In 1986 John Raftopoulos was sitting in his Year 10 geography class when his whole world changed. A new student entered the room; it was her first day at Melbourne’s Carey Baptist Grammar School and 15-year-old John couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“We went on a little geography excursion together and I fell in love that day,” he tells The Weekly of how he first met Claire Jensz, the woman who captured his heart for a lifetime. Not that she knew it.
“It sounds dumb, but I really didn’t have any idea that’s how he felt,” Claire laughs a few decades later. “I thought we were just friends and hanging out.”
The pair were best friends, inseparable, as they finished high school together. But then – as so often happens as we move beyond the schoolyard – their lives diverged in their early twenties. Claire moved to London, where she married and had three boys. John married twice, then went on to raise his daughter as a single dad. But he never forgot the blonde with the infectious smile, quick wit and ready laugh.
When they reunited 22 years later, it would spark a love story so epic that it has now received a motion picture treatment. Although, they’re both quick to add, the movie does differ a little from real life.
“I was placed firmly by Claire into the friend zone and the film is a little bit different, we have them getting together in the first act,” says John, who both co-wrote and directed Take My Hand, his personal love letter to Claire.
“But if we met at school and were together then, this wouldn’t have happened,” interjects Claire.
“You don’t think when you’re young,” John continues. “But now? You know yourself better. You know what you need and what you want.”
Sliding doors
Having modelled after school, both locally and in Japan, Claire was 24 when she received a job offer from a leading bank in the UK. She packed her bags and set out on a new adventure.
A year later she met her husband, Mark Pennycook, a successful businessman. The pair were a power couple, both scaling heights in their professional lives. And then the unthinkable happened.
At 28, Claire began experiencing double vision, something she put down to the long hours she was putting in at work. “I thought I was working too hard, I was too busy and overwhelmed,” she says today of what she’d learn was her first symptom of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease which attacks the central nervous system – brain, spinal cord and optic nerves.
“I went to see a GP, then a neurologist. Then quickly I went straight to hospital as I was really sick. I was diagnosed fast because my [MS] was so pronounced.”
It was a devastating diagnosis for Claire. Firstly, because she had such little knowledge of the condition, and what she did know was frightening. Secondly, because she was told that – due to the drugs she’d need to take – she wouldn’t be able to have children. The diagnosis put her marriage under stress, the bank fired her on the spot due to her medical condition – it was a perfect storm.
But, as we are fast learning, Claire isn’t one who can be told what she can and can’t do.
With treatment not nearly as advanced as it is today, Claire was put on a variety of drugs and steroids which didn’t appear to help her symptoms but actually made her feel even worse. So, determined to start the family she’d dreamed of, she stopped taking them in order to attempt to fall pregnant.
At 30, Claire had her first son. Then, in quick succession, two more at 31 and 33. Ironically, she felt better than she had since before her diagnosis.
“When I stopped taking any drugs at all to have the babies, I went on to think my MS got better,” she says now. “Back then, having treatment was quite toxic. It was really hard on you. When I had the kids, I felt so much better. Pregnancy was like a gift. The babies made me feel very happy and well. But unknowingly, my brain was being attacked.”
Another blow
While Claire was feeling blissful with her longed-for babies, things with Mark weren’t quite as picture perfect. Their marriage was again put under stress, both from his relentless approach to work and from Claire’s illness, which reared its head aggressively again after the birth of baby number three.
And then, at the age of just 48, Mark died after suffering a massive heart attack. Claire was alone in England, with no family on hand and her MS symptoms making it increasingly hard to cope alone. The boys were 11, 10 and eight, and they were reeling in the wake of their father’s passing. Going to live in Australia, where Claire’s family was based, was a concept they resisted. And while financially she had had means, Claire couldn’t continue without emotional support.
“They’re very English boys and they’re very indoor boys,” Claire reflects. “So they weren’t keen.”
Even so, the family packed their bags and descended Down Under. It was on home ground that, once again, Claire’s illness caught up with her.
“MS can hold off and it’s delayed typically from a horrible trauma for 12 months, then eventually the trauma hits you,” explains Claire. “I was really, really sick.”
MS is an unpredictable disease which affects people differently. Weakness, loss of balance, fatigue, tremors and problems with speech and coordination are common, as are problems with vision, cognition, sexual function and depression. And while it may not be a death sentence, it effectively steals your quality of life, say many sufferers.
Claire is often in pain. Her brain can take a while to deliver messages, so she struggles with speech – especially as the day progresses. She falls fairly frequently and can have trouble walking. And she has found it very hard to find a local community of friends who understand her limitations.
“It’s a lonely disease,” Claire says, adding that it’s hard for her to commit to regular plans – let alone impromptu ones a non-sufferer wouldn’t think twice about. “People kind of avoid you and they ostracise you a bit. I don’t have many friends really.”
But little did she know that, not long after she arrived home, she’d rediscover an old friend and transition their relationship into something magical.
Blast from the past
John had carried on with his life after Claire left for the UK, “dating other girls that I didn’t want to, playing footy and in a family fruit and veg business,” he tells The Weekly. He’d been on his own from 2010, with his daughter, and then one day his stepmother delivered a message, saying she’d heard a girl he’d gone to school with had returned from the UK. Did he know Claire?
“I was like, ‘Oh my God’,” he says. But when he learned of the circumstances that had brought his unrequited love back to town, he hesitated. “Her husband had just died, I’m not going to just ring her up. I tried to Facebook her a few times but she didn’t answer. And then a mutual friend of ours sort of pushed us together on Facebook. And I went and saw her on April 10th at nine o’clock in the morning.”
“I opened the front door and thought, ‘Oh Lord, look at this man’,” says Claire, looking with adoration now at the old friend who instantly swept her off her feet. “Straight away, in that first minute, I thought, this is going to work.”
“And we’ve been by each other’s sides for eight years now,” says John, hugging Claire closer.
Not, of course, that it has been as easy as all that. First there was some expected resistance from the kids. Then there were the complications of Claire’s MS. But through it all, “we’ve dealt with it,” says John.
“I do think, ‘poor John,’ because he looks after me all of the time,” says Claire. “He’s a carer, and that’s probably quite isolating.”
“Yeah, but look,” rebuts John, “I don’t want to sound corny but because of that day in geography, nothing else matters. I don’t think anybody understands how much I’ve wanted to be with Claire from the age of 15.”
A new project
A year after their reconnection, John started putting some thoughts down on a page, reflecting both on their unlikely love journey as well as the bravery Claire had displayed over the course of her life. He thought he might turn it into a novel. But after a few months he knew this was a story for the big screen.
“I thought, stuff it, I’m just going to go to the library and borrow How to Write a Screenplay,” he says. For six months he tinkered with his passion project before sending a draft to someone in the industry. “They said, ‘This is an absolute disaster, but what a story! You should pursue this’,” he laughs. “So I did.”
What followed were a multitude of drafts, two different US-based writers to help, and entry into an LA competition in which the script came in an impressive eighth amongst 3000 applications.
“The first script was so true to life and emotional,” Claire says, recalling how she reacted when reading this version. “It was too true. And I just kept crying.”
“I don’t think Claire thought it was going to happen,” John says of making the film. “But I just knew I was never going to give up.”
And so, with the same certainty he had after spotting Claire in that geography class, he pressed forward in his dream. After toying with the idea of trying to make the movie in the US, in the end it was a local production company, Bronte Pictures, that picked up the project. They paired John with co-writer Dave Patterson who, the former says, “brought a bit of class and structure to the script”. The story also moved away from being a blow-by-blow of real events – there are definite divergences between the two – while reflecting the essence of their love story and helping shine a light on MS.
Early in the process, John knew he didn’t want anyone else to direct this film. He wanted to try to tell the story in their own way. So he got some help ahead of taking on a completely foreign task. Natalie Bassingthwaighte was brought in to do a test shoot for the role of Claire – directing her for a day “was the best training I could have had, really,” says John.
The role of Claire – or Laura as she is named in the film – would eventually go to Radha Mitchell (although Natalie is in the cast in another role). John’s character in the film, Michael, went to Adam Demos. And both are very pleased with how the casting came out.
“Radha was a great get,” John says. “She brought a wealth of experience to the table and did a great job of portraying Claire’s journey.”
“I consider her my friend,” says Claire, who formed an instant bond with the Aussie actress.
They shot in Byron Bay, close to where we are meeting today. Claire acted as a consultant on set, sitting behind John’s director’s seat every day to give notes and share in the experience.
It’s important to her – to them both – that it’s not just their love story that people take away from the film. Awareness of MS is something they want to raise. The most common acquired chronic neurological disease affecting young adults, it is usually diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. In Australia it affects three times more women than men and, as yet, there is treatment but no cure.
“Awareness is number one and understanding second,” says Claire. “Because a lot of people think MS and then look away. It’s too ugly, too unknown, too weird. But I want people to know we’re not dead, we’re not going to go away, we’re still here and we’re still relevant.
“And then the third thing I want people to know is that there is hope. Because every year, things are even better. As diseases go, all neurologists talk about how MS is quite exciting now because fusing and repairing things are in the forefront. It’s a lot better and I hope that, in my lifetime, I’ll be cured.”
As they await that day, the duo is taking a much-needed break. They’ve bought a farm where they plan to live, and horses abound on the property – a dream Claire had as a child which is now coming to fruition.
She rode horses when she was young and when her MS was diagnosed, they proved instrumental in her emotional wellbeing.
“When I was really sick one time in England – in a wheelchair, in hospital, really bad – I said to Mark, ‘When I’m out, I’m going to get a horse.’ And he goes, ‘Claire, you haven’t walked yet’.
“But I had this desire to ride a horse. They are such giving creatures, and generous and kind. They walk for me when I can’t. Equine therapy is something I’ve pursued more now, and I hope that is what we will end up doing on our farm.”
Take My Hand is in cinemas from August 22. Visit takemyhandthemovie.com
