Janet ended her visit with a promise to come back and clean all the moss and dirt off the gravestone, and to try and tidy up the weeds and nettles round the back.
It had been an exhausting day, and Janet had nodded off on the bus home, missing her bus-stop by about two miles. But this made her laugh as well. “What am I like?” she asked herself as she limped along the road. It had been a great day, and so what if she had to walk back a few miles back to her sheltered accommodation scheme? At least she was alive.
Life was looking good, for the first time that Janet could remember, and that prospect filled her heart with joy. She felt cured of her alcoholism now, and never was this better tested than now, as Janet made her way past dozens of Off-Licenses and Mini-Marts on her way back to her new home, and her new start.
Janet arrived home, back to her flat. It wasn’t in the best of conditions, it needed a good clean-up, and a redecorate. But Janet was looking forward to getting stuck-in, and sorting the place out. It would be a project to focus on. She was thinking positive now, looking forward.
She went through into the living room and took a seat on the settee that her support-workers had got for her from the second-hand shop. There were tears in her eyes. Tears of joy, of relief, of regret. It had been a very emotional day, but she was glad that it was over now, she needed her rest. Day one of Janet’s life version two had been an overwhelming success.
The tears continued to sting Janet’s cheeks, as she realised that there was bound to be some difficult days ahead too. Especially if she was to keep her pledge about bringing her abusers to justice. The way that her heart suddenly started jolting high in her chest whenever she thought about her teens told her that there was unfinished business to attend to. The thought scared her, but also brought a peaceful feeling too. Those heart-jolts settled down as a wonderful, settling calmness flowed through her. The tranquil, easy feeling came from deep within her, and a confidence in the knowledge that she was going to win in the end.
* * *
Kathy Hopkirk had spent several hours with Janet, learning about her tragic back-story. Over the course of two-weeks, Janet had poured her heart out via e-mail, phone conversations and face-to-face chats at Sally King’s office. And now, in the third meeting that had been arranged at the prestigious Covent Garden offices of Kathy’s manager, Janet was prepared to reveal the reason that she had shared all of this private, personal trauma baggage with a complete stranger.
It hadn’t all been depressing. For the most-part, Janet and Kathy had had a laugh, and talked about other stuff, like how freaky it is that Facebook has started showing you adverts for things that you’ve looked for on Google.
“Honestly, I can’t believe how lovely you have been to me! Its as though they’re talking about a different person when they talk about you in the papers,” said Janet, as the two sat in Sally King’s spare office and talked over a skinny mocha frappucino in Kathy’s case, and a tea, two-sugars in Janet’s.
“Oh, there could be no Super-Bitch career if people thought that I was nice really. It wouldn’t work.”
“No, I guess not. But I had no idea…”
“People who know me genuinely help me to remain successful by ignoring the nasty stuff, and keeping quiet. It’s all a big con, there’s loads of us out there. Simon Cowell is a great example. He doesn’t know anything about music… so he gets five million TV viewers to tell him which singer to hire.”
“Yeah, God, I suppose you’re right. When you strip it back like that…”
“Besides, it’s not a total secret. Most of the journalists already know I’m not totally subhuman really. They know it’s just an act, a stage persona. But I need to make a bit more money before I can retire, so let’s hope nobody finds out that I’m okay really!”
Janet laughed loudly, and it was a really joyful, squeaky sound, that came right from the belly, which made Kathy laugh too.
“Anyway, I’ve got a plan. Don’t tell anybody, right – but I am going to retire one day, by completely disappearing.”
Janet laughed, but then stopped laughing when she saw that Kathy was being deadly serious.
“You can’t tell anybody though. Swear to God.”
“What, why… I’m surprised that you’re telling me this…” Janet was stunned that Kathy Hopkirk, one of the most famous, most unpopular people in the UK, was sharing such a private, bizarre conversation with somebody that she barely knew.
“Well come on Janet, if I can’t trust you, someone who’s just told me every private, painful detail of your life story, then I can’t trust anybody, can I?”
“Yes, I suppose. So what are you going to do?”
“Well, I’m going to whip up the hatred to level ten…”
Janet threw her head back, and another huge roar of infectious laughter filled the room. “So what level is it now, just out of curiosity?” asked Janet once she’d simmered down a bit.
“It’s only level six, six and a half. But I’ll get it up to level ten no trouble…”
“And disappear?”
“Yes. That’s the plan. I’m serious, don’t breathe a word of this to another soul…”
“I’ve not made a promise for a long time…”
“How long?”
“Well, let’s just say, the last promise I made was to promise that I will do my best, to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the Queen and my community, to help other people and to keep the Brownie Guide Law!”
The two women laughed, and smiled for a minute as an air of nostalgia filled the room.
“No, honestly, I promise, of course I won’t say a thing…”
“Thanks. Well, the plan is, I get the hatred level maxed out, and then I disappear, into thin air. The papers and TV channels will be in a frenzy! I’ll keep it up for a day or two… and then…”
“What?” Janet was really excited by this bizarre idea, but she thought it was hilarious none-the-less.
“Then I’ll pop a video on Youtube, announcing my retirement, and I’ll apologise to everyone that I’ve pissed off, and say I only did it for the money! Then I’ll say goodbye and that I’ve left show-business and the media for good, and that will be the end of that!”
“Oh my God! That’s absolutely mental!”
“Well, that’s the plan, go out on any almighty thunder-clap of hatred. Then move to my new house in a secret location. I’ve already recorded my departure speech, well, it’s a practise run… but I just need a couple more big jobs, and I’ll have made enough cash to live comfortably for the rest of my time. I fancy a little cottage by the coast. Somewhere pretty remote.” Kathy’s eyes glazed over and it became pretty clear to Janet that this was quite an established plan.
“Wow… I’m, I’m really shocked that you’ve told me. Thank you!”
“Oh, don’t be daft I know you’ll keep shtum, especially now that you’ve said the Brownie promise!”
The two ladies chatted about nonsense for a while, until the conversation returned to Janet’s story.
“So, anyway, we need to work out where we are going with everything that you’ve told me. You see, I think we could get a lot of goodness from this.”
“Goodness?”
“Yes, I’m talking money. There’ll be a book, a TV dramatisation, endless media interviews. I’ve spoken to my manager Sally and she’s…”
“What, no, sorry wait Kathy. I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick here.”
“Eh? How do you mean?”
“I’m not here for money…”
“What? I don’t understand.” Kathy looked genuinely confused. This was an unexpected announcement.
“I’m not… making money was never my intention. I contacted you because I just had a feeling that you’d be able to help me.”
“Help you to do what?”
“I want to get the bastards that abused me. I want them in prison. That’s what I have to do… then I can have
my peace. It’s not a cottage by the sea that I’m craving Kathy. It’s closure, revenge, a settling of scores. ”
Kathy looked across at the window, and gazed out over the London skyline. Eventually, after an awkward silence, she spoke. “Janet, love, where do I come in to that?”
“Well, I was out of my head when all the Jimmy Savile stuff came out. I missed it all, the celebrity child abuse scandals. I was completely off my nut on cider.”
Kathy looked deep into Janet’s eyes. She could see, as well as feel, the sadness flooding back.
“I knew nothing about any of it until I was in the Cuckoo’s Nest. They told me all about it, after I’d opened up about my apprenticeship at London TV.”
“Shit! Oh my days that must have been horrific?”
“Well, no, it was, I don’t know. I’d spent most of my life pissed up-to this point, so it just felt, I don’t know… I wasn’t surprised anyway. But the staff, the mentors, they were telling me to sue, to get my name down with the thousands who have complained against Savile and Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall, and all the others. But I don’t want money. No amount of money can buy me the thirty odd years I’ve lost.”
“What are you saying?”
“I want to name the others. Some of them are still working today. One of them you’d not believe… I want to name and shame him, and get him locked away, behind bars.”
Kathy looked shocked, and moved, but also a little bit excited by this.
“Wait… why are you only telling me this now?”
“Because, if I’d told you that first, you’d never have heard about my story.”
“Well, I…”
“And if you’d never heard my story, you wouldn’t want to help me now.”
“Makes sense. But why did you choose me? I mean, I’m the worst bitch in the UK! It seems a little bit bizarre that you’d approach the hardest, nastiest woman in the media to help you.”
“I told you, I heard you on the radio. You said if there was anybody who had an interesting story to tell, to get in touch.”
“Yes, but I meant, I don’t know, someone banged a car into you on purpose to get some compo, or someones wife cooked a pie made out of dog food for her cheating husband… I never imagined that… well, anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m really glad you did get in touch, it’s a really heroic story.”
“There’s nothing heroic about lying in your own piss for thirty years Kathy!”
“No, no, of course not. But I mean, the ending!”
“It’s not ended yet.”
There was a weird silence, and suddenly, both women felt awkward.
“But you can help me to get to the end.”
“Taking your abusers to prison?”
“Absolutely right. So what do you say, are you in, or are you out?” Janet looked nervous. A lot, an immeasurable amount rested on the answer to this question.
“Course I’m in! Fucking hell Janet, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”
There was an audible sigh of relief from the vulnerable, weak looking lady.
“You’ve not heard who I’m talking about, yet.”
“I can probably guess…”
“You can’t.”
“Well, okay, that sounds like a challenge?”
“You’ll never guess.”
“Okay… I’ll trust your instincts. Give me a name.”
“Bob Francis.”
Kathy’s eyes widened as her brain visibly struggled to compute the name with the deviant sex-acts that Janet had described. At first, Kathy seemed a shade paler, and then a moment after that, she seemed to be heating up, as a rosy glow filled her cheeks.
“Bob Francis? Like, the Bob Francis?”
Janet nodded, to confirm. But as she did so, Kathy noticed that her eyes were moistening, and that her hands were trembling. In that split-second, this stopped being an unbelievable piece of juicy gossip about one of Great Britain’s best loved entertainers, and Kathy was reminded of the horrors that Janet had described in their earlier conversations.
“Fuck!”
Janet nodded again. This was quite a shock, quite an unbelievable, head-wrecking moment.
Bob Francis was one of the UK’s most famous, and best-loved entertainers. He’d been a British institution almost as long as HRH Queen Elizabeth II. He had been a household name since before The Beatles were famous. He was so well-known, it seemed as though he had presented every big-hit television and radio show that had ever been on the air in Great Britain since the end of the Second World War.
The fifties teds, sixties swingers and seventies punks had all grown up with him. As had the eighties posers, nineties ravers, right through to today’s idiotic, brain-dead millenials. They all knew who Bob Francis was. As 2016 claimed an extraordinary amount of famous British names and celebrity stars, a Facebook group had been set up called “Please Keep a GP, an Ambulance, an Intensive Care Bed and a Transplant on Standby for Bob Francis Until 2016 Is Over PLEASE.” The page had over a million likes. It may have been a joke, and a bit of sarcasm, but those million plus people wanted to put their love of Bob Francis out there anyway. Put simply, the man was the most celebrated legend of light-entertainment in the UK.
To ask the British people to associate this national treasure with nasty sex crimes against a fifteen-year-old girl, over a quarter of a century ago, was quite frankly going to be a very, very big ask. It was possibly too big an ask, not least because he had recently been on a variety of TV shows celebrating his ninetieth birthday, where his kindness, his charitable work and “all-round-good-guy” image had been given a fresh lick of paint by every single department which made up the national media.
Kathy Hopkirk was thinking fast. She was trying to figure out if there could possibly be any substance to what Janet was saying. It was remarkable that a man so famous could have kept such reprehensible behaviour quiet, especially throughout the past few years. This particular point in recent history felt as though every single British celebrity was a suspected nonce or a rapist. The press had groomed a blood-thirsty nation of outraged TV viewers, who were absolutely desperate to know who the next sex-monster would turn-out-to-be.
But Kathy couldn’t recall Bob Francis’ name being mentioned, not once, not ever, in the long list of beloved British stars whose names had been suggested in the press. In most cases, celebrity names cropped up simply because they had “links” to some of the accused stars, many of whom had been arrested, and then put under investigation and suspicion for a year at least – before finally being cleared of whatever accusations had been made against them in the first place. It had been a very dark time in British show-business.
“I’m really, really struggling to get my head around this Janet.” Said Kathy, calmly, and kindly.
Janet looked disappointed, but not surprised.
“I know, I get it.”
Kathy looked across the London sky-line, and recalled how sad and shocked, and completely confused she had felt when the news was announced that Rolf Harris had been found guilty of sex crimes against children. It was so unbelievable, it was as though it was one of the satire news websites that had made it up. Rolf Harris had been one of Britain’s best loved celebs. He’d enjoyed a hugely successful career spanning forty years. He was rich, popular and was widely regarded as one of the kindest personalities in the country. At the time that Harris was sentenced, it seemed beyond belief that he had committed the sex crimes that had been heard in court, some of them involving children as young as six or seven.
And now, several years after the jail term was handed down to the shame-faced, disgraced entertainer, it still seemed surreal. Kathy reminded herself of how upset she had felt for Rolf Harris’ family and friends, who were left to pick up the awful pieces when his G4S van took him away to prison, pelted with eggs.
Kathy looked back across the room at Janet, who was waiting patiently for the conversation to continue.
“Lis
ten… I don’t think I can take any more today. Can we take a break, let me try and get my head around this?”
“Yes, yes, course. It’s a head-fuck, isn’t it?”
“It is… in lots of different ways. Can I give it some thought, and get back to you… say tomorrow?”
Janet looked a tiny bit embarrassed, and maybe a little bit let down too. Judging by the expression on her face, this hadn’t been the response she’d expected. She didn’t look thrilled by Kathy’s “I’ll get back to you,” remark, but she accepted it gracefully.
“I don’t want you to mention this to anyone…” said Janet, as she stood.
“What… not even…”
“Nobody. I have never told a single person about this. Not consciously anyway. I might have blurted it out when I was in drink, but nobody would have taken any notice of a sad old drunk. That’s if I did say anything on the very few occasions that I’ve been in the company of anybody else.” Janet was stood over Kathy, waiting for a nod, or a smile to acknowledge the request to keep quiet about Bob Francis.
“Okay, I’ll not say a word. I just want to mull it over, think of a way that we could do this.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, the thing is… no. Look, I’ll phone you tomorrow. There’s no point in me saying this now.” Kathy had a gentle, reassuring look on her face. It wasn’t an expression that she was famed for.
“No point in what?” Janet sat back down, across the table from Kathy. “You’re starting to worry me. You don’t think I’m lying, do you Kathy?”
“No. No, of course, that’s not. Okay, listen… I know you’re not lying, I can tell a mile off when somebody is telling even a tiny lie, let alone a massive one. I’m just really worried about something.”
“Go on.”
“Bob Francis is a very well protected man, in terms of his reputation, his history, and let’s not forget his back catalogue of shows. Now that all of the TV companies have been named and shamed in the years after the Jimmy Savile scandal… I’m just really worried that you’d be dismissed, you’d be ignored or made out to be a liar. And I’m just not confident that you’d be able to take that treatment Janet.”
Gone Too Far : DCI Miller 4: Britain's Most Hated Celebrity Has Disappeared Page 19
