Mrs Cresswell was the mother of Joanne Cresswell, friend of Jenny Bradley's and she and her husband were co-hosts of the girls’ joint eighteenth birthday party held at the Mortlake Hotel in March 1989, along with Alan Bradley and Rita Fairclough.
Mrs Cresswell turned up at The Kabin earlier in the day to speak to Rita as she was worried specifically about the announcements and she hadn’t been able to get a response at No. 7. Mavis Wilton thought this strange but none of them knew that Rita had uncovered Alan Bradley’s fraudulent plan to pose as the deceased Len Fairclough and re-mortgage No. 7 to get himself out of his financial troubles. Instead of being at home, she was at Castlewell Building Society discovering exactly how he had perpetrated the fraud.
At the party that night, Mrs Cresswell got increasingly nervous as Alan and Rita failed to show and worried that her husband would get drunk and grab the microphone, telling some of his unsuitable jokes. She nagged Joanne to get Jenny to phone home and find out where they were. Jenny rang just as Alan attacked Rita when she revealed that his game was up. She and Martin Platt rushed home and were in time to stop Alan killing Rita by smothering her with a cushion.