But in amongst all of the hatred and the bile – one person had a good idea for a discussion. A woman called Janet Croft contacted the radio show’s Facebook page. The most interesting messages from listeners were forwarded onto Kathy by the radio station’s producers. Janet Croft’s message was certainly interesting, and heart-breaking. It was sent to Kathy with the red “high priority” label illuminated.
From opening and reading the message, Kathy realised immediately that she had a very, very good story to focus on. But the more she read, the more she realised that this was absolutely heart-breaking. Kathy wrote back immediately, thanking Janet Croft for her message, and telling her that she was extremely brave for getting in touch about such a traumatic experience.
The messages went back and forth between Kathy and Janet for several days. Then the two moved onto phone calls. Eventually, after a few more days of communications, Kathy arranged to meet Janet at the office. The office was the place Kathy used for formal meetings, and discussions that she wanted to remain private, and out of the lenses of paparazzi photographers. The office was actually Sally King’s office, and Kathy would regularly take a smaller office for a few hours for such business. “You take twenty per cent of my earnings, darling!” she would remind Sally if she seemed a little annoyed. “And besides, it’s not as if I’m taking a shit in your toaster.”
By the time that Janet Croft had left Sally King’s offices in Covent Garden, Kathy Hopkirk felt as though she had known the woman for years. As she waved the hard, but kindly looking woman away, Kathy broke down in tears, and made a pledge that she would help that woman. As Janet Croft turned the corner and disappeared into the bustling London rush-hour, Kathy knew that her life had just taken on a new meaning. Kathy was going to help that poor woman get justice for the appalling life that she had endured.
* * *
Janet Croft left school with excellent O level grades, and started working for London Television as an admin apprentice in the 1970’s. It was a very exciting, very respectable first job, and her parents and friends were delighted for her to have such a glitzy and glamorous opportunity at such a tender age. But it wasn’t quite what it appeared. She told Kathy that she was used as a sex toy by TV stars and executives at the corporation, for three years. And then, as her apprenticeship came to an end when she was eighteen, she was dismissed. Another fifteen year old girl was brought in, to take her place. This cycle was normal in the sixties, seventies and early eighties.
Janet Croft’s life had been ruined by the time that she’d reached eighteen. The disgusting abuse and degradation that she’d suffered on an almost daily basis caused her to suffer a great number of mental health issues. The issues began with self hatred and self loathing. She felt that she was weak, that she should have walked out, should have reported it. She should have stood up to the fucking perverts and rapists and bullies. But she didn’t, and the reason was, because she had been very skilfully tricked. She’d been made to believe that it was normal, it was fun, made to think that it was her who was weird for not enjoying it.
Another reason that she didn’t do anything about it, was because she didn’t want to upset her parents, who were so proud of her amazing achievement. She couldn’t do anything, she just put up with the abuse and the awful, degrading treatment in the hope that it would all stop soon, and that at least she would have a job at the world famous broadcasting station in the end. But it wasn’t to be.
One Friday afternoon, a lady from the big offices upstairs came down to Janet’s desk and announced quite ceremoniously that it had been a pleasure having her on the apprentice scheme, and wished her well for the future.
To Janet, it felt like a wall had been pushed on top of her. She felt stunned, winded, she couldn’t catch her breath. She looked around the office and her colleagues were all smiling and offering the young lass a round of applause.
Most of them were men, and all of them had had some fun with Janet. And now, it was all over. Thanks, now clear your desk and go. Just like that.
The more thought that she put into those awful, terrorised teenage years, the more mental health issues she suffered. Her self confidence and self esteem were broken, and she struggled to find the courage to even think about the next step in her career, let alone start to apply for jobs. Janet felt that she was such a dirty, useless little slag, and that everybody would know about her. By the time that Janet was nineteen, she was extremely unwell. She had begun to self-medicate against her mental health problems, and had a very worrying alcohol dependency by 1981, the time she’d reached twenty.
Her parents despaired. They had no idea what had happened to their pretty, funny, outgoing and sporty young girl. She had aged incredibly since losing her job at the television station. She’d lost her friends. The light in her eyes had gone out. They tried, they tried so hard to help, to try and get to the bottom of what was going wrong with Janet. But every time, it just ended in a blazing row, her parents would be stressed, hurt and frustrated. They felt completely lost and confused. Janet would just head back to her room, and continue drinking.
Life never improved for Janet whilst her parents were alive. When she attended her father’s funeral in 1989, she was twenty-eight years old. Most of the family, friends and extended relations failed to recognise her. Janet had become a weak, frail, unhealthy looking woman who didn’t look like she was long for this world.
The heartbreak of losing her husband of almost forty years was too much for Janet’s mum, who passed away just a month after her man. The death was recorded as a sudden cardiovascular death, more commonly known as a heart-attack. But everybody who knew the family, knew that Janet’s mum had died of a broken heart.
The cycle of despair and self-loathing, self pitying and drinking continued. Before Janet knew it, she was thirty-five years old, and the Spice Girls were just coming into the charts. A whole twenty years had passed since she’d started that exciting, wonderful apprenticeship which had promised so much, and had warmed her parent’s hearts.
Another ten lonely years passed, the Spice Girls came and went and Janet’s alcoholism continued, funded by her weekly giro-cheques from the incapacity. The rent on her council flat was paid by the DHSS, so she was an ideal tenant, who had a no arrears, and her desire to be left alone meant that she never presented any anti-social problems. Because she was such a quiet tenant, Janet Croft was practically forgotten about by the authorities, and her local community. Her only contact with the outside world was her daily trip to the shop for her drink. The cycle continued for years, and years. On the day that Oscar Pistorius was charged with the fatal shooting of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, Janet’s life changed forever.
Janet was an extremely weak and feeble lady, and on the night of February 14th in 2013, returning from the corner-shop with her three-litre bottle of cider, Janet had collapsed in the stairwell of her block-of-flats. The resulting fall had been so violent that she’d suffered a broken arm, a sprained ankle and a nasty head injury. An ambulance was called, and the paramedics who attended the shout didn’t think that the lady would last the night. They were shocked, and saddened to learn that she was fifty-two. They’d guessed at eighty. And an unhealthy, gravely-ill eighty at that.
But it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, that nasty fall. The pain had been quite bad, but she’d been so pissed, it all felt just the same as everything else in her life… fuzzy, and not quite real. Janet spent her 53rd birthday alone, in the hospital. She was completely isolated from all friends or family now. She had nobody. She’d locked herself away for over thirty years, and had spent all of that time drinking, and wishing she was dead. The nature of her injuries prevented her from being able to leave the hospital, so her fall down those stinking concrete stairs turned out to be a blessing.
Over the course of a long, torturous week, Janet Croft had no option but to sober up. It proved a very unpleasant and difficult week, but by the time that it had ended, she was glad of it. The hospital
ward became clearer, and sharper in her vision with each passing day. When she visited the bathroom at the end of the ward, she didn’t recognise the old, wrinkly woman who stared back at her from the mirror. Janet was confused, she thought that there had been some sort of mistake. Some kind of a mix-up.
But there had been no mix-up. It all soon came flooding back. That endless cycle of waking, hating herself, walking down to the shop for booze, drinking it, hating herself, falling asleep, and repeat. She was stuck on a loop, and throughout all of that time, all those years, almost thirty-five sad, lonely years, the routine barely changed. In the eighties it had been Thunderbird wine. In the nineties, she’d acquired a taste for White Lightning cider, a product which was later discontinued by its brewers Heineken, due to its links with ill-health and anti-social behaviour. In more recent years, Janet had been taking advantage of the unbeatable value of Frosty Jacks super-strength white cider, which cost just £2.99 for three litres.
Janet would buy two, often three bottles every-day, drinking it none stop until she fell asleep with the last sip of the last bottle. The only food Janet ate was baked beans or pot noodles. She was very rarely sober enough to organise anything more than toast or crumpets for breakfast, and that was only when she had any bread in.
Janet Croft was gravely ill when she’d entered the hospital. Aside from the injuries that she’d sustained on that miserable, stinking stair-case, there were a number of serious, life-threatening issues which needed to be dealt with. Most significant of all was Janet’s weight. She was painfully thin, almost skeletal, weighing just over five stones. The malnutrition was causing dozens of negative effects to her vital organs, and the doctors wanted to tackle the malnutrition first, and monitor Janet’s progress based around specialist dietary care. It was a starting point. This form of treatment involved being fed by a tube, the fastest and most effective way of ensuring that Janet was receiving all of the correct nutrients and supplements. It was the start of a long road, but within days, Janet was making positive progress. A month after she’d been rushed into hospital, Janet was beginning to look much better. Her skin had lost its latex look, and the blue tinge around her eyes was making way for a healthier complexion. Her eyes looked less sunken into her skull now as well. Most noticeably, she’d started putting some weight on, and had the beginnings of a bum growing behind her. She’d been a model patient, very polite and undemanding, and Janet was well liked by the NHS professionals who were nursing her back to health.
“I… I don’t want to go home…” she said quietly to a nurse one night. The nurse had cheerfully announced that Janet would be ready for discharge soon, possibly within the next few days. The prospect filled her with an intolerable terror. She couldn’t even bear the thought of imagining what her flat must be like inside. She had fuzzy, whoozy flash-backs of the place. It was dark, cold, there was mess everywhere. No electric, the supply had been terminated years ago. It was a miserable place, and she didn’t want to go there again. Big piles of mess, rubbish, clothes, junk was everywhere. The memories began stuttering back. A cold sweat began enveloping her frail, pale face, her bony, scabby arms and body.
“Of course you want to go home Janet!” said the nurse cheerfully, playfully mocking her patient. But the tears, the panic and anxiety that this suggestion fuelled told a different story. Those sad, lonely, yet kind, loving eyes were desperate and the nurse saw the pain that Janet was in. The nurse contacted the mental health intervention team, asking them to take a look at this patient’s situation. Luckily for Janet, she had landed at the right place, at just the right time.
It took many months of rehab and counselling, and several other care packages that Janet had to engage with. By the time that ten months had passed, Janet was absolutely desperate to get out of the hospitals and clinics and day-centres that had saved her life. She didn’t want out of there because she was unhappy with the constant meetings, support sessions and awareness exercises. It wasn’t that, she was sure she’d miss it, miss the friends she’d made, the camaraderie. The laughs. No, Janet wanted out because she was absolutely desperate to get on and start her life, her new life. Janet’s life, version two. It was all she could think about. The past was the past, and that was shit. But throughout the rehab sessions, she’d learnt that you don’t have to go back and revisit the past. You can treat the past like you’d treat a shit holiday resort. Never go back there again. Most importantly, Janet had been taught that the best days of her life lay in front of her, and now, going off to explore those best days was all that she craved.
The mental health professionals had worked miracles with Janet. And Janet had worked miracles with them too. At the very start of the journey, when Janet was heavily doped up to cope with the various side-effects of quitting alcohol, there was very little that she wanted to do, other than pass away.
Janet had really upset a nurse, albeit unintentionally. She’d said that it wasn’t fair that the hospital should have her taking up a bed, that it wasn’t fair on other people who needed the treatment, and she said that it would be better if she could just die, and let someone better have this bed. It was desperately sad, to see another human-being in such a sorry state, and it made a lasting impression on the nurse that had to hear such sad words that night.
But the NHS staff had been truly amazing, and they had provided ten months of delicate care and considerate, dignified support to Janet Croft, and they had turned her into a different lady. The major turning point had come quite early on in the recovery. A meeting had been called, for the alcohol and substance addicts on the ward. The subject of the meeting was to try and identify triggers that made the addicts do what they did.
Janet began talking quietly, and slowly, and through tears of pain and tears of shame, she began to tell her story to the group. She explained how thrilled she had been to land the apprenticeship at London TV Centre. She talked about how proud everybody was of her, how exciting it all was. But then she spoke of the horrific abuse and humiliation that was forced on her from practically the first day. She spoke of one day, a managers meeting was taking place, and Janet had been asked to go through to the Boardroom. The manager who was running the meeting explained to Janet that she needed to undress and stand on top of the table.
She asked why, in her shy, scared, fifteen year-old voice. She was told that it was because the meeting was boring, and that it would be more fun if a pretty young thing was stood on the table, wearing nothing but a smile. The Boardroom had erupted in laughter. Janet had told them, the adults, that she didn’t want to do it. In reply, she was told that she had two options. Option one was to do precisely as she was told, showing gratitude and with a smile on her face, and option two was to leave the TV station right now, and never return.
Janet broke down in tears in front of the group of recovering addicts, as she described how valueless and vulnerable she felt taking her clothes off in front of all those guffawing, chain-smoking old men. She struggled through, talking about that day, and how it had ended, with her on her knees whilst several of them abused her in the most degrading and unspeakable manner.
It was tough. It had been harder to speak of that event, to re-live that horrific day, than anything else that Janet had ever experienced. It had been harder to undress her secret, than that day had been, all those years ago, taking her clothes off while all the old men stared at her, smiling and winking and making lewd comments to her. But her thirty-eight-year-old secret was out now, and there was no turning back. Janet’s crippling, self-destroying, torturous secret had finally been unburdened from her, and the relief that she felt was life changing. Gone was the shame, the self hatred, the self-pity, the low self-esteem.
The months off the drink had cleared her mind. The counselling staff had taught her that she had baggage which needed letting go of. The mentors had taught her that she had to deal with the issue that was causing her to drink. The psychiatrists explained that finding vengeance for her abuse would be a positive step
to take going forwards.
As impossible as it had always seemed, Janet had found a way out of the living hell that was her useless life. It had been a positive way-out too, it wasn’t the way that she had hoped for, for so many years, that she wouldn’t wake from her next drunken sleep on the settee in that stinking, stone-cold flat.
On the day that she took over full ownership of her day-to-day care, Janet took a bus from her new flat in Tower Hamlets, to the town where she grew up. She felt happy, and giddy, ridiculously excited, with butterflies in her tummy, as she remembered the old places and the fun-filled days of her childhood. She stood outside her childhood house for a few moments, happy, joyful memories came flooding back as she stared up longingly at her bedroom window from all those years ago. Janet realised she was smiling, from ear-to-ear, as she walked along the very same route she had covered every day to her school. She walked all around the district, finding joyful memories of her early years. Happy memories on every corner, at every shop or café.
Janet found herself in the cemetery, surprised and rather impressed that her sober mind had been able to use her drunken mind’s memory, to find her parents’ final resting place. She stayed there a lot longer than she had imagined that she would. She spoke for a long time to the dirty, weathered marble headstone. She apologised for her behaviour towards her beloved parents. She thanked them for giving her a wonderful childhood, and a very happy life. She talked of blissful memories stirred up on this most enchanting of days, chattering away like a mad woman. Janet then gave a rather vague explanation as to what had happened at the TV station. It was vague because she felt embarrassed, despite being alone in this deserted cemetery, telling her dead parents about the horror that she had endured, while they thought that she was having the time of her life. “The time of my life, Mum, Dad, was with you. You were the best parents, and I hate that I never told you what happened. I’m sorry.”
Gone Too Far : DCI Miller 4: Britain's Most Hated Celebrity Has Disappeared Page 18
