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 theotherthing. 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.
NottheEmma.
‘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, nottheEmma 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.
