Hear Me Out

by Sarah Harding

  I guess that was a sad thing to admit, but after the way things had been for the past couple of years, it was the truth. The funny thing is, after I finally went public about my diagnosis, a few people have come out of the woodwork who I haven’t seen or spoken to for ages. Acquaintances who have my number but haven’t contacted me for years, suddenly messaging me: ‘Are you all right, babe?’ or ‘Devastated to hear your news’. It feels like they’ve seen something that they think is a big news story and message me purely because they have my number in their phone. ‘Have you heard about Sarah Harding?’ they say to their friends. ‘It’s so sad. I’ve just sent her a personal message.’ There’s a difference between those people and the people I can call real friends – the ones who’ve stuck with me through everything. As I said earlier, I can count my real friends on one hand.

  Peter said that I could totally trust him not to tell anyone. He said he would help me as much as he could, and, as I had no management or representation at the time, he would steer the ship if and when the time came to make an announcement.

  A while into my treatment, someone alerted me to a tweet that somebody had put out. It said, ‘Does anybody know why Sarah Harding is at The Christie Hospital?’

  I’m not going to lie, I completely freaked out when I saw it. I think I’d built up the idea of nobody finding out about my illness so much that this sudden chink in the armour set off major alarm bells in me. Surely now people were going to start asking questions. The press would start digging.

  I called Peter, who agreed that it might not be long before the tweet started circulating among fans and people started asking questions.

  Not long after that, someone at the hospital sent me a tweet saying that she had sat by my bedside one night. It was a public tweet rather than a private message, so now the cat was really out of the bag.

  This meant it was probably time to ‘go public’. Peter suggested we should do this via my social media platforms, which he said he would help me reactivate. This would be preferable to an exclusive press interview, which he thought could look cheap and open me up to all kinds of unwanted drama with the media. If I made my own short statement through my own social media, the announcement would be on my terms, rather than it having the spin of a journalist. I trusted him, so agreed to follow his advice.

  Before the announcement, I would have to tell my family, friends and loved ones. There was no way I wanted people I hadn’t yet told to find out through a news bulletin, or through rumours on the internet. While I geared up for that, Peter contacted Twitter and Instagram to get all my login details – which I’d long forgotten, having not used them for two years. After that, he made a little schedule for the week, indicating how it would all unfold. With news like this, we knew we had to be prepared. Part of that schedule would be to let my Girls Aloud bandmates know. I asked Peter if he could arrange to meet the other girls from the band and tell them personally. Meanwhile, Mum and I could tell anyone that I felt needed to know. This included other people in my family and people who were close to us.

  Nadine was in Ireland, so he told her over the phone, but he met all the other girls at Cheryl’s house, and delivered the news to them together.

  Once that was done, on Wednesday, 26 August, at 10am, I took to Instagram and Twitter for the first time in two years to share my news.

  Hi everyone, I hope you are all keeping well during these uncertain times. I’ve not posted on here for so long, thank you to everyone who has reached out to check in on me, it really does mean a lot.

  I feel right now is the right time to share what’s been going on. There’s no easy way to say this, and it doesn’t feel real even writing it, but here goes.

  Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and a couple of weeks ago I received the devastating news that the cancer has advanced to other parts of my body. I’m currently undergoing weekly chemotherapy sessions, and I am fighting as hard as I possibly can.

  I understand this might be shocking to read on social media, and that really isn’t my intention. But last week it was mentioned online that I had been seen in hospital, so I feel now is the time to let people know what’s going on, and this is the best way I can think of to do so. My amazing mum, family and close friends are helping me through this, and I want to say a thank you to the wonderful NHS doctors and nurses who have been and continue to be heroes.

  I’m doing my very best to keep positive and will keep you updated here with how I’m getting on. In the meantime, I hope you’ll all understand and respect my request for privacy during this difficult time. Sending you all so much love … xx.

  It was so essential for me to explain things in my words and not have the story leaked or reported incorrectly. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of control over my life at that point in time; this announcement was at least one thing I could do on my own terms. We knew that the press would call for further clarification, so we added contact details for Peter’s management company and Simon Jones PR. Simon is a close friend of Peter’s and also Cheryl and Nadine’s publicist. Now, when the press enquired, we could tell them that at this time, what I’d written in the post was all there was to say on the matter.

  Sure enough, within six minutes of the post going live, the story was on every news site and every radio and TV news bullet-in. It was out. In fact, Kirsty, one of the Fascination team, told Peter she stepped off the train at Euston at 10.30am, and it was all over the LED news screens around the station. In the week that followed, Peter told me that 100,000 new people followed my Instagram account. Isn’t it strange how that kind of news affects people?

  I was in turmoil at home that week. There seemed to be so much going on. Apart from the terrible worry of the illness itself, I was upset and freaking out about what everyone else was saying. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail ran with a headline: ‘Britain’s most glamorous hell-raiser: How Girls Aloud’s “Hardcore Harding” became famous for wild partying, explosive love affairs and stints in rehab, but now faces a battle against cancer’.

  It was full of stories of me being a wild party girl, of me falling out of clubs, of me being a ‘caner’. They illustrated the piece with the now-famous photo of me drinking from a bottle of whiskey. It was a horrible story. Even the messages on the Daily Mail message board commented on how the piece was below the belt. Everyone else was kinder with their stories. In my statement, I’d asked the press to respect my privacy because I was terrified there would be photographers camped outside Mum’s house or following me to and from the hospital on my treatment days. Mum had enough on her plate without fending off journalists on her doorstep. In fairness, the press has so far respected my wishes and I’m grateful for that.

  What was really lovely was the messages of support I received either via social media or through people contacting Peter’s management company, Fascination Management. Not just from friends and followers, but from others in the entertainment industry, some of whom I didn’t know that well, but who had taken the time to reach out with kind thoughts. Knowing how I must be feeling after the announcement, Peter collected them into an email and sent them over to me. I was quite overwhelmed. Among many others, there were messages from Fearne Cotton, Perez Hilton, Duncan James, Sadie Frost, Fifi Geldof, Keith Lemon, Katie Price, Ella Henderson, Keisha Buchanan from The Sugababes, Shayne Ward, Susanna Reid, All Saints and Rylan Clark-Neal. I was very moved, reading them all.

  In those first weeks, my diagnosis, and the thought of all the treatment that was to follow, just felt like the highest and most terrifying mountain to climb. It was comforting to know that people were not just thinking about me and reaching out, but also spurring me on to beat this thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Hearing from all the girls again really lifted my spirits. I was so happy when Peter suggested organising a couple of days away so that all of us could be together. I guess you could call it a Girls Aloud reunion.

  The plan was for us to go to Soho Farmhouse, which is a privat
e members club and hotel on 100 acres of farmland near the Cotswolds – part of the Soho House Group. We knew it would be low-key and private there, and besides that, it was only two hours from my mum’s house, where I’d been living during my cancer treatment. A trip to London would have been too far, and it didn’t seem like a good idea for me to be that far away from the hospital and my doctors.

  On the one hand, I was really looking forward to hanging out with the girls again. Apart from anything else, having cancer and going through treatment often feels like you’re living on another planet, separated from the rest of the population. Everyone else around you seems to be going about their business: going to work; going out to dinner; hanging out with friends etc. Meanwhile, a person going through chemo has an entirely different experience of the world. It’s like you’re living in this weird bubble. So, when I was feeling up to it, any opportunity to get out into the world had to be grabbed.

  I did have my reservations and fears about the reunion get-together, though. It was going to be the first time we’d all seen one another in about eight years. That in itself was nerve-wracking enough, but the fact that I felt and looked the way I did made it worse. Going through cancer is bad enough, but the side effects of all the stuff that’s supposed to make you better can sometimes be as difficult to deal with as the disease itself. The steroids I’d been taking made me look bloated, and I’d lost my eyelashes due to the chemo. As the time for the reunion drew closer, I was picturing them all turning up looking fabulous and glamorous, while I looked … well, like I did. Not myself. Not my best. It’s not that I thought they wouldn’t understand or be judgemental, of course; it’s just that when we were together as a group, part of our thing was the glamour. As a band, we all had our own styles and looks, but there was a sexiness and glamorousness about Girls Aloud that I just wasn’t able to rise to then.

  Still, I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so a few days before the trip I went shopping to get some new outfits. A friend of mine has a boutique near Mum’s place, and she was happy to help me out, finding some new gear.

  On the day, I arrived at Soho Farmhouse just as Nicola, Nadine and Kimberley pulled up, so actually, the reunion moment was mainly in the car park.

  We all stayed in the same big house, and we had the most amazing Japanese dinner delivered in from Pen Yen, which is one of the beautiful restaurants within the farm.

  By then, I’d loosened up and started to enjoy myself. There was much reminiscing. We decided to watch all the episodes of Girls Aloud: Off the Record, which was the documentary-style behind-the-scenes TV show we’d made for E4 in 2006. The show followed us in the run-up to our Chemistry tour that year, along with the filming of the ‘Whole Lotta History’ video in Paris. Around that time, we were also doing promotion in Australia and New Zealand, Ibiza and Greece. All this stuff was included in the episode, which, looking back with hindsight, seemed hilarious. We were all so different then; there was a sort of sweet naivety about us. I remember Cheryl in particular almost watching her old self through fingers over her eyes, mortified at some of her comments and antics. There was a difference in how the girls were then to the sophisticated women they’d since become. I’m not so sure about me. I think I’ve continuously remained brash and lairy. Maybe that’s something to be proud of.

  Nadine was particularly funny during the watching of the show.

  ‘I’ve never seen this,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember doing any of this.’

  Peter reminded us that none of us wanted to do the show in the first place and that he was the one who’d persuaded us all to do it. The rest of us had all agreed eventually. Nadine had been the only one who stuck to her guns and said no, but in the end was outnumbered. Maybe that’s why she didn’t remember doing it – perhaps she’d erased it from her memory.

  Watching Off the Record provoked lots of laughing and even more cringing, but I have to say, I looked on fondly.

  ‘You only miss this when it’s gone,’ I told the girls.

  My classic scene was where I crashed a Ferrari. Peter got a call at the record label asking, ‘Are we insured for this?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Over the years, Girls Aloud worked with many charities and, given my situation, it’s something that I would like to continue with if I can. Mainly for Macmillan’s or The Christie Charitable Fund, which provides enhanced services for The Christie Hospital, over and above what’s provided by the NHS. The Christie is one of the largest cancer treatment centres of its kind, and the hospital where I’ve received the majority of my treatment. What I’d really love is to put on some sort of charity gala or big fundraising event by way of a massive thank you. It’s something I’ve talked to Cheryl about, and, having done so much for The Prince’s Trust, it’s something she feels she might be able to help me with.

  It would undoubtedly be something positive to look forward to and to get dressed up for. Just find me a good stylist and a make-up artist, and I’ll be there. Let’s face it, I still have to look good standing next to those other four girls, if they come and join me.

  Even if I’m not around to see an event through, I need to let the people there know how grateful I am to them for all they’ve done for me.

  It’s strange, I keep thinking about funerals at the moment. It might sound morbid, but it’s hard not to at this stage: cemeteries, plots, burials, what kind of send-off I’d like and how it would all go. It’s all there front and centre in my mind. I’ve also thought about an epitaph for my grave. I’m thinking ‘FFS’ might be a good one. It’s probably been my most used phrase throughout this, with one crappy event following another. ‘For fuck’s sake!’

  In a couple of days, we have a meeting at the hospital to discuss the possibility of an alternative chemo treatment. In truth, I don’t even know if there is one. What I do know is that if the one I’m on now is the only one they have, then I’m in trouble. I just can’t cope with the underlying effects of it, and I don’t want to any more. Feeling as I do is not how I want to live out whatever time I have left. If this is going to be it, then I would prefer to stop chemotherapy altogether. Instead, I’d take some CBD to help me manage the pain, and leave it at that. I know at some point I will have to make a call on what I want my quality of life to be, and if the doctors can’t do much more for me, then I’d rather come off the chemo and move on. I know now that the disease has progressed further and is running through me. However, I don’t know where I am with the original breast cancer site at the moment, as I’m post-radiotherapy and awaiting another test.

  Still, the tumours on my lung have gotten more prominent, and then, of course, there are the brain lesions. They are what worry me the most at the moment. I think they are what’s causing me to feel dizzy and confused sometimes. I feel like a 90-year-old a lot of the time. I’m not steady on my feet, and if I start having dizzy spells and seizures, who knows what will happen? I really don’t want to be put into an induced coma again, that’s for sure. When it comes down to it, I’m just not living my life how I should be, and at some point soon, I’ll have to make a decision about how I might change and take control of that.

  On 17 November 2020, my 39th birthday, I went to The Christie for my chemo, but when I got there, my treatment room wasn’t ready.

  ‘Can you just hang out in the coffee room, Sarah?’ the nurses said. ‘We just need to change the sheets on the bed; it won’t take long.’

  When I eventually walked into the room, there were cupcakes, bags of presents and cards. The nurses had laid on a little birthday surprise for me. I can hardly put into words what this small, simple gesture meant to me. I’d always tried to be nice to the nurses, to crack a joke and make them laugh while they were looking after me. I guess I must have done something right to receive such kindness from them that day. It was quite overwhelming.

  Right now, I’m trying to find joy whenever and however I can. It might be roasting a chicken or watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. It’s definitely sp
ending quality time with Mum and seeing my friends whenever I can. True, life has got so much smaller, and my priorities have changed, but the other Sarah Harding is still in there somewhere too, trust me. Given half a chance, I know she’d be back with a vengeance, dancing on tables and laughing and joking with everyone. Making people smile is one of the things I’m missing most because it’s what makes me smile.

  I think what I’d really like to do is to see everyone – all my friends, all together. One last time. Then I’d throw a great big fuck-off party as a way to say thank you and goodbye.

  Wouldn’t that be amazing?

  3. My brother and me!

  4. Family: My mum is still my biggest supporter!

  5. Dad and me when I was younger.

  6. Peter, mine and my mum’s good friend, always on hand to give me advice when I needed it.

  7. My love of music is the thing that has always kept me going.

  8. I was the last person to be announced by Davina, and I was utterly overcome at being chosen to be part of Girls Aloud. It’s been a wild ride since.

  9. I am so proud of everything we went on to achieve.

  10. Friends. The ones I’ll forever love.

  12. Over the years, I’ve been lucky to have been invited to some amazing events. And even luckier to have made special friends in the industry, including Peter loraine (top left), Terry Ronald (bottom left) and ex-manager Hillary (below middle). But it was Mousey, who I first met on set of the ‘Sound of the Underground’ video, who would change my life by introducing me to Tommy (top middle).

  13. My fans have always been brilliant, and have done so much for me. The Sarah Harding Addicts in particular have always been there for me in difficult times.