Vanessa was the manager of a clothing firm called The King's Robes and a friend of Aidan Connor's. He asked her if she could find a position for Caz Hammond, the former fiancee of his sister Kate Connor who had started to show some strange tendencies which involved falling so deeply in love with her that she clung to her to the point of losing her job in the army and lying about her health. After breaking up with Kate and sleeping rough, she had then become attracted to an unsuspecting Maria Connor and Aidan saw the job that Vanessa could offer as a means to get her out of the way of his sister, if not Maria as well.