Sussex writer's memoir tells of her real life wicked stepmother

Suz Evasdaughter, who was born on a farm in East Yorkshire, had to fend for herself from the age of 15 after her father’s new wife made her life unbearable.

In her book Unwanted, which was published on Thursday, the 68-year-old tells how her life changed when she lost her mother at the age of six to breast cancer.

Suz, who now lives in Etchingham, said: “My parents had moved to Huddersfield as they couldn’t get by on farmers’ wages.

“My mother was very ill and my brother and I were placed in a children’s home. A stranger came to tell us when she died.

“By the time I was seven we were in a new house and we had the most lovely dad for the next seven years.

“He kept a family together when most dads might have kept us in the children’s home.

“But when I was 13 he remarried, and that’s the crux of this story. It’s really all about how she was the epitome of a wicked stepmother.”

Suz as a baby with her older brother Arthur

In Unwanted, Suz describes her stepmother Muriel as having a “bacon slicer tongue” and a personality “like a pressure cooker”.

While Muriel and Suz’s father Arthur ate dinners of lamb chops and roast potatoes, she and her older brother, also named Arthur, would be served “slops”.

Suz said: “She would give us things like oxtail soup – workhouse food. She put locks on the cupboards where they kept food. We were like feral children but came under control by her draconian treatment very quickly. We knew we couldn’t speak to each other or to our father.”

Suz said Muriel would comment on her appearance and stopped her from wearing a skirt when she was in the house. She said: “She seemed to take issue with me as I was a burgeoning pubescent girl. Muriel had polio as a child – I don’t know if that affected how she saw me and my body.

“She would say things like ‘don’t cross your legs, your father can see up your skirt’. But it went from ‘don’t wear a skirt in the house’ to ‘don’t be in the house at all’.”

Suz and brother Arthur in the 1950s

Between the ages of 13 and 15, Suz would wander the streets of Huddersfield between tea time and after 9pm as Muriel banned her from the house.

Her father and Muriel had a child named Edward, but Suz was not allowed near him and he was given preferential treatment.

Suz describes how on one occasion Muriel thumped her on the nose after Suz asked the police if she could be returned to the children’s home. She said: “She was very strong from working in the mills from a young age. We were just unwanted. I understood I did not have the right to exist in the house.”

After leaving home at 15, Suz worked as a hotel chambermaid and later held down five jobs at once to pay her rent.

Despite her traumatic upbringing, she said writing the book was “more like therapy”.

She said: “Now I have agency. My stepmother is dead and does not control me any more.

“I have contact with her son, my half brother Eddie – that came out of me writing this book. None of this is his fault.”

After initially training as a nurse, Suz gained a philosophy degree and went on to work for Ford, before later moving into art therapy and writing books about history and feminism.

At the age of 40 she discovered she had an older half brother by her own mother called Norman when he turned up on her doorstep.

She said: “Over the years I’d had letters from my stepmother. In her mind she was not at fault.

“When Norman came he told me my dad had been dead for two years. I was totally devastated as there was no possibility for reconciliation, and Muriel, who was still alive at the time, had never told me.”

Suz Evasdaughter with her memoir Unwanted

Suz went through a lot of therapy which she said “changed her life” and has her own daughter called Faye, who works as a vet.

She said: “I think my biggest achievement has been allowing Faye to have the life she wanted. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Unwanted is available from major book retailers now.