SUSAN floats down the magnificent staircase of her giant £7m mansion looking like a woman in her element. Glancing at her salon-styled hair, designer suit and Prada heels clicking against rare Italian marble flooring, you might be forgiven for thinking she'd never suffered anything more terrrible than a smudge on her French manicure.

But Susan's past has been filled with more tragedy than most and the memories constantly threaten to sabotage her happiness, even now.

She's lived through the horror of homelessness, abject poverty, a stillborn child, agoraphobia and a suicide attempt, as well as the appalling lows of a volatile first marriage.

So it angers Susan, wife of Darlington Football Club chairman George Reynolds, when people make crass assumptions about her as the "millionaire's moll" who has wheedled her way into sharing his £150m fortune.

Whispers of "gold-digger" have dogged her throughout her marriage to 65-year-old George, who is 24 years her senior.

"Some are just so quick to accuse me of marrying George for the wrong reasons, but they haven't seen us together. Those who have know the dynamics and call us a double-act," says 41-year-old Susan. "In some ways, our past hardships have helped to bond us together.".

But her face darkens as the past comes flooding back, a time which couldn't be further removed from the fantasy lifestyle she leads now.

"I've shared a cramped bedroom with my two children and another family in a women's refuge and slept under nothing more than curtains to keep me warm," she says. "I've had a lot of experiences that haunt me even now because they were so horrific. It's as if I've lived many different lives and I feel weather-beaten by them."

Far from being accustomed to a life of unfettered glamour, she cherishes every moment of it because of a distant fear that it could all disappear tomorrow.

"I'm so careful with money and how I spend it because I've known such poverty and I never ever want to go back to it," says Susan, who divides her time between the mansion near Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, a £1m holiday home in Marbella and a North London penthouse. I get a thrill every time I go on a first class plane journey and I keep all my expensive clothes for the 'best' occasions. I've got a real weakness for shoes - I've got about 60 pairs - but I wouldn't dream of sitting around at home in designer suits. It's just not in my nature."

While her self-made husband's rags-to-riches story inspires many, her own past is just as extraordinary. And everyone wants to know about it; fter doing the chat show circuit in England- Trisha, Vanessa and the Esther Show - Susan and George have received requests from Oprah Winfrey and David Frost for TV appearances.

"I feel surprised that people are interested in my story. I can use the coverage to urge women to take control, to be independent and not suffer in unhappy relationships in silence," she says.

Susan has only travelled five miles from her home village of Byers Green to the immaculate five-acre grounds of Witton Hall, Witton-le-Wear, but it's been a winding road.

Her sheltered home life ended when her 34-year-old boss fell for his pretty 18-year-old secretary. It was her first job and she was thrilled by the charm lavished on her by the older man. She ended up marrying him a year later and embarked on a turbulent 12-year marriage.

As a teenage housewife, her confidence started to ebb away and after the harrowing experience of delivering a stillborn baby, Susan felt herself in the grip of depression. A crippling fear of the outside world began to take control until she could only find solace locked up for hours in tiny cupboards and bathrooms.

"I'd just sit in there and cry for hours. I started making excuses to myself and to my husband so I wouldn't have to go out."

The depression culminated in an attempted suicide when she slit her wrists and was only saved when her mother found her by chance in a pool of blood.

A few years on, Susan became a mother of two, Alexis, now 19, and Paul, 17, and salvaged some of her lost confidence. It was then that her husband's business folded and holes in the relationship began to appear.

I was desperately unhappy in the marriage until I felt I couldn't take any more."

She eventually fled with the young children and found solace in a tiny room at Bishop Auckland's women's refuge. Penniless and frantic with worry about where the next meal was coming from, she feels eternally indebted to the women who mucked in to feed and clothe her ravaged young family.

"I'd never had to cope on my own before and it was a terrifying time. My mother was of the belief that a wife sat through a marriage even if it was a bad marriage. But I gradually taught myself to be a working mum."

She found herself working for £7,000-a-year at the refuge that taken her in. The work covered everything from driving a busload of rundown women to Scarborough to cheer them up, to forging new identities for those who had had every bone in their face broken by their husbands.

"It was such an emotional experience; I'll never forget the incredible women I was with and the great feeling of sisterhood we shared. At the same time, I saw women at their worst, tragic cases where women went back to men that had destroyed them."

Today, she is a passionate advocate of the refuge system, which she considers to be a unique safe-house for women in abusive or difficult relationships.

"We have a tremendous refuge system in this country but it's just so under-funded. Certainly in my experience, it was the last hope for so many of the wonderful women I met there who'd been mentally broken by the men in their lives."

Those healing days at the refuge inform her thinking even now.

"I have always urged my daughter to get a job, to be independent and never, ever to depend on a man. I would never let her stay in a bad marriage or suffer in silence and, thankfully, she's grown up to be fiercely independent.

"I got the shock of my life when my first marriage went wrong and I don't want Alexis to feel that. You really have to prepare your children for life."

Meeting George in 1991 was a turning point for her. After years of austerity and trauma, she had forgotten how to smile - but every time she met George she found herself roaring with laughter.

"He is such a warm person who always sees the positives in life. It's as if he never lost his youthful sense of fun. We're a perfect match - he pulls me out of my occasional pessimism and I help with his paperwork because he's dyslexic, and organise him whenever he needs me to."

Susan had no idea of George's millions until he took her to see his 'boat' which turned out to be a £7m yacht, moored stern -to-stern with Robert Maxwell's.

Married six years ago in Gleneagles, Scotland, she's had her fair share of the jet set lifestyle but she's never let the money change who she is. She's not too proud to do the dusting or sew curtains for her daughter's new home and she insists the family eats at least one meal together every day.

The people she cherishes most are the ones from way back who have kept her strong through all her hard times.

It's not the money, the diamonds or even the initialised gates of her mansion that make her feel lucky. It's the incredible love of friends and family that make her feel like the richest woman in the world.