One morning over breakfast, Suzanne Heywood’s Yorkshireman father announced their family would soon be leaving the UK. He wanted to spend the next three years sailing round the world, recreating Captain Cook’s third voyage.
But what was pitched to the then-six-year-old as “the adventure of a lifetime” actually became her 12-year nightmare.
After sailing through storms – one so brutal that Suzanne’s skull was smashed when their boat Wavewalker was overturned – she describes growing up deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water.
For months at a time, no one knew where they were. Suzanne was eventually abandoned in New Zealand as a 16-year-old, with her younger brother Jon, while her parents continued sailing in Fiji.
The years of neglect infused deep emotional scars. Now aged 54, the former civil servant has penned her memoir of a jaw-dropping childhood at sea, drawing on detailed diaries she wrote at the time.
As she chats to the Weekly over Zoom from her home in London, Suzanne likens her “traumatic” upbringing to Stockholm syndrome.
She didn’t really want to admit it to others for decades and made many excuses for her parents, Gordon and Mary Cook.
“I knew that as soon as I started to write my book, I would jeopardise my relationship with my parents,” she admits candidly.
“So I put it off. I had a superficial relationship with them, which was based on ‘as long as we don’t talk about the past and I don’t criticise anything’, it was fine.
“But I don’t consider mine to be a ‘victim’ story,” she points out. “It’s a survivor story. Looking back, I think, ‘Good on you – you got out!'”
In July 1976, after setting off on the epic voyage from Plymouth Sound, it was merely six months later when their 21-metre schooner was caught in a storm that nearly ended it all.
Life at sea with parents Gordon and Mary, and brother Jon.
Suzanne suffered a severe skull injury and underwent multiple brain surgeries without anaesthetic on a primitive island, carried out by a doctor who spoke only French.
On top of this, she remembers gnawing hunger and loneliness. There was also only one working child’s life jacket, which went to Jon.
“I lived in this world, where from the outside, it looked pretty perfect,” says Suzanne. “We’re on a beautiful boat, sailing around the South Pacific, and my parents presented that idyllic picture to the world. But from the inside, I was isolated. I was malnourished – there was no calcium on the boat and we ran out of water.”
Her lowest point, however, came after Suzanne had lived on Wavewalker for almost nine years. The family had arrived in Auckland, where her dad told them he had got a job near Rotorua.
Two months later, Gordon announced another decision – that the children, then aged 16 and 15 – were going to live in two tiny baches by Lake Rotoiti on their own, so that Jon could start going to a school there but Suzanne would continue to self-learn by post. Her parents then sailed to Fiji.
“I just can’t believe you can abandon your kids like that,” she exclaims.
For the cameras, Suzanne’s childhood looked carefree.
“Being in New Zealand was the most difficult year of my life, even though Lake Rotoiti was one of the most beautiful places in the world.
“The bach I was living in on my own was incredibly basic… barely any heating, a single bedroom and a wee galley kitchen. The only adult I knew in New Zealand was this friend of my parents who lived in Auckland.”
One night in despair, Suzanne picked up the Yellow Pages and called Childline. With a quavering voice, she told the counsellor on the other end how she sat alone all day trying to teach herself.
“I couldn’t go to anyone in authority because you’re effectively telling on your parents,” she reflects. “I was also left facing immigration issues due to my lack of a visa. I knew at any moment if I didn’t get the visa, they would deport me.”
Suzanne ended up joining the local youth rotary club Rotoract and raised money by picking fruit. At 17, through determination, she had saved enough to fly back to the UK for an interview at the University of Oxford.
Happier on dry land and studying at Oxford.
When her husband, British cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, passed away from cancer in 2018, Suzanne (officially Lady Suzanne) took their three children, Jonathan, 21, and twins Lizzie and Peter, 19, back to Aotearoa as research for the book.
Suzanne says although she feels robbed of her childhood, she can still look back and call Wavewalker “home”.
As we talk, the author pivots her laptop around to show the schooner’s black compass sitting on her bookshelf, which was gifted to her while writing the book.
“I was so emotional to get it back!” says Suzanne, who is chief operating officer of the Exor Group. “I look at it and feel really proud that I escaped from my childhood. That I didn’t allow my parents to define what I could be and came back to the UK and created a very successful business career.
“I also had a very happy marriage. And that was hugely healing for me because I grew up in a world where I didn’t have unconditional love from my parents.”
Wavewalker: Breaking Free by Suzanne Heywood, (Harper Collins, $37.99) is out now.
