Please Let It Stop (19 page)

We contacted the local fire brigade and spoke to an officer who verified that there had been a fire in that area at the time stated. He said the fire had caused severe damage to the upper floor of the house and there were two possible causes: a cigarette butt or a sex toy. His view was that Anita’s Rampant Rabbit had been the cause since she had denied smoking in the bedroom, and he could not find any evidence of smoking upstairs. He therefore thought that the cause was the batteries in the vibrator. This was a very unusual situation. We first discussed it with our in-house legal people who strongly advised it should immediately be handed out to lawyers. I didn’t agree and felt that, whether it was our responsibility or not, something more had to be done, something personal. I spoke to Julie and we agreed she had to go up there. We wanted to show our support and see if there was anything we could do to help. I also asked her to find out more about the case while she was there.

When Julie arrived she offered to put the family up in a hotel and give them money for clothes, about £2,000 in all. She had instinctively felt that the situation was not wholly above board, but set about attempting to establish a relationship with Anita, something that would be necessary if we were to get to the bottom of this. Anita seemed very concerned that the press had found out about the situation; she had already had calls on her phone from the
News of the
World
and the
Sun
. She told Julie she really did not want to take the money but she was desperate. Julie advised Anita that she would get to the bottom of the matter and would conduct a full investigation, but stressed that she could not understand how our product could have caused the fire.

Julie visited the shell of the burnt house with Anita. She told me how distressing she found it watching Anita searching among the rubble for her dead daughter’s belongings and this made her decide to offer to cover Anita’s costs in rented accommodation for a period of six months. Meanwhile she’d asked Anita what batteries she had been using in the Rabbit. Anita was very vague, saying it was a silver and red battery; she had one with her and showed this to Julie. Apparently, the Rabbit had been in the washing basket upstairs when the fire started.

Julie then got Anita to agree to give us access to search the burnt-out shell of the house. This was vital if we were going to find out the truth. We first had independent tests done by an inspector from the fire service. His report said he was 99 per cent sure the Rabbit had
not
caused the fire – but, for me, this wasn’t good enough. We were talking about doubts being cast upon one of our best-selling products, so what we needed was 100 per cent certainty. I authorised Julie to find the best person she could to investigate the case. By this time I was having increasing doubts about Anita’s integrity. There was definitely more than a whiff in the air that someone had put her up to it.

To make things even more complicated Anita said she was pregnant, and hinted that she’d taken tablets to ‘lose’ the baby. She then began to make all sorts of requests of us, including an overseas holiday. To meet her halfway, Julie offered to send her to Centre Parcs, but this was rejected and she requested a villa abroad, for her family and some friends. However, as passports and birth certificates had been lost in the fire this would prove to be difficult, so Jersey or Guernsey were offered as alternatives. Things got even more bizarre. At one point Anita told Julie that her father was a High Court judge in Ireland. He was very unhappy that she had allowed the Rabbit out of her hands – for the investigations – and was arranging top barristers for her. She wanted Ann Summers to pay for her journey to Ireland and put her up in a five-star hotel. None of the details she gave seemed to make sense, and Julie and I both felt strongly that someone else was behind it. But first we had to prove that our Rampant Rabbit was not the cause of the fire.

In the meantime Julie located the investigator who had examined the evidence from the famous Lockerbie air crash. We couldn’t get better than that! I told Julie that whatever he said, I would accept. With Anita’s permission, he went to the burnt-out house to carry out his investigations. His conclusion was that she had lied to investigators by saying she didn’t smoke in her bedroom, as there was evidence of her smoking in bed and cigarette burns on the carpet. It transpired that
she’d taken a phone call at 5am on the day of the fire and had been smoking while she talked. Having also taken the sedative, Temazepam, she fell asleep during the call – and the cigarette caused the fire. As for the vibrator, she admitted to the investigator that it had only one battery in it because she didn’t want it to turn on by accident and then go flat. The investigator said that in light of this, there was no way it could have caused the fire. We were provided with copies of his report, detailing the extensive testing that had been carried out on the product and providing the proof that it was an impossible cause of the fire.

In November we received a letter from Anita’s solicitors, stating that Anita had not said one of the batteries was removed from the vibrator and confirming they had a copy of the very first report from the fire brigade that showed there was no evidence of the fire being caused by a cigarette. They also wanted the toy sent to them. A few days later Anita rang Julie on her mobile phone in a very distressed state. She said she needed money and she wanted it today; she was talking wildly about having seen an article in the press regarding vibrators and said she had thrown her daughter’s ashes in the river. She then became hysterical and wanted confirmation of a £100,000 payment from me or she was going to the press. She said we had tricked her into giving us the product while she was vulnerable. Finally, she started screaming about talking to the
News of the World
and breakfast TV, and hung up.

We knew Anita was depressed but we’d had no idea how severely. Two months passed, and about three weeks before Christmas Julie received a phone call from Anita’s sister to advise us that Anita had committed suicide. Julie and I, and everyone who had been involved in the case, were shocked and obviously devastated to hear the news. Julie explained all of the circumstances to her and told her it had been proven that the product could not have started the fire. She was very reasonable and understanding, and said Anita had talked about Julie to her; she was grateful for the help we had given the family. A letter was sent confirming the conversation, and Anita’s sister confirmed they were satisfied that the evidence that had been presented to them was correct and that the case would go no further.

However, in April Julie did receive a call on her mobile from a gentleman who identified himself as a friend of Anita’s. He asked if we knew that Anita had killed herself due to the stress of the situation following the fire caused by our product. He said he wanted an update with regard to the claim against us. He also mentioned the press. Julie took his number, and our solicitor called him and advised him in no uncertain terms he had no claim. The case was closed.

The fact that none of this turned out to involve Ann Summers in any way was never my main concern. When we first got word of the fire, we had no option but to take the claims seriously – my view is that any business faced
with a similar situation needs to do so. Anita’s was clearly a tragic situation and you could not help but feel for this woman. Her death reminded me – and should remind us all – that we don’t live in a vacuum and that life in all its forms is going on outside our own world. Most of all it was a reminder that for some people every day is simply about survival, nothing more. Anita was not living, she was struggling just to exist. I still get upset when I think about her.

From my own experiences I understood how depression had taken over Anita’s life. Some people have described it as a prison and that’s exactly how it feels. Unlike unhappiness, you cannot shake it off when you decide to. It stays with you; it goes to bed with you; and it wakes up with you. And while it may start in your brain, it slowly but surely invades your whole body. It makes you tired, it affects your memory and concentration and even your eyesight can be impaired as mine was; and, in a matter of a few weeks, it can turn the strongest, fittest, most motivated person into one that cannot bring him or herself to get out of bed. To all those people who are of the ‘just pull yourself together’ school, I can categorically state that when you are depressed your brain’s chemistry will not allow you to pull yourself together. It just won’t work. Prior to my own encounter with depression I was guilty of that way of thinking, but once you’ve gone down that dark road you know that it’s definitely not mere unhappiness. A night out with a friend can help you forget you’re unhappy: nothing
will help you forget you’re depressed. You have to get help. But like a lot of people, I still hadn’t got the help I needed because I wasn’t aware of the seriousness of my condition, and my GP didn’t seem to be either. I hadn’t told her about the abuse and my problems with Dan, and so, understandably, she assumed my change in behaviour was all down to Mum dying. At one point she’d given me a very low dose of antidepressants but they didn’t do anything for me.

In September I’d somehow managed to do a photo shoot for
OK!
magazine with Dan. There we were in our lovely house, portrayed as the couple who had it all: success, the perfect lifestyle and love. It just makes you wonder how many other people put on a brave face for the cameras. My depression was getting worse but at that point it still didn’t have a name.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

They say that people are at their lowest during December–January: indeed the Samaritans handle a huge increase in calls over the Christmas period. For me, Christmas 2003 was simply a continuation of the downward spiral I’d been in for pretty much the whole year. I’d now reached a point where I knew I had to do something or else I would fall apart, both physically and emotionally. Exhausted and in despair I went back to my GP who now realised that this was not a case of transient mild depression but something far more serious. She referred me to the Priory Clinic in Hayes, Kent. There I met with a psychiatrist, Dr Sara McCluskey, whom I immediately knew I could trust and who I knew would help me. It took her very little time with me to figure out what was wrong. ‘You have Major Depressive Syndrome.’ Hearing those words come out of her mouth absolutely stunned me. Of course, I had known I wasn’t right but to
be told that I had depression and it was very serious was unexpected.

Depression is not just about being very unhappy. It is an actual illness, something I realised when, in a bid to understand it better, I started reading every book I could find on the subject. Like any other medical condition, it requires a strategy. That may mean taking drugs either for a shorter or longer period, often combined with therapy of which there are many different forms. As for the view that ‘antidepressants are bad, and have side effects’, I have often found this to be the argument of people who have not been there. All medication has potential side effects, but for some reason those of medication taken for a ‘physical’ illness are deemed acceptable. Antidepressants are not new but the media coverage they get – often adverse – would often suggest they have the same status as some pill peddled by a dealer on the street. Plenty of people take them, and have done so for many years. As a result, they are able to have a quality of life they would otherwise not have. And for some people they are the difference between life and death.

Without wanting to sound like a know-it-all, unless you have suffered depression you simply cannot know what it’s like to find yourself in this lonely prison while the world dances around you. You can see and hear what is going on but you’re not part of it. It is estimated that more than 2.9 million people in the UK are diagnosed as having depression at any one time. As many as one in five people will be
affected by depression at some point in their lives. Some may be cured in months but some may continue to suffer throughout their life. There are no instant cures: antidepressants can take up to a few weeks to start working with your chemistry and even then they do not make you miraculously happy. What they gave me was an ability to function, to be able to get out of bed and get dressed instead of thinking, ‘I just can’t do this.’ Now I had a floor to stand on, I could start rebuilding myself.

I was having regular sessions with a qualified therapist at the Priory, who specialised in counselling victims of sexual abuse. I talked about Dan, about my mother, about the IVF and, for the first time, about the abuse John had inflicted on me. I was finally ready to discuss it. Up till now I’d had no wish to do so. And I now had no choice but to talk about it anyway: I had reached a point where it was time to get things out in the open or my health would continue to suffer. Over thirty years after my abuser began his reign of terror, I was able to release all my feelings and thoughts. It was very painful and tough but it was a huge relief as well. Nonetheless, there was no quick fix and I had a long way to go with my therapy.

Meanwhile the problems that had built up during 2003 were unresolved. With three failed IVF treatments behind us and the gulf between us widening, Dan and I were stuck at an impasse in our relationship. In March 2004 I asked
Dan to move out because I just felt like I was breathing for two people and I could no longer cope. Dan also seemed depressed and the atmosphere had become claustrophobic: that’s what happens when you have two people who are feeling damaged. The fact that I’d suggested he leave didn’t make it easier. My physical stress symptoms ranged from backache that was so chronic I couldn’t sit down, to vomiting. I decided I needed to take myself away and booked a week’s holiday in the Caribbean.

I flew off to Barbados and it felt good to be free of worries for a week – relatively speaking. Not long after I came back Dan and I got back together. I wasn’t sure about it but he persuaded me things were going to be different. The truth is there was much more love and affection when we were apart. When he returned and got over the pain of missing me, it wasn’t long before the possibility of not having children resurfaced.