Yes, I noted that too: that it was SW who went off to London to see ‘Cooper’, despite him being TW’s relative. I did wonder if that was necessary to create the fiction TW told the police when she didn’t show up as requested for further questioning, after saying ‘no comment’ for the first day — that she’d gone to Skye and was implicitly distraught and in danger of harming herself. One assumes he knew exactly where she’d gone?
Episode 2 makes it clear that ‘Cooper’ was still in touch with TW after his business had gone bust, and was still well-intentioned enough towards him to have written to the businessmen who’d bought the debt that TW was making every effort to sell Pen y Maes but was being hampered by a serious illness he’d been hospitalised for and of which ‘Cooper’ had only recently been made aware of. That makes it clear the primary relationship is with TW, not SW, even though she was apparently the one who sought the loan.
I have found myself asking throughout exactly what TW’s role in all this was (other than it being clear he enjoyed the things SW’s thefts and, later, earnings, got him): it’s SW who steals from her employers, SW who apparently takes out credit cards, SW who apparently goes to London to beg a loan, SW who is arrested, SW who steals from her mother, SW who apparently steals from TW’s parents (though, significantly, she puts the money into TW’s account), SW who writes the ‘confession letters’ taking responsibility, SW who writes the bestselling books and fronts the publicity, who issues the two statements saying the Observer is spreading a grotesquely misleading narrative etc etc. No sign of TW, even in situations where it might be natural to expect it — given that much of the first statement is about his health, why doesn’t he co-sign, or write the part that’s about him?
Through all this, both in the books, media, CH investigation etc, we get very few glimpses of TW (outside the chilled, charismatic, tragically ill secular saint persona SW gives him in the books).
I think that’s why the glimpse of a furious, intimidating TW in Episode 3, lashing out at their benefactor Bill Cole when he tries to bring in a young couple to make cider because the Walkers aren’t, feels so significant to me. And that, when approached via email by BC afterwards, SW said it was CBD making him behave that way, and implying that she regularly has to deal with it.
It really is the illness that gives and gives, isn’t it?