Irene Manning Clayton was Viki Lord Riley's childhood friend and college roommate. Irene had been raised in Llanview but had relocated to Chicago in the early 1960s, where she raised her daughter Tina largely as a single mother. Irene had married a man named Ted Clayton, whom Tina believed was her biological father, but the brief marriage had ended in divorce and Tina grew up knowing little about him.

In 1978, a very ill Irene returned to Llanview and asked Viki to look after Tina, who was now 16 years old. Irene had named Viki as Tina's godmother, and Viki knew Irene had nowhere else to turn. Irene quickly succumbed to cancer, and Viki took Tina in. Irene's ex-husband Ted eventually showed in Llanview and caused much trouble for Tina and Viki before being shot dead in front of Tina, who left town.

Tina returned to Llanview in 1984, having discovered in her mother's diary that Ted Clayton was not her biological father after all. After a year of searching for her true paternity, Tina found a letter from Viki's father Victor Lord in which he confessed that he and Irene had once been married and that Tina was his daughter. Viki refused to believe it, but eventually she was forced to accept the truth after recalling a long-repressed memory of seeing Victor and Irene in bed together.

Irene's past with Victor resurfaced yet again in 1994 when Dorian Lord was accused of murdering Victor 18 years earlier. Dorian was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, but was freed after a man named David Vickers surfaced with a diary in which Irene confessed to having smothered Victor. That part of the diary had been forged, but Irene also revealed in the diary that she had given birth to a son by Victor after they were divorced. David claimed to be that son, although he was lying in the hopes of claiming the inheritance Victor had promised his son when he turned 25 years old. The true heir turned out to be Todd Manning, a convicted rapist, who had been raised by Irene's cousin Peter Manning and his wife Bitsy.

In 2011, Irene turned up alive in an undisclosed location where she was running a top-secret firm that went by the name Security Systems. Irene chastised one of her employees, rogue CIA agent Malcolm Baker, for allowing one of their prisoners to escape. The prisoner, who bore Todd Manning's original face and believed he was Todd Manning, had been held in the undisclosed location for eight years as Baker tried to extract useful information from him. The man fled to Llanview and discovered that another man claimed to be Todd Manning. Initial tests showed that both men had the same DNA.