IT only takes a clock clicking 9.11am and Janice Brooks is jolted back inside the World Trade Center as the hijacked plane struck.
As if watching some barely believable disaster movie, the survivor will vividly relive the “almighty thud”, the 1,362ft South Tower swaying precariously and the blood-curdling screams of those inside.
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Recalling the atrocity, which killed 2,753 innocent victims, Janice, 66, tells me: “It’s like the universe is conspiring to never let me forget — as if I could. I can close my eyes and be back there in an instant.”
As the 25th anniversary of history’s deadliest terror attack approached, Janice was plagued by nightmares.
Miraculously, she escaped the South Tower from close to the plane’s impact point.
But the fact 61 of her work colleagues did not make it remains an enduring sadness that compels her to share her story.
It was a gloriously sunny autumn day in the Big Apple — Tuesday, September 11, 2001 — and Janice had arrived at her desk at Euro Brokers on the 84th floor of the South Tower at 7.30am.
The executive assistant had already been for an early morning jog along the Hudson River, savouring the days after landing her dream job.
Born in Stepney, East London, Janice — the eldest of five children with a lorry driver dad and an office cleaner mum — had made a life-changing decision on reaching 40.
She revealed: “I had one of those, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ moments. I thought, ‘I work for an American company. I love America. Why not go and work there?’
“So on August 23, 2001, I arrived in New York to begin the biggest adventure of my life.”
Divorcee Janice produces a photo taken of herself on September 7, 2001, at the Top Of The World observatory on the roof of the South Tower, also known as 2 World Trade Center.
Smiling broadly as the setting sun dipped below the Manhattan skyline, her excitement was unmistakable.
Just over three days later, Janice’s world changed for ever.
At 8.46am on 9/11, American Airlines Flight 11 — carrying 92 passengers and crew — emerged from blue skies with crazed al-Qaeda hijackers at the controls and smashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
In the neighbouring skyscraper, Janice remained unruffled.
“I was at my desk, eating breakfast, when I heard a loud bang,” she recalls.
“At the time, New York was experiencing a construction boom so there were often big bangs.”
Janice carried on sending emails for another five minutes. Then, a man boomed at the top of his voice: “Everybody out!”
She called Euro Brokers’ London office and spoke to then-UK managing director Robin Clark, who screamed: “F***ing hell, Janice, a plane’s gone into the building, get the f*** out of there.”
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Janice said: “Robin was watching on telly 3,500 miles away and I had no clue what was happening 200 yards behind me.”
She grabbed her Louis Vuitton handbag and ran as staff began evacuating down the stairs.
But Janice said there was no panic: “The chit-chat around me was what people had done at the weekend,” she recalls.
Descending from the 84th floor, Janice’s heels were cumbersome so she put them in her bag and continued barefoot.
When she reached the 72nd floor, there were repeated announcements from the building’s security that it was safe and staff should return to their offices. Joining a group including some fellow Euro Brokers employees, she began climbing the stairs again.
It was now 9.03am and they entered a corridor between stairwells, which Janice estimates was between the 76th and 78th floors.
As the world watched on live TV, United Airlines Flight 175 carrying 65 people wheeled through the Manhattan sky at 540mph and rammed into the second tower.
Tilting at an angle, the fuel-laden jet, piloted by terrorists, carved a gaping hole from the 77th to the 85th floors. Janet believes she and her fellow staff members were below the plane’s right wing.
She remembers: “There was an almighty thud and the tower began to sway. The lights flashed on and off and parts of the ceiling fell in.
“There was dust and debris everywhere. After a while, the building seemed to shudder and stand still. The lights flickered and came back on.”
Janice’s group headed back to the stairwell, but it had “disappeared”, replaced by “darkness and flames”.
She says: “Just as we’re starting to digest that, we heard one of those horror story screams that live in your head for ever.” A traumatised woman was trapped behind another door.
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Led by a man in a white shirt, Janice and others cleared away rubble and prised it open.
A group of dazed people stumbled through, led by a badly injured woman.
Janet explains: “She was cut almost neatly from her shoulder to her elbow. Her skin and muscle were flapping down and I could see the bone. As she moved, blood was going everywhere. Then a guy came through with a big piece of glass sticking out of his chest, followed by a guy with his back covered in blood.”
Finally came the screaming woman. Janice adds: “She had long, dark hair and was crying, ‘I can’t see’.
“She had a cut on her forehead and the blood was dribbling down into her eyes.”
One of the men in the group had his gym bag with him and fashioned the first woman a splint from a T-shirt, before cleaning the blood from the second.
Then an explosion from the other tower blew all the windows in. Miraculously, the terrified group found another door. After wrestling it open, they set off down the stairs. Still barefoot and clutching her handbag, Janet soon began to notice blood oozing through her toes.
She recalls: “I was going to scream, but then realised it was blood from the lady with the gashed arm who also appeared to have lost half her foot.”
The well-lit stairwell was littered with exposed wires and debris, with a broken pipe causing water to gush down the steps.
After descending a few more flights, Janice noticed her shirt was covered in blood. In shock, she stood stock still until colleague Bob Mahon grabbed her by the elbows and said: “It’s not your blood. We have to get out of here, we have to keep going.”
The group continued down the stairs, with Bob giving the woman with the gashed arm a piggyback for the last few flights.
Finally, they made it to ground level, where a burly policeman yelled: “Keep your heads down, don’t look up.”
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Janice and Bob headed for her 17th-floor apartment, which was just ten minutes’ walk away. It was 9.43am.
For the first time, she looked back at the tower.
“Where our floor should have been, there was this huge gaping hole with flames coming out,” she recalls.
After helping her home, Bob left and Janice made a cup of tea before switching on the TV. That is when she realised for the first time she had been in the midst of a terror attack.
Soon after, she heard a giant rumbling noise. A reporter on TV shouted: “The tower’s down!”
It was 9.59am and the South Tower Janice had fled a short time before had crumpled like a house of cards.
She remembers: “The noise was incredible. The windows hummed, crockery in the dishwasher rattled and the lights went out.
“Clouds of dust billowed around my windows and then it went black.”
At 10.28am, the North Tower came crashing down. Janice says: “I was rocking backwards and forward on my sofa, thinking I was going to die.”
Eventually, she fled her home to stay with a friend in an outer New York suburb. Astonishingly, Janice was back at work the next day in a temporary office manning her company’s help desk.
It is only now, after more than an hour of recounting her story, that this remarkable woman breaks down in tears as she recalls how 61 of her 300 Euro Brokers colleagues perished.
Sobbing, Janice tells me: “To my utter shame, I only went to 23 of their funerals.
“I think it’s the one thing I’ll take to the grave, that these people died and I didn’t make the effort to go to more funerals than I did.”
Janice worked in New York for another five years before returning to London to continue her City career.
She went through therapy, found strength in her Christian beliefs and “made the best of life”.
Today, we are talking in her Norfolk cottage near Diss, where red admiral butterflies flutter though a lilac-filled garden.
She gains solace from her work with charity Since 9/11, reliving her experiences for school children to build hope from tragedy.
Janet roots around in her bedroom and emerges with the Louis Vuitton bag she clutched as she fled the tower — and a vial of dust she scooped up from her flat on 9/11.
“The bag still has the stains on it from that day,” she reveals. “I need to keep them there to remind me of it.”
Today, on the harrowing anniversary of the atrocity, Janice will be at Ground Zero in New York paying quiet respect to the 9/11 victims.
Staring out over the tranquil Norfolk landscape, she tells me: “I still have bad days.
“If I feel black moods coming, I go out to the garden, let my hands touch the soil and it goes.”