Hear Me Out

by Sarah Harding

  To be honest, I think Mum needs the respite as much as I do, and I really need it. I guess what’s called for is some specialised medical care, and that’s what I’ll get here at The Christie.

  This week, I started my sessions of radiotherapy, so it’s like one thing on top of another. The radiotherapy leaves me tired, confused and weak most of the time. It wipes me out. It’s no wonder I’ve been a bit unsteady on my feet. I’d been told that radiotherapy isn’t generally as invasive as the chemo, but, quite honestly, the way I’ve been feeling after the first couple of sessions, I’ll take the chemo any day.

  It’s never a dull moment in hospital. They start their rounds at six, and from then on it feels like someone or other is coming in to do something every ten minutes: take blood, do my vitals, change my cannula, deliver a menu and take my order for lunch – today it’s tuna and cucumber with soda bread. Nice.

  Once again, I’m just so impressed and moved at the hard work of the caregivers in this place. They don’t stop.

  Today I’ve got a full schedule. Various appointments and tests, but with my head all over the place like it is, I can’t always remember what they are. I do know I have an MRI booked in, and I think that’s the big event of the day. Fingers crossed the findings are positive.

  While I’ve been sitting here in my hospital bed, Cheryl has WhatsApped me to see how I am. The girls have all been so supportive throughout this. It’s a really lovely feeling to know that they’re all thinking about me, and it’s great for us to finally be reconnecting.

  CHAPTER TEN

  For a while in 2006, I dated the actor Stephen Dorff, but the way that all came about was quite strange. It all started while Stephen was over filming in the UK. He’d seen me on the front of Arena magazine with the girls and decided he liked the look of me. It really was one of those ‘his people called my people’ situations. Not the way you’d expect a romance to start out, and it almost didn’t happen at all. Stephen had asked one of his assistants to get my number, so Angela from our management team called to tell me while my mum and I were getting our nails done in a salon in Hampstead.

  ‘Stephen Dorff has asked for your number,’ Angela said. ‘What should I tell his assistant?’

  I was a bit miffed, to be honest. ‘If he thinks I’m just dishing out my number to someone I don’t even know, Angela, he’s got another think coming,’ I said. ‘That’s not the way it works with me. If he wants to get in touch with me, tell his PA to send us his number. Then maybe I’ll call.’

  As it turned out, Stephen did send his phone number over, but once I’d got it I felt timid about calling him, after all my bravado, so I just left it for a while. Maybe I should just have let him call me after all. By the time I finally plucked up the courage to call him, he was in the airport lounge at Heathrow, ready to fly back to LA. I was a bit gutted to tell you the truth.

  The funny thing was, we got on quite well on that first call, and so we ended up staying in touch. In fact, we spoke quite often. It got to the stage, over the next few months, when we were literally talking every night … and for hours on end. Sometimes, we’d be on the phone chatting until the early hours. Well, it was the early hours for me; he was in Los Angeles, eight hours behind UK time. When he called me in the evening, it was two or three in the morning for me, so I’d invariably end up feeling exhausted during the day for weeks and weeks on end. I mean, I was hanging up with Stephen at 4am and then getting up to rehearse for our Chemistry tour, singing and dancing for hours at a time. I’ve already mentioned how much concentration I had to give when it came to choreography, so you can just imagine. That was mentally draining enough, without being up half the night for all that transatlantic canoodling!

  As tired as I was, the calls were quite romantic. Stephen had a lovely way about him and was always so sweet to me. Sometimes, he would even play the piano for me, which he did really well. He could sing well too. Like me, he’d never had any formal musical training, but he learned a lot from his father Steve Dorff (Sr), who is a well-known country music songwriter and producer.

  After many nights of talking for hours, there was something between us, even though we’d never even met. I think we were slowly falling in love with one another’s personalities, and that felt kind of nice after all the drama of Mikey and Calum. The nightly phones worked for me in another way in that they were something of a routine; something regular. At the time, that was good for me. By this time, we were on tour, and there was always the option to go out and get crazy. Having my routine, late-night calls with Stephen kept me on a good, steady level. Although I was absolutely knackered all the time, I couldn’t wait to meet him.

  That meeting was to be right before the final night of our Chemistry tour, on 3 June 2006, at the newly renovated Wembley Arena. It was in the midst of such an exciting time. Our first tour, What Will the Neighbours Say?, had been in concert halls and playhouses up and down the country, but here we were, playing arenas of 10,000-plus people.

  The day before the last show, I had a day off, so I went to meet him at his hotel: Blakes in Kensington. Of course, I was apprehensive. I mean, talking to someone is one thing, but an in-the-flesh meeting with a handsome Hollywood movie star is enough to make even the coolest girl’s heart beat a little faster. Plus, it was all so shrouded in secrecy, I remember feeling like I was going to meet James Bond! It’s funny, the first thing I thought when we met face-to-face was that he was shorter than I’d imagined, about five foot seven, but certainly very good-looking with a sexy smile – no complaints there. Anyway, what difference did a couple of inches matter when I’d already fallen for his personality.

  We chatted in the bar for quite some time after I got there. It felt weird putting a real face to the voice after all that time. It had been four months of over-the-phone courtship, and he hadn’t got bored and given up. For that, I had to give him kudos. Stephen was no disappointment either, and I have to admit the whole thing felt quite seductive. Electrifying even. I felt like we’d known one another for ages, and in a funny way, I suppose we had.

  I won’t go into all the details of the evening – a girl’s got to retain some mystery – but I did end up staying the night with him at Blakes.

  The next night, Stephen came to Wembley to see us on the final night of the tour. Later, he came along to the after-party at a club in London – which for the life of me I can’t remember the name of … chemo brain! Anyway, it was a great do; food and drink were flowing and a good time was had by all. Of course, there were so many people I had to thank and chat to at the party, I hardly got to see Stephen. He spent half the party looking for me. Unfortunately, and, some might say typically, I’d had one too many shots. So on top of all that food and a bit of dancing, I had to dash to the toilet to throw up. I remember hiding out there for a while until I felt better and was ready to face the party guests again – not to mention Stephen. Eventually, he found me just as I was emerging, refreshed and ready for round two. Luckily, I had some mints at the time.

  After that, we circled the party together, chatting with various people and having some more drinks. It was the thing when I was younger. You got sick after consuming too much alcohol, but then carried on drinking afterwards. Throw up and carry on! Not something I could ever do now.

  Anyway, at the end of the party Stephen and I somehow ended up back at Blakes together, but that night I just had a shower and we went to bed. There was no rumpy-pumpy of any description.

  A few weeks later, I was supposed to fly to New York to see him, but it all went tits up. I was shopping in Selfridges when I got a call to say that his plans had changed.

  Eventually, I planned a three-week trip to LA, so we planned to be together for that. I’d organised some meetings and songwriting sessions out there, and the plan was that I would use Stephen’s place as a base for the duration of my trip. Unfortunately, my extended stay seemed to freak him the fuck out; I remember his assistant telling me that he’d never had a girlfriend stay for more
than a couple of nights, and here I was staying for three weeks.

  It wasn’t like I was expecting him to be glued to me the whole time either. The idea was that I’d do my thing and he would do his. Girls Aloud were signed to EMI Music Publishing, so I had some meetings with a guy called Ed from the LA branch of our publishers, while Stephen was doing whatever he had to do.

  I realised things weren’t as they should be when, on a couple of occasions, he went out for meetings and then disappeared. He’d call to tell me he was on his way back, so I could get ready, and we could go out for a bite, but it would end with me all dressed up with nowhere to go. Stephen, meanwhile, had gone somewhere else, and then somewhere else after that.

  When we were together, Stephen was quieter than he’d been during our months of late-night phone calls. He liked to read or sit outside on the beautiful terrace of his house on Malibu Beach.

  It was clear that he felt uncomfortable with me being there, and I felt uneasy being there, too. One morning, I had breakfast with one of his PAs and I told her how I felt.

  ‘I guess he can be a bit of a brat when he wants to be,’ she said. ‘It’s just the way it is with him sometimes. I guess you either put up with it or you don’t.’

  ‘You know what, babe?’ I said. ‘I don’t think I will. Do you think you could find me a room at the Viceroy in Santa Monica?’

  I ended up at the Viceroy and had some more meetings with Ed, who agreed to set me up with some great co-writers. I remember suddenly feeling alone while I was staying at the hotel, with not much to do. At the time, Nadine was going out with Desperate Housewives actor Jesse Metcalfe, so she was over in LA with him. We hung out a couple of times at the Sky Bar, but at the time they were hard to pin down, so our plans didn’t always work out. There were times in between my writing sessions that I was at such a loss at what to do, with no real friends in the city; I remember driving to The Beverly Centre a few times to visit the pet store just so I could hang out with the puppies.

  Eventually Ed set me up a meeting with Diane Warren, who’d written songs for Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga, Cher and Beyoncé to name a tiny few. It was so great meeting with her; she was lovely, and I had so much admiration for everything she’d done. Diane actually reminded me of Chrissie Hynde, whose song ‘I’ll Stand By You’ had given Girls Aloud their second number one in 2004. Diane had listened to some Girls Aloud tracks but said she wished she could have heard my voice more in among the girls. At the time, that made me feel a bit sad. I guess that was before I’d really had my chance to shine vocally within the band.

  While I was at the Viceroy, I got the most hideous food poisoning and had to miss some of my co-writing sessions. I started to feel like the entire trip had been a bit of a disaster. First, there’d been the whole thing with Stephen and now this. After my meetings with Ed, I really thought this could be the start of something great – a chance to write songs with teams who were writing for artists like Tina Turner and also an emerging artist called Robin Thicke – but something as stupid as a few mouthfuls of dodgy food had thrown it all up in the air. I was acutely aware that my potential co-writers would think that I wasn’t committed. If I couldn’t commit a first time, they weren’t going to bother giving me a second chance. I was bummed out to say the least.

  It wasn’t long before I was due to leave to come home, so I somehow pulled myself together and forced myself out of the hotel to my last few co-writing sessions. I did see Stephen again, too. He came out and met me with Nadine, and called to ask if I wanted to go out for a bite to eat. There was no real animosity, but when he didn’t turn up to meet me one day, I just stopped believing in him. He obviously had other priorities now, which I found strange because, for all those months, his priority had been to call me every night for hours on end. It rang in my head what the people who worked for him had told me – that they had seen him behave this way before. It wasn’t just me, so that was that.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  While I was in hospital last week, I had some news that really hit hard. I’m not sure I’ve even really processed it yet. I’m not even sure how a person can process that kind of news.

  An MRI scan revealed that I have another tumour, either at the base of my spine or on my brain. I knew something was up. It felt like I’d been wearing a hat that was too tight for too long. One scan revealed lesions between my hair and my skin that were swollen. An MRI revealed another tumour, which means that the spread of the disease has worsened, as had my prognosis. This tumour is the thing that scares me more than anything because I think it will be the thing that affects me the most.

  I don’t know what it’s going to do, but it’s there. There was an option for radiotherapy on my skull but I don’t want to go through that and lose my hair at this stage, especially with no guarantees at the end of it.

  ‘At the end of the day, we’re fighting multiple different areas now,’ I told the doctors. ‘We’ve got a new chemotherapy plan, so I’d rather stick to that.’ It might seem vain thinking about my hair, but my thinking was that if there’s a chance I’ve only got six months, then I’ve got six months. Losing my hair probably wasn’t going to change that, so if there’s another way to manage the disease or treat it, then let’s do that. I don’t want to feel like I have to spend whatever time I have left hiding away.

  My new regimen of treatment includes this oral chemotherapy, where I take ten pills a day. So now I’m having a dose of chemo, then two weeks of pills, then a week’s break. After that, it all starts over again. At the moment, it’s a new thing so I feel like I’m sitting here waiting for whatever side effects might come, although I have no idea what they might be. All I know is that my body aches like absolute hell: my neck, my back, my chest.

  The way things are going, I’m going to end up with a Stannah stair lift and a walking frame, shouting at kids in the street like a very pissed-off old woman.

  OK, so I’m not exactly there yet, but, I’m not going to lie, I do feel like I’m missing a lot of life.

  It’s very hard thinking about it and talking about it, so my plan is to just crack on. I want to get this book done, and doing it gives me something else to focus on rather than pain, medication and chemo.

  In 2006, the band agreed to participate in the Most Haunted spin-off show, Ghosthunting with … Girls Aloud. Well, I say the band; in the end only four of us ended up doing it, as poor Nadine was too scared. This was the first-ever episode of the show, with Nicola, Cheryl, Kimberley and me looking for ghosts in two separate places in North Wales. One of them was Plas Teg, which is a Grade I listed Jacobean house, said to be one of the most haunted houses in Wales.

  Yvette Fielding, the primary host of the show, took us around the place where there were all sorts of weird banging and noises and spooky goings-on. Going in there, I was billy-big-bollocks, confident that everything that happened was going to be a set-up, designed to scare the crap out of us. I’d watched all the Most Haunted shows and loved them, so I was really quite into it, but I knew a lot of it was just scary fun. I have to admit, there was a definite shift in my attitude as the show went on, and I started to feel like there really was something to it all. At a certain point, my voice very clearly went from ultra-cocky to ‘please don’t hurt us’. Some of the other girls were just as bad. I remember Nicola was quite scared. She’d been relatively quiet for a while until her heavy Liverpudlian accent rang out in the darkness.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ And, ‘Get me the fuck out of here!’ I love all the girls’ varied accents, and I’m pretty spot on with the impersonations. Nadine’s is probably the hardest – that strong Northern Irish twang. If I’m relaxed and have had a couple of drinks, I can usually get it down pat.

  During a seance, objects were being thrown around the room. It was supposedly the presence of some squire who used to work there and who didn’t like women. At one point something went flying past my ear, there was a bang, and I screamed. After that, I was a complete wreck, and all m
y bravado disappeared, especially after the loud bang that made us all scream and run out. It’s pretty hilarious to watch back. There was one funny moment in another room where Cheryl said, ‘If you’re here, just tap the fucking table!’ It tapped, loudly, and I swear there was nobody in that room but us. After another fast, screaming exit, I turned to Cheryl in the darkness.

  ‘Cheryl! What the fuck did you do that for?’

  The other place we went on Ghosthunting was Crossley Hospital, which was an old tuberculosis sanatorium in Cheshire. It was virtually derelict, but there was a morgue and another part of the building where the nurses used to live. Again, Nicola eventually bailed on the group, but I followed suit pretty soon afterwards. Ultimately, I gathered my nerve to rejoin Cheryl and Kimberley again, but when somebody started throwing stones at us in the basement of the building, we all decided that enough was enough. We all headed for the safety of the taxi, while Yvette stayed on to face the evil spirit. It was terrifying at the time, but actually one of my favourite things we did on TV. I loved it.

  In 2008 we made a TV series called The Passions of Girls Aloud for ITV2. The premise of the show was that each one of us had an episode demonstrating something we were passionate about other than singing. Nicola’s was creating a make-up range, Cheryl’s was street dancing, Kimberley tried out in a West End musical, and I was to play in a polo tournament, training in the UK and in Argentina. Nadine was supposed to be conducting an orchestra, but I don’t think she’d ever been all that keen on the idea of doing the show, so it didn’t end up happening. She was always the most reserved as far as that kind of stuff went.