Chapter 18 #2
Pippa couldn’t stop thinking about Emma, the woman who’d run from everything, changed her name, started a new life.
A woman who’d been dragged through the mud simply for being married to a man who’d made terrible choices.
Then there was the other thing. The secrecy.
The commissioned piece. The client no one would name, not even after all these years.
It all sat in Pippa’s mind like scattered puzzle pieces, and if there was one thing Pippa was terrible at, it was letting unfinished puzzles lie.
So now here she was, hunched over her phone at stupid o’clock, following the trail of crumbs the internet had dropped.
She typed ‘Emma Wetherby Facebook’, knowing it was unlikely anything would appear now she’d changed her name, but it was worth a try.
The results loaded.
A few Emma Wetherbys, but none matching the one in the article: wrong ages, wrong counties, wrong vibes entirely. She clicked through a couple of profiles anyway, just in case.
One belonged to a twenty-year-old with neon pink hair and an obsession with crocheting Pokémon. The other was a retired yoga instructor who posted inspirational quotes in curly fonts. Another was a cat breeder in Cardiff.
She closed the tabs and tried again.
‘Emma Wetherby Instagram’.
More nothing. A scattering of private accounts, mostly empty. One with pictures of cakes. Another with a suspicious number of selfies involving alpacas.
Not the Emma.
‘Okay,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Let’s try something else.’
Then she typed, ‘Emma + Vale Brothers’.
Zero relevant results.
‘Emma + crime case’.
One article came up about a woman who stole 300 packets of crisps from a petrol station in Birmingham. Again, not the Emma Wetherby.
Pippa was determined to keep going until she found something.
‘Right,’ she whispered. ‘Time for level two.’
She typed:
‘Emma Wetherby change name after conviction’.
The search bar spun for a moment.
One result.
Just one.
A link to a genealogy forum thread from four years ago.
Pippa clicked.
The page was aggressively beige, badly formatted, and clearly a place where amateur genealogists argued about the correct spelling of eighteenth-century surnames. She scrolled through the conversation.
The thread was titled: Looking for information on family who left Northumberland after 1965 scandal?
Her heartbeat picked up.
Most of the comments were people saying things like ‘Could be the Witherleys?’ or ‘Try the Whitbys?’ but then she found it.
A single message from a user called HistoryNut44:
Think you’re referring to the Wetherby case. The apprentice who was jailed for stealing gold and a secret commission from the Vale Brothers. Wife changed her name when she moved south, something double-barrelled. Worthington-Frost, maybe? Pretty sure she wanted a clean break.
Pippa stared. Her pulse began to race.
Worthington-Frost. The same surname as Sebastian.
Remembering from the article that Emma worked in a school, her fingers flew across the keyboard as she typed, ‘Worthington-Frost, Emma, daycare’ and pressed enter.
The search results appeared instantly, and there at the top was a link to a perfectly ordinary, extremely unexciting website for a primary school PTA fundraiser, with a tiny thumbnail photo of a smiling woman presenting a giant cheque for a sponsored walk.
The caption read: Sarah Worthington-Frost, fundraising coordinator.
Pippa clicked the link. The woman had the same distinctive double-barrelled surname as Emma… Surely that wasn’t a coincidence?
Pippa kept digging, opening new tabs, checking dates, following links to try to find a connection between Emma, Sarah and – hopefully – Sebastian. Andrew Wetherby’s family tree slowly came together on the screen.
There was Andrew and Emma.
Their two sons; Oliver and Henry.
Henry’s wife, Sarah.
And a grandson.
Sebastian Worthington-Frost.
Pippa sucked in a breath. Andrew Wetherby was Sebastian’s grandfather.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. Then, ‘Oh my actual God.’
Sebastian’s grandfather was the man who’d stolen from the Vale Brothers.
No wonder Sebastian had such a twisted obsession with the Vales and had been so desperate to embarrass Horace, swearing blind that Wetherby – his grandfather, she now knew – had been set up.
She flung back her duvet, still clutching her phone and the book, and marched towards Theo’s room like a woman propelled by nuclear-level urgency. She lightly knocked on the door.
‘Mmph,’ came a muffled sound from the bed.
‘It’s me,’ she whispered, as though anyone else could possibly be knocking on the door of his room at this hour.
Another muffled sound emerged, this one possibly a question or possibly a groan.
She pushed the door open without waiting for an invite.
Theo was sprawled on his side, the duvet pooled around his waist, his hair in a state of mild anarchy.
His eyes were half-lidded, his face slack with sleep. He blinked at her in the dimness.
‘I know you don’t particularly want to talk to me right now, but you need to hear this.’
Theo sat up in bed looking alarmed, his hair tousled, his T?shirt rumpled.
Words were falling out of her mouth so quickly her mind was having trouble keeping up. ‘Just listen… Andrew Wetherby, Vale’s other apprentice – the one who worked alongside your grandfather – he … he … he’s…’ She flapped the phone wildly at him. ‘He’s Sebastian’s grandfather.’
Theo blinked at her, completely stunned. ‘What?’
‘I’ve got proof. Actual proof. Solid, name-change, PTA-fundraiser proof.’
Pippa had his full attention.
‘Hang on … start again. Slower. I just … what?’
But Pippa was already speed-talking again, incapable of slowing down.
When she’d finished, Theo just stared at her, his mouth slightly open. Then, without a word, he shoved his duvet aside and patted the mattress beside him.
‘Get in,’ he said, ‘before you combust.’
She clambered into the bed, waving the phone under his nose like an excitable puppy.
Theo pulled the duvet up and around them, then took the phone from her. But he didn’t look at the screen. Instead, his gaze stayed on her face, his expression struggling between disbelief, concern, and the dawning sense that whatever she’d uncovered was genuinely monumental.
‘Pippa,’ he said carefully. ‘Are you actually serious?’
‘Yes!’
Pippa watched as Theo read through the articles.
‘Oh my God,’ he murmured. ‘You are serious.’
She nodded. ‘I told you! It’s all there. It lines up. Name changes, dates, locations … everything.’
Theo leaned back against the headboard, staring at nothing for a moment. His mind was clearly running through years of memories, resentments, and rivalries, all freshly reframed.
‘That’s why he’s always been out to get me. It wasn’t just ego. Or competition.’ He swallowed hard. ‘It was personal. He knew who my grandfather was, and must blame him in part for what happened.’
‘He’s convinced his grandfather was framed, and that’s mainly because the special commission was never recovered. This book…’ She handed it to him. ‘You need to read this, though I’ll warn you that the pages that matter the most have been ripped out.’
‘I’m going to be in for a long night…’ Theo rubbed his hands over his face, then through his hair, then looked back at her with a rueful half-smile. ‘Your eyes are closing.’
‘I’m completely knackered.’
Theo slumped further down in the bed, the book resting on the duvet in front of him. He stretched his arm out to her and Pippa didn’t hesitate to snuggle into him. Theo began to read, and by the time he’d finished the first page, Pippa was fast asleep.