'I’m a successful self-made businesswoman, yet I only learned to read and write at 14': Tracy Woodward uses her experiences of abuse and domestic violence to help others →

After surviving her unreliable mother’s myriad bad choices and violent boyfriend, Tracey Woodward vowed to make a better life for herself. And now she is helping others to escape similarly difficult circumstances. 

I am eight years old and cowering under my bed. I can hear my mother’s boyfriend trashing our flat, smashing her prized perfume bottles, hurling her belongings against the wall, ripping up her clothes and breaking off the heels of her shoes. I am only too aware that if my mum were here he would be killing her.

My childhood was one of fear, uncertainty, neglect and distress. Now, at 49, I am fortunate to have a happy family and can look back on a successful 30-year career in the beauty industry – quite an achievement given that I didn’t even learn to read and write until I was 14.

After surviving her unreliable mother’s myriad bad choices and violent boyfriend, Tracey Woodward vowed to make a better life for herself

I was born in 1966 after my mum, Wendy, became pregnant at 18 by Graham, the neighbourhood playboy in Southwest London. My grandfather, who considered himself a fine upstanding man, was furious. The prospect of his daughter becoming a single mother was shameful and with the two families at loggerheads and no suggestion of my mum marrying Graham, her family moved a few miles away to Crystal Palace.

The first six months of my life were spent in hospital with little expectation that I would live; my mother suffered a haemorrhage during the birth and I weighed just 1lb 6oz, but we were both survivors even then. 

My early years were happy and secure. Mum and I lived with my grandparents and she had a job working on the cheese counter of my grandfather’s supermarket.

But when I was five, my grandmother died and it transpired my grandfather had been having an affair with his bookkeeper, Marcia. 

Just days after my grandmother passed away he moved Marcia into the family home, told Mum and me we had to leave and pushed Mum out of her job, too.

Overnight, we went from a warm, secure home to a damp, miserable bedsit in a squalid block of flats where all the tenants, including us, were on the breadline. 

Hurt and distraught, Mum sought solace with the wrong kind of people, and started hanging out with a heavy-drinking crowd. 

Grown up and working at Clinique; Mother with Tracy's daughter (right)

They introduced her to drugs, and she became totally unreliable; she would tell me that she was just nipping out for cigarettes and not return for two days having met some bloke. I felt abandoned, and never knew where the next meal would come from. 

A Chinese family across the hallway would sometimes look after me but I was mostly on my own. Looking back, it’s a miracle I didn’t come to any harm. Every time Mum came back I would have to take care of her and myself. The next day we would have a good day together because she would be so racked with guilt about leaving me alone. But it wouldn’t be long before it happened again.

Mum was never addicted to any substance, she just took things to extremes. I recognise now that her life had spiralled out of control. 

She was frightened and no doubt seeking comfort and oblivion, but for a little girl, seeing her in that state was extremely upsetting. As a result, I have never smoked or taken drugs, and drink only moderately.

Over the following year we led a hand-to-mouth existence with Mum picking up occasional jobs such as cleaning. 

She took a number of different aliases in order to claim benefits while she worked; if she thought she was close to getting caught, she would change her alias again. 

She didn’t seem to think it was important for me to go to nursery so stopped taking me after we left my granddad’s house.

Things changed for the better when I was six and Mum married Chris, who had his own haulage company, and we moved to a house in Camden. There was stability in my life again and in photos from that time I look happy. I started attending primary school and at last we had some money, but Mum couldn’t cope with a man being nice to her and took up with Neil, a schizophrenic alcoholic, the man who I later thought was capable of killing her.

I was terrified of Neil; he was jealous and violent and involved in criminal activity. There would always be guns lying around the house. 

One day, when I came into the lounge, there were bags of stolen money everywhere. Although I never actually witnessed them using drugs, Mum and Neil were without doubt taking cocaine and speed on top of their constant drinking.

My mother became pregnant, and when I was eight Little Neil was born. Sadly, his arrival didn’t change my mother and Neil’s behaviour; they would still go out all night and leave me to look after the baby. Neil was a known criminal on the run and the day after he smashed up our home, Mum turned him in to the police. I still remember the feeling of relief when he went to jail.

Tracey with younger brother Little Neil; her mother with Little Neil

But without his ill-gotten money, Mum couldn’t pay the rent and we moved into a squat with no furniture or carpets on a terrifying estate in Stockwell. 

Between the ages of 11 and 15 I received only intermittent education. As for social workers, where were they? It was only when I was 14 and got a Saturday job in a chemist’s that I started to learn to read. Instead of firing me when he discovered I was illiterate, the pharmacist taught me with Janet and John books, encouraging me to practise my writing and learn a new word every day.

At home things had taken another bad turn. After Neil was sent to prison, Mum – who was 30 by then – met Gary, 18, who quickly moved in. 

Gary was a nasty piece of work who encouraged Mum to go shoplifting in a gang. Occasionally they would take me with them and my job would be to guard the bags of loot while they went back to steal more. My mother got caught stealing once but was let off with a suspended sentence. 

She was always well dressed and used to tell me, ‘If you look the part, no one will question why you’re there.’ There were no security tags back then, so we would come home with piles of cashmere, perfume and even fur coats that mum and Gary would sell on for cash.

But soon enough the money would be spent on drink, drugs or food for Gary. While Little Neil and I subsisted on chips and baked beans, Gary demanded expensive food such as steak that we weren’t allowed to touch. 

Even now I have to keep my fridge stocked up with nourishing food; it’s a big control issue for me that my children don’t open the door and find it empty.

I was 15 when Mum had Alexis, my sister. As a first-time father, Gary tried to go back to steady work as a roofer but it didn’t last; he and mum were soon out stealing again. 

By now I was 17 and with five of us – including a man I loathed – living in a dingy two-bedroom flat, I was desperate to get out. I would go to the phone box every day with a handful of coins and call the council’s housing department to beg for a flat. 

I didn’t stop until they gave me one. In the end Gary left Mum for somebody else and she was never herself again. She tried to commit suicide twice, overdosing on prescription medication. Both times she refused to get into an ambulance but she somehow survived.

I knew very strongly by then that I wasn’t going to have the life that Mum had. I was ambitious and fortunate that Mum’s friend, also called Tracy, wanted to help me. When I saw in the paper that Debenhams in Croydon was looking to hire Clinique counter consultants, she encouraged me to apply and I was called for an interview. 

I had no suitable clothes so I borrowed Tracy’s smart navy dress and shoes that were too small for me and I could barely walk. But I got the job. Eighteen months later I met Dave in a club, and two years after that, when I was 20, we got married.

Through hard work and determination I eventually became Estée Lauder counter manager at Allders in Bromley and was then promoted to department manager. I always made sure that I was well turned out and immaculately groomed for work. 

My mother’s words rang in my ears: ‘If you look the part, no one will question why you’re there.’ 

Indeed, no one ever guessed that at night in the early days I returned to a council flat; I was secretive about my past and where I lived. I was extremely organised and good at selling, though I struggled with maths and my writing was practically illegible.

In 1991, when I was 25, I had my son Josh. By this time, my relationship with my mother had changed for the better. 

She didn’t have a boyfriend and had stopped drinking and drug using, and I trusted her enough to look after Josh while I was at work, but only – and strictly – on my conditions: she had to take him to school every day and collect him, feed him the correct food and do everything she hadn’t done for me. I bought her a car and paid her a wage, and although it was a practical arrangement, for me it was like therapy.

By this time, my career was soaring. I became head of beauty in the gleaming Duty Free department at Heathrow Terminal One where I took annual sales from £18 million to £21 million. 

I was headhunted to work for Donna Karan Cosmetics and given responsibility for the entire UK business, frequently flying to New York and staying in five-star hotels. Strange to think now, but I felt so out of my depth I cried every single day. However, the brand flourished and from there I went to Aveda as director of sales, reporting to beauty entrepreneur George Hammer.

Meanwhile, after seven years, my marriage to Dave ended in divorce. Looking back, I married him because I craved security and the kind of family life I’d never had. But just a few months later I went to view a property to rent owned by a man called Tony Zoccola, who turned out to be my future husband.

Tony and I had our daughter Ava in 2001 and got married in 2004. Wanting to spend more time with the children, I took a break from my career and Tony and I opened a successful delicatessen and bakery business in Dulwich, Southeast London.

But then George Hammer approached me to turn around Urban Retreat, Harrods’ luxurious beauty destination. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, and for the next eight years I held the position of commercial director there.

By now Mum and I had become close, and when she was diagnosed with incurable cancer at 66 in June 2012, I was devastated. In the hours before her death, I asked her if she had any regrets. ‘My only regret is that I wasn’t the mother to you that I should have been,’ came her reply. I’d waited 47 years to hear her say those words. She died just two months after her diagnosis.

Shortly after Mum died, I left the Urban Retreat to focus on my charity and mentoring work with CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women), the Prince’s Trust and Action for Children. I am driven by a desire to help other children and young people from a similar background to mine, and I mentor several of them a year. I try to instil in these young people my belief that anyone can turn their life around, but you have to be prepared to work relentlessly hard, and explore every option available. I also advise Marks & Spencer on its beauty departments and guide venture capitalists on purchasing cosmetic brands.

Despite my difficult childhood, I miss Mum much more than I ever thought I would. Underneath it all, she did have admirable qualities as a person but it’s fair to say that nearly all of her lifestyle choices were woefully