to sell their house and has just been diagnosed with a ‘degenerative and quite debilitating muscle disease’ and had been in hospital. Hmm. A first instance of ‘using illness’ as an excuse?
The Walkers, who had been communicating with the creditors via solicitors’ letters, stopped responding entirely. That’s when they started legal proceedings.