Cheryl: My Story

by Cole, Cheryl

  Standing up for us as a band and fronting up to the label was usually my job. I was forever asking what the next single was going to be, and if I didn’t agree with the choice I told the bosses in no uncertain terms, ‘This is a load of crap. We’re not doing it!’

  I said that of ‘Love Machine’, actually, which looking back is quite embarrassing as it became one of our best-selling singles. It’s hardly surprising I became known as the ‘gobby one’ of the group, but I wasn’t outspoken for the sake of it, I just did it when I thought I needed to fight our corner.

  We’d never had any media training and Louis Walsh was nowhere to be seen in terms of managing us, so if anybody said anything bad about us I just used to say exactly what was on my mind. I remember a few years down the line Lily Allen said something bitchy about Nicola and Sarah, and I wasn’t having it. Stuff like that bugged the shit out of me and I had a massive go at her, publicly. It was the same with Ulrika Jonsson and Charlotte Church, who both criticised me in years to come. I didn’t ask for their opinion and I would never have wanted to start a public spat, but I retaliated because it’s in my character to protect myself and the people I care about.

  Within the group, though, we honestly never had any bust ups, apart from one morning when Nadine was literally three hours late getting in the car and we all completely lost it.

  ‘You’re taking the p***!’ we all shouted at her. ‘You’ve been getting later and later every day and we can’t be sitting around waiting for you like this!’ I think she had just overslept, and she was very apologetic and never did it again.

  It was a miracle we didn’t fall out more often. In the first couple of years the five of us were practically only apart to sleep because the workload was that intense. We’d eat together and chill out together, often watching Friends on TV in each others’ flats or going out. We loved to go to clubs in London and we’d drink disgusting bubble-gum shots that were sky blue. I was always the worst drinker, never able to keep up with the others.

  ‘How come you can all drink for fun and I can’t?’ I’d complain the next day when I had a banging headache and the rest of the girls were all completely fine. I’d get horribly drunk after just a couple of glasses of wine or vodkas and Red Bull, while the other girls would just be buzzing and having a good time. Even Sarah, being the party animal of the group, never got into some of the states I did. Once I actually got refused into a club because I was so drunk. ‘I’m mortified,’ I said to Nicola the next morning. I even had to get her to tell me exactly what had happened, because I couldn’t remember half of it.

  All the other girls had boyfriends, some more serious than others, but I was never in a relationship in those early years. I had my share of dates, but nothing serious. I think I was just too scared to let anybody in after what I’d gone through before, and the pain both Dave and Jason had caused me in my teens had not been forgotten, not yet.

  ‘You can use the main bathroom and I’ll have the bedroom with the en-suite,’ I said to Nicola on the day we moved in to Princess Park Manor. She used to put on so much fake tan and it was always absolutely everywhere, and I just couldn’t be doing with sharing a bathroom with her.

  The apartment was very swanky and it was hard to believe we actually lived there. It was all newly painted with wood flooring and clean lines. There was a balcony off the living room and an absolutely massive TV. The first time we saw it we laughed our heads off. ‘Look at the state of us!’ we giggled.

  The complex had been built around an old Victorian mental hospital that had been converted into loads of luxury apartments, set in acres of parkland. Security guards manned the gates and inside there were tennis courts, a pool and a gym that had been built in an old converted church.

  Despite all the luxury, Nicola and I hadn’t learned much since our days in the Popstars house and we still managed to live like students. ‘Shall I make us a bacon butty?’ was about the extent of Nicola’s cooking skills, and she’d put the rashers in the microwave. We left sweet wrappers on the floor, pizza boxes all over the kitchen worktops and our bedrooms were always a complete tip with clothes, shoes, make-up and cans of hairspray strewn everywhere.

  We turned it into a flea-pit at first, to be honest. We were still so young and, with working such long hours all the time, we found it almost impossible to take care of ourselves and an apartment properly.

  ‘Have you worked out how to use the washing machine yet?’ my mam asked a few weeks after we moved in.

  ‘Er, funny you should say that, Mam. I was going to ask you to show us when you came down.’ Sometimes we would literally have no clean clothes to put on unless my mother came down and did the washing for us.

  The only improvement I made to my lifestyle was that I did start to exercise and think about my diet a bit more, and one day I read an article in a magazine about Jennifer Aniston doing the Atkins Diet.

  ‘That sounds good,’ I said to Nicola, who didn’t pay much attention, as she never had to worry about dieting.

  ‘She looks amazing on Friends. I’m going to get the book.’

  For the first time in my life I began to educate myself about the different food groups, and I started to eat meat, eggs, bacon and cheese and avoid fruit, veg and carbohydrates. The weight started to fall off, and over the next few months I actually lost 16 pounds.

  At the same time I was working out on the treadmill in the gym because I didn’t have a clue how to use any of the other equipment. Kimberley would come with me and we’d just run for as long as we could, watching how many calories we burned.

  The label had obviously noticed that a bit of exercise wouldn’t do us any harm, and they got us a personal trainer, who ran a boot camp for us in a gym near our recording studios in Kent. It was down in a little village called Westerham, and the studios were in the home of our music producer, Brian Higgins, who ran the record production company Xenomania and was responsible for all of Girls Aloud’s music.

  Louis was out of the picture completely by now, although on paper he was still our manager. I think in those first two years we probably had two phone calls from him, so we were on a huge learning curve, trying to be across every nook and cranny of the business and do the best we could with absolutely no experience whatsoever and very little help.

  ‘We’re putting you in a cage,’ I remember being told when we made our very first video, for ‘Sound of the Underground’.

  ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Sounds amazing!’

  I was so grateful to have got into the band and to be doing what I’d always wanted to do that if they’d said, ‘Go out and do it for free’, I’d have done so willingly.

  That first videoshoot was a total eye-opener. It was done on a limited budget, nothing seemed to go smoothly and the styling was awful. It felt like we shot it and re-shot it for 24 solid hours, stuck in a freezing cold warehouse, and afterwards we were all half-dead.

  On photoshoots I had one technique, and that was to smile.

  ‘What are we meant to be doing?’ we’d say to each other constantly.

  ‘Just smile!’ we’d say, because we didn’t have a clue what else to do.

  We never complained about anything though really, because we loved being busy and we were all young and fresh and raring to go. Nothing was a problem.

  We would often bump into other bands like Busted and Big Brovaz, who were ‘on promo’ at the same time as us, which meant we’d be crossing paths with them at various TV and radio studios. It was always exciting because we felt so un-famous compared to them, but it was amazing how quickly it all became so normal to see people I’d been in awe of not very long before. I’d say ‘hi’ to the boys exactly like I would with my friends back in Newcastle, and we all started giving each other familiar, knowing looks, as if to say, ‘Good luck with your umpteenth interview of the day, we know exactly what it’s like …’

  There were always a few stories doing the rounds about boys I was meant to be dating or having relationships with. One of the
m was supposedly Duncan from Blue, which is hilarious, as he later came out as gay. I was forever on the phone telling my dad, ‘Don’t read that. It’s a load of crap.’

  ‘OK, sweetheart,’ he’d say. ‘As long as you’re alright. You are alright, aren’t ya?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, I’m more than alright. I’m living me dream,’ I’d say, because finally it was true. The court case was behind me, Girls Aloud were doing well, and I had a very strong feeling that my life could only get better.

  6

  ‘Ashley treats me like a princess’

  ‘Can Ashley have your number?’

  It was the footballer Jermaine Pennant, and I knew he was talking about his friend Ashley Cole.

  ‘No,’ I said straight away. It was a gut reaction. I knew what footballers were like and I wasn’t interested, even though I did think Ashley was very cute-looking. ‘Absolutely not.’

  Of the two or three guys I had dated in the last year or so, one had been a footballer, and he’d messed with my head a bit. It wasn’t anything serious, but he was the sort of guy who said he’d phone and then left it for weeks. I couldn’t be bothered with it all, and I’d said to Kimberley just days before that I was more than happy being single. We were in a busy phase with the band in any case, with a new single and album to get out, and we were even thinking about planning our first ever tour, which I was really excited about.

  I’d said ‘hi’ to Ashley a few times when we’d seen each other around Princess Park Manor. He had an apartment on the other side to where Nicola and I lived and I’d see him out on the tennis courts. One time, after he’d played for England in Euro 2004, I’d said ‘congratulations’ because I knew the team had done well.

  Ashley was very bashful and I think he even blushed, which I found quite sweet.

  ‘There’s Ashley again,’ Kimberley said to me one afternoon in July 2004. We were on our way to the shops to buy electric fans because the weather was so warm, and Ashley was standing beside the tennis courts fiddling with something on his Aston Martin. We pulled over in Kimberley’s car to see what the problem was.

  ‘Have you got a jump lead?’ Ashley asked shyly. ‘We’ve run the battery down.’ It turned out he’d been listening to loud music from his car’s sound system while he and Jermaine played tennis.

  ‘I think I have,’ Kimberley said, which made me laugh. It was typical of Kimberley to be prepared for every eventuality. We gave the boys the jump lead and left them to it, and a few days later Ashley came over to me when he saw me around the complex.

  ‘I wanted to say thank you,’ he said. ‘And can I have your number please?’ I think he’d had a drink and he didn’t look as shy as before, but I gave him the same answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not interested.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  I was on my way to the gym, and I walked off thinking to myself, ‘He’s gorgeous, actually.’

  The next time I bumped into Ashley, not long afterwards, I was secretly pleased when he asked me yet again for my number.

  ‘OK then,’ I said, and I don’t think Ashley was prepared for that answer.

  ‘I’ll, er, text you,’ he said, blushing and smiling.

  The first text I received from him a few days later said: ‘Wot u up 2?’ to which I replied: ‘Not much, wot u up 2?’

  We started texting each other loads after that, and we were both beginning to wonder where we could go from there.

  ‘We can’t go out, can we?’ I said to Nicola.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘Not unless you want the press out with you. What are you gonna do then?’

  Ashley’s friends were all saying the same thing, and he texted me one day and invited me over to his flat for a drink. I was cool with that. I didn’t know what to expect and I just went round in my jeans and a jumper and thought ‘whatever’.

  He had a friend there when I arrived, who stayed for a few hours, which looking back is funny and typical of Ashley, and then he and I had a glass of wine together. He’d eaten a takeaway with his friend, and he put out a few nibbles but didn’t cook for me. I can say that with absolute certainty, because Ashley never once cooked for me, in our whole relationship.

  I wasn’t bothered at all. We chatted about our families and our backgrounds and it felt very comfortable, right from the start. Ashley came from a council estate like me, and his mother, Sue, sounded quite similar to my mam, always having told Ashley and his brother Matthew to stand up for themselves and follow their dreams.

  ‘Can I kiss you?’ Ashley asked at the end of the night, and I found that really sweet. He was handsome and nice and shy. I’d only ever been out with people who became ugly once I got to know them. I couldn’t ever imagine that happening with Ashley, because he was just so sweet, and I let him kiss me.

  ‘He’s gorgeous!’ I giggled later, telling Nicola all about him. I was buzzing. I hadn’t felt this way for a long time, and I couldn’t wait for our second date a few days later.

  ‘Cheryl, get in here!’ Nicola screamed. I was due round at Ashley’s in an hour and I wondered what on earth was going on. I’d been out shopping and got back to the flat to find the front door wide open and the bedroom doors both shut tight. Nicola’s terrified cries were coming from my bedroom, and I ran in, panic-stricken.

  ‘There’s a cat in my room!’ she shrieked. ‘Shut the door! It’s huge. It’s like a lion!’

  I started laughing, told Nicola not to panic and went back out and found the cat lounging on the floor of her bedroom. Admittedly, it was the biggest cat I’d ever seen in my life, but I managed to show it the door without too much trouble.

  ‘It’s only a cat,’ I said to Nicola, but she was having none of it.

  ‘That was dead scary!’ she wailed. ‘I never want to see that creature again! It won’t come back, will it?’

  An hour later, I arrived at Ashley’s flat only to find him trembling on the doorstep.

  ‘I’m not jokin’, there’s a cat in there the size of a tiger!’ he shrieked.

  He looked properly freaked out, actually, and was panicking just like Nicola.

  ‘Let me in,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘I think I know the one you mean.’

  Sure enough, the same gigantic cat was spread out on Ashley’s furniture, purring contentedly, as if it owned the place.

  It looked at me as if to say, ‘Not you again – party pooper!’ and snarled as I heaved it out onto the corridor.

  I found it absolutely hilarious, especially as there were hundreds of apartments in the complex and Ashley’s was miles away from ours.

  ‘What are the chances of that?’ I laughed, but I think Ashley was too shaken up to see the funny side.

  I loved the fact he wasn’t aggressive or arrogant as I imagined most footballers to be. He was one of Arsenal’s biggest stars, he had loads of money and everybody seemed to adore him. In spite of all this he didn’t act like the big ‘I am’ in any way at all. He was soft and gentle, which was just so attractive.

  Ashley and I managed to see each other for about three months without the press finding out, which was the best thing ever. I began to spend more and more time in his flat, and we just clicked, in every way.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Kimberley would say to me. ‘He’s a footballer, and footballers have girls throwing themselves at them all the time …’

  ‘He’s not like that,’ I always replied. ‘Ashley treats me like a princess. He’s the kindest, most reliable person I’ve ever been out with. If he’s gonna to be 10 minutes late, he texts. He never lets me down, and he’s so calm and gentle. He balances me personality out nicely.’

  This was so true. I still suffered with my nerves. I might have been able to chuck the big cat out, but that had nothing to do with being emotionally strong, just streetwise and practical. Deep down, I was still insecure and anxious about so many things in my life. A knock on the door could scare me, for instance. The Domino’s Pizza man would come to As
hley’s flat and I’d practically jump out of my skin. The knock would take me right back to my childhood, to the days when the police would hammer on the door and search our house, looking for stuff Andrew had stolen.

  One time, I remember Garry sitting in the lounge back home, playing a game on a laptop that his little friend from school had brought round. The police knocked on the door really aggressively, marched in and tried to seize it. Poor Garry told them, ‘You can’t take that. It belongs to me friend.’ He was only about 10, and it must have been so awful for him.

  Memories like that were still so vivid it didn’t matter that I was sitting in a luxury flat, locked behind security gates. The knock on Ashley’s front door could take me straight back to our council house in Heaton, and I would have my heart in my mouth just I had so many times in my childhood. I should never have had that amount of worry growing up. I blamed Andrew, and it was something I could never shake off.

  I guess it’s hardly surprising that one of the things I loved about Ashley, right from the start, was that I felt safe with him. He didn’t invite trouble into our lives in any way at all, and I felt so comfortable in his company. I was happy to open up to him and tell him about my life and my past, because Ashley just listened patiently and didn’t judge or even make much comment.

  In our first few weeks together I told him about Dave and Jason and I also talked about my brother being in prison, but nothing fazed Ashley. He’d been brought up in a high-rise block of flats in the East End of London, the son of a white mother and black father. They split up when Ashley and his brother were little. His mam Sue raised the boys on her own, and although Ashley never said much about his childhood, I knew those early years weren’t easy.

  Ashley was first spotted by Arsenal when he was nine and had been incredibly spoilt by the club from then on, but he wasn’t a spoilt person. I felt I could tell him absolutely anything about my ups and downs, because his own life had been so unusual, and so incredible. It was like we were meant to be together, and I knew I was falling in love with him.