Being bullied as a child and suffering horrific abuse at the hands of her first husband convinced Mary Rowell that she was ugly and worthless. She tells Sarah Foster how having a facelift has changed her life.

MARY Rowell sat in the restaurant, in her best dress, hair and make-up perfect. She was on holiday in Cyprus, and tonight - a Cypriot-themed night - was going to be special. Music started and one of the waiters, a handsome Greek, began getting ladies up to dance. He approached Mary's table and for a spilt second, met her eye, then moved on to a glamorous woman nearby. At that moment, she felt utterly crushed. "My stomach just fell," she says.

While her reaction may seem extreme, this was by no means the first time Mary had felt like this.

There was the time when she was pushing her son in his pushchair and a man working under a car wolf whistled at her - only to let out a growling noise when he saw her face.

Then there was the time when she was 14 and had fallen in love for the first time. When she saw her boyfriend with another girl she was devastated, but not surprised. "She had long, blonde hair and she was beautiful. I thought, 'He wants her because she's pretty'," says Mary.

This negative self-image was established during her early childhood in North Shields. "I've worn glasses since I was about three and I used to get called cross-eyed, four eyes, big nose, ugly and all sorts. Really, I was bullied. I wanted to stand up to them but I couldn't. I've never really had much confidence," she says.

Mary grew from a quiet, insecure child to an introverted teenager. She hardly ever went out, except with her parents. Then at 17, she fulfilled her ambition to become a nurse and found something of a social life. "I used to go out with the student nurses and get drunk," says Mary, now 61.

It was through a friend that, aged 19, she met the man who would become her husband. He was a soldier serving in Germany and she fell deeply in love with him.

They married when she was 21. "I went to live with him in Germany but I was really nave. I got pregnant straight away," she says.

It wasn't long before Mary realised she was trapped in a living nightmare. "He used to say I was ugly. He would put a mirror in front of me and say, 'Look at that. Nobody will look at you.' He broke my finger," she says. The abuse only confirmed Mary's low opinion of herself and cut off from her friends and family, she suffered in silence. Not even when her husband left the Army and she returned with him and their two children to the North-East did she feel able to confide in anyone.

"My mum had said, 'You've made your bed, you lie on it.' I never told anybody about the beatings or the mental cruelty. You can get over the beatings but you never get over the things people say to you," Mary says.

But this was not even the worst she had to endure. On top of her private pain, she also suffered the public humiliation of her husband's infidelity. "Every friend I had he took to bed. He was sleeping with the woman across the road, then he went to stay with the next door neighbour. I knew there were other women but he always denied it."

The couple moved from Burnopfield, County Durham, to Newton Hall, on the outskirts of Durham city, and Mary, who is now retired, began working at Earl's House Hospital. But her husband's continued womanising - this time, with one of her work colleagues - ultimately brought things to a head."There was a young girl on the ward who was only 16 and he ended up sleeping with her. I found out about it and I thought, 'I can't stand it any more.' I took an overdose and ended up in hospital. It was a cry for help," she says.

Although her husband moved out and she considered the marriage to be over, this was not the end of the abuse. An emotional wreck and infertile from a kick to the stomach, Mary endured further physical abuse by her brutish spouse. In the end, it took a court order to free her from him.

The depression which ensued was both tragic and inevitable. "I had no money and I wasn't getting any maintenance. I made friends with another woman in a one-parent family and we used to just go out and get drunk. I used to drink about half a bottle of vodka before I went out. I was taking tablets for depression, for keeping me awake and for making me sleep," she says.

Then, in the early 80s, she was given what she describes as "a fright". "The doctor said if I continued, it would kill me," says Mary. Yet despite this, the drinking - and the depression - continued. "I seemed to spend most of the 80s crying," she says.

It was not until Dave, a taxi driver ten years her junior, drove her home from the bingo one night in 1986, that hope began to emerge. Undeterred by her drunkenness, he got chatting to her and the pair became an item, eventually getting married. But no matter how much he tried to convince her otherwise, deep down, Mary still felt she was ugly.

"I've spent a fortune on creams. I've even put haemorrhoid cream on my eyes because that's supposed to get rid of the bags. When you put that on your eyes, you're desperate," she says with grim humour. "I once paid £120 for a 'facelift in a jar'."

But what Mary really wanted was a proper facelift, something she admits to being "obsessed" with for 15 years. When Dave's ill-health forced his retirement from roofing and the couple decided to sell their Chester-le-Street home and move somewhere smaller, he encouraged her to pursue her dream. "He said, 'Have your facelift if it's going to keep you quiet'," says Mary.

So she did, having the operation at Washington's Bupa Hospital in February this year. "I actually enjoyed being in hospital because everyone was so caring. I was so happy. I couldn't wait to get the bandages off," she says.

The grandmother of two, who now lives in Rowlands Gill, Gateshead, says the boost it has given her confidence has been immeasurable. "I can talk to people now. I can talk to men," she says, still sounding incredulous. So transformed is she that far from shunning attention, as she used to, she now aims to try her hand at modelling.

While she's planning a nose job, Mary says there'll be no more surgery after that. "I'm not one of those women who wants everything. I'll just continue with Botox every six or eight months," she says.

When I ask what reaction she now provokes, she tells me about being winked at by a man while waiting for a friend outside a shop. "At first I thought he was winking at someone else. Then I realised it was me," she says, laughing with delight. And seeing the new-found confidence exuded by this attractive, well-groomed woman, it's unlikely she'll ever again be left sitting at the side of a dance floor.