Cheryl: My Story

by Cole, Cheryl

  I then called Kimberley and Nicola, and said the same thing.

  ‘I’m out of here,’ I said. Nobody knew what to say to me. I don’t think they could believe what was happening but they could tell I meant it wholeheartedly, and they were all devastated.

  My mam was as shocked as everybody else, but she is so soft-hearted she still managed to think about how Ashley was feeling. She was staying with us at the time, and she told me she gave him a cuddle. Afterwards she said to me, ‘Everybody makes mistakes. Don’t forget, he’s also hurting.’

  Ashley just couldn’t wait to run away to his football in the morning. He didn’t want to stay at home and face it, and when he went out to training I thought, ‘It’s OK for you, once you’re at the ground the paps can’t come near. All you have to do is get there, then you’re safe. What about me? You’ve fed me to the lions.’

  I let Sundraj put out a statement a day or so later saying I didn’t believe Ashley had slept with the girl and that I wanted to save the marriage. Both were gut reactions that I felt once I’d had a bit more time to think. If the girl was willing to tell the nation she slept with a man who got up in the middle of having sex to vomit, what sort of a person was she? I certainly thought that someone selling their story to a newspaper was not the most trustworthy character and was capable of making things up.

  The one thing she and Ashley were in agreement on was how drunk he was that night, and I knew that if he was that bad, he would not have been capable of having sex. That’s why I made the statement I did. The alternative was to throw my marriage away because of one drunken night that Ashley couldn’t even remember. I felt I couldn’t justify doing that, although I really wasn’t sure how or if I could come back from this. The statement was out there, but privately I was full of doubt and indecision about where to go from here.

  I had to get out of the house, and a day or two later I went to Kimberley’s in the middle of the night. She was crying her eyes out when she saw me. I was still in shock, and when I say ‘in shock’ I really mean that I wasn’t in control of myself at all, and I needed medical help. I got Valium tablets off the doctor to calm me down, and I lay on Kimberley’s sofa but still couldn’t sleep a wink.

  My memories are all muddled up, but I know that some time that week we had to do the videoshoot for our new single ‘Can’t Speak French’, and how I got through it I just don’t know. The doctor gave me a B-vitamin injection in my bum to perk me up, but it didn’t work, not at all.

  ‘Are you sure you can do this?’ Kimberley asked.

  We were filming in a house in London and it was an all-night shoot. I hadn’t eaten or slept for two days, but I knew I had to keep going. There were so many other people involved, and this was my problem, not theirs.

  ‘Yes,’ I told Kimberley. ‘I’d rather be here than moping around the house.’

  While we were doing the shoot I heard that the girl Ashley was meant to have slept with had responded to my statement and called me ‘ridiculous’ for believing he couldn’t remember what had happened. I didn’t read it, but I was told the gist of it. It baffled me why anyone would want to be at the centre of such a sordid story, but here she was again, prolonging my pain and rubbing salt into an already open wound.

  ‘What is wrong with these people?’ I thought.

  There was a lot worse to come. The next day the girl claimed that she’d feared she was pregnant after her night with Ashley, and that his agent tried to pay for an abortion. I didn’t believe her pregnancy claim for one second, but it did seem like the kind of offer Ashley’s agent might make. I knew it was exactly how he would have reacted in the circumstances. The agent’s job was to look after my husband, and if Ashley genuinely couldn’t remember what had happened that night, the agent had no choice but to consider the claims might be true and try to protect his client.

  It hurt like hell when I thought about the agent’s involvement. I’d known him for years, and not only that, I’d been out to dinner with him and Ashley in the last few weeks, when all this abortion business must have been going on. It was beyond hideous to think I’d sat there, with Ashley, making conversation with a man who knew our marriage was under threat like this.

  The pregnancy claim made me distrust the girl’s story even more, but I didn’t know what to do next. I was so hurt and confused. When I’d said my vows to Ashley on our wedding day I meant them, but how could we possibly recover from this?

  After the videoshoot, I festered on Kimberley’s settee for days and days, barely moving. Kimberley’s boyfriend Justin helped take care of me, and was really supportive. Ashley didn’t know where I was but I thought the very least he deserved was the silent treatment.

  Over the next few days I heard that two more girls had come forward to say they’d had sex with Ashley. I didn’t read the stories, but I knew one was saying it happened when Ashley and I were courting, and another said she slept with him a few months after our wedding.

  ‘Why would they come forward now?’ I asked myself. ‘They must be making it up, trying to cash in while Ashley’s vulnerable.’

  I desperately wanted the stories to be lies and I told myself they had to be made up, but the truth was I didn’t know what to believe. I just wanted to run away and hide, and I asked Kimberley and Nicola if they’d come away with me, on a holiday somewhere far away.

  ‘Just go,’ Justin told Kimberley straight away. ‘Don’t think twice.’ Nicola said, ‘I’m coming, wherever you want me to come.’ I don’t think she even consulted her boyfriend, because she replied to my text in a matter of seconds.

  I picked up the phone to Ashley and told him, ‘Guess what? Me, Kimberley and Nicola are going away and I’ll send you the bill.’ He didn’t argue; in fact I don’t think he even spoke more than two words to me.

  I booked us a villa at a private resort in Thailand, and as soon as our flight took off, I had this overwhelming feeling of ‘f*** the world’. I could have fallen out of the sky from the plane and I was certain nothing would have been as painful as what I was feeling inside.

  It was now about two weeks after the initial allegations had come out and, looking back, I was completely out of my head on tranquilisers. As soon as we got to the villa I crashed out in my room for two full days. I literally closed the blinds and I was gone.

  ‘Is there any coffee?’ I asked the girls when I finally emerged into the light.

  We laugh our heads off about that now, because Kimberley and Nicola say it was exactly like the scene in the first Sex and the City movie, but the funniest thing is that the film hadn’t even been made yet.

  I hired a boat even though I hate sailing, but my attitude was that nothing was important any more, and I didn’t even care if I was eaten by a shark. ‘Nothing matters,’ I thought. ‘My career certainly doesn’t matter. All I care about is my friends and my family. The rest of it can go to f***. Girls Aloud can go. I don’t care about any of it.’

  Kimberley, Nicola and I drank cocktails, went to dinner and laughed about some of the funny moments we’d had together.

  ‘Remember when we used to do the university gigs in the early days, and the students chucked beer at us?’ Kimberley said. ‘I can’t believe that really happened.’

  ‘What about when Cheryl’s costume ripped all up the bum on the “No Good Advice” video?’ Nicola laughed. ‘Oh my God, that was so funny. The outfit looked like it was made of tin foil and you had silver gaffer tape holding it together!’

  ‘Wardrobe malfunctions must be my thing,’ I replied, reminding the girls about a more recent disaster, when I’d gone out to dinner in a pair of lace trousers and ended up getting stuck to the table, as someone had put chewing gum underneath the table top. ‘How embarrassing was that? They literally had to get a hair dryer to melt the chewing gum and get me out of my seat without ripping the trousers!’

  We’d sit on the harbour with bits of bread between our toes, dangling our feet in the water to feed the fish and waving to the friendly fisher
men in their little boats.

  I felt like I’d escaped the world for once. One morning, I came out of my room and saw three arses sticking in the air on the balcony of our villa.

  ‘What the f*** are you doing?’ I said loudly. For a minute I thought my tranquilisers were making me hallucinate, but then Nicola and Kimberley started hushing me.

  ‘Shhh! It’s yoga,’ Kimberley whispered. Their instructor calmly continued the class while I cracked up laughing.

  It definitely helped to be away with the girls, in the sunshine, surrounded by beautiful beaches. My heart was racing all the time, though, and I had a constant, physical pain in my chest. I didn’t feel like eating much, and I was smoking more than normal, to the point where the girls would say: ‘Cheryl, you’ve just put one out.’

  One night I went out onto the balcony and spoke to a friend back home. I’d had a few drinks and started pouring my heart out, saying I couldn’t care less what was in the tabloids. ‘I’m not a victim,’ I said. ‘I don’t want sympathy.’

  As I spoke I heard a rustle in the bushes beneath our balcony, and when I looked down there were two men standing there, looking straight at me. I screamed in fright and they ran off. The next day we heard that someone had checked into the villa next door and then left without paying. Sundraj was on the phone soon afterwards.

  ‘I know you’re trying to get away from it all and you don’t want to know what’s in the tabloids, but I need to warn you there are journalists out there.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because the conversation you had on your balcony last night, about not being a victim, is splashed all over The Sun.’

  I couldn’t believe how naïve I’d been, again. When was I going to learn that the press would follow me everywhere, even to Thailand? It also turned out that some of the ‘friendly fishermen’ were paps, so there were pictures of us in our bikinis too, with me looking all skinny. Unbelievable.

  The next day I sat on my own overlooking the beach. I didn’t know who I was anymore, I thought. I was a heartbroken girl, but who was I, now, without Ashley by my side? I knew I loved him and I didn’t want to end my marriage. I still felt that, very strongly. Despite all this heartache he’d caused, my initial gut feeling remained, that I couldn’t justify leaving my marriage because of one drunken mistake that wasn’t even in Ashley’s memory. Now I’d had a bit more time to think, I definitely didn’t believe the other two girls who’d come forward, because why had they just done so now? I’d known something was up after the night of the fight because Ashley acted so weird, but he’d never behaved like that before, and surely I would have known if he’d been hiding secrets from me for years?

  Their stories just didn’t add up, but the trouble was that nothing made much sense to me any more. Kimberley and Nicola comforted me and listened whenever I wanted to talk, but they didn’t probe or offer advice when I said some of these things. I knew they were both angry and upset with Ashley, and that they were there for me if I needed them. That’s what was important.

  After 10 days in Thailand the three of us flew to LA via Hong Kong, because I was due to audition for my place as a street dancer in Will.i.am’s ‘Heartbreaker’ video, for The Passions of Girls Aloud documentary series.

  I was so glad the girls were with me, because when we landed in LA there were more than 30 paps waiting at LAX Airport. My bags had been lost in Hong Kong, so I had to fill in loads of forms that kept us at the airport for much longer than we wanted. When we eventually walked out the paps were being really aggressive, calling Ashley names and trying to provoke a reaction.

  ‘Why’s your husband a jerk?’ one of them called out.

  I bit my lip and tried not to cry, and when we finally got to our hotel I put on Mary J. Blige’s album, Growing Pains, to try to cheer myself up. Her lyrics are inspiring and it really lifted my spirits, so I kept putting the album on repeat.

  ‘Do we have to listen to that again?’ Nicola moaned.

  ‘Shut up, it’s saving me life!’ I replied.

  ‘So what? It’s doin’ me ’ead in! Come on, let’s go out.’

  The girls took me out clubbing, and in one club, late into the evening, I was introduced to Will.i.am for the first time. I’d had loads of vodka shots, and I just remember someone saying to him, ‘This is Cheryl. She’s auditioning to be in your video tomorrow.’

  He smiled politely and wished me good luck. I remember thinking to myself, ‘How the hell is this audition going to go down?’

  All the time I’d been shooting The Passions I was a happily married, healthy woman. Now I was miserable and messed up in the head, and I didn’t even look like the same person because I’d gone from Size 8 to Size Zero.

  I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was also going to have the hangover from hell the next day. When we got back to our hotel that night I’d lost my key and the receptionist refused to believe I was a guest.

  ‘Honestly, I checked in as Emma Robinson, but I don’t have ID in that name because my real name is Cheryl Cole,’ I told her.

  She looked at me like I was crazy.

  There were some British air stewardesses checking in, who overheard the conversation. One of them assured the receptionist that I was Cheryl Cole, but because I’d signed in under a false name, it all got very confusing.

  ‘This is just typical! The one time I wouldn’t mind being recognised I’m not! Why do things like this always happen to me?’

  I began drunk crying, making a lot of noise but with no tears, and begging the receptionist to get someone to take me to my room, where I promised I’d get my passport to show her my photo and prove who I really was.

  ‘What’s a pretty lady like you crying for?’ I heard an American guy say to me. I was just about to turn round and tell him to do one when I heard one of his mates explaining to the other girls that they were members of the R&B band Jodeci.

  ‘Wow!’ I said, my ears pricking up. ‘I listened to you as a teenager! I love your music!’

  In my drunken state I was thinking, ‘That was a time when I was happy! This is a good omen!’

  A security guard appeared, who took me to my room, and a few minutes later Kimberley, Nicola, our friend Lisa who had joined us and the two Jodeci guys appeared at the door. The boys had a hand-held camera and told us they were making a behind-the-scenes film to promote their comeback.

  ‘Oh my God! You’re making a comeback,’ I said. ‘That’s the best news ever!’

  We let them come in and we all started being daft, saying ‘hi’ to the camera and having a drink together. Jodeci was such a huge group I felt they’d understand the whole fame thing, and so I allowed myself to open up and told them a bit about Ashley and why I was so sad. It was all very innocent. Bizarrely, one of the guys said a prayer for me before they left an hour or so later, and when I woke up the next day with a banging headache I just thought, ‘Wow! That was such a random night.’

  I struggled to the video audition that morning and felt absolutely terrible doing the street dance routine I’d worked so hard to learn for months before. The fact the song was called ‘Heartbreaker’ was so ironic it was ridiculous, and when Will.i.am turned up to see how I’d done I wondered what the hell he would make of this messed-up, hung-over person who was trying to be in his video.

  ‘Of course I want Cheryl in it,’ he told his team as soon as he saw me perform, and I felt like crying all over again.

  Will came over to me for a chat, and we connected straight away. It turned out my label had warned him about what was going on in my private life, and he talked to me a bit about his old relationship.

  I hadn’t expected him to be like that at all. He was one of the biggest names in the music industry and was such a huge star that I imagined he might have been a bit distant, or even on a totally different planet to me. Instead he was a very real, charming person in amongst all the madness in my life, and I really appreciated the fact he took the time to speak to me. Will later asked me t
o record some vocals for ‘Heartbreaker’ too, which was also very sweet of him. That was the first time I ever recorded without the girls, in fact, though I had no clue then where this experience would eventually lead me.

  Once the video was done I felt ready to go home. I wasn’t used to LA and I’d been away from Ashley for several weeks. Despite the hell he’d put me through, I felt very strongly now that I just wanted my life to go back to normal. Splitting up was unthinkable to me. I’d been torturing myself for weeks, going over and over events in my mind. I had no real proof Ashley had been unfaithful. All I knew for sure was that he’d gone out and got blind drunk and met that girl, and my gut reaction remained the same.

  ‘I can’t justify leaving me marriage because of one drunken mistake,’ I told Kimberley and Nicola as we headed home. It was like I had to say it out loud, to make my decision official, and my friends just listened and told me they would always support me, no matter what.

  I made a pact with myself on that flight. I had made the choice to go back to Ashley, and I would not throw all this in his face. I couldn’t see any point in that because we had to move on, not look back. He’d been texting me ever since I left, asking me to come home, but he was totally in the dark about how I was going to react. I’d ignored most of his messages or told him to leave me alone, and I knew he was panicking about what I was going to do next.

  We had never spoken about the allegations from the other two girls, but right from the start I didn’t believe their stories, and I decided I didn’t even want to go there with confronting Ashley about them. I wasn’t going to tell him all this to begin with, of course, because we had to get a few other things straight first, but that’s what was going through my mind.

  Before I saw Ashley again I actually had to go straight to the BRITs from the airport, though if I hadn’t gone through my old diaries I wouldn’t have remembered the event, which shows what a mess my head was in. All I recall is that Girls Aloud were nominated for Best Group and didn’t win it, and Nadine didn’t show up. I think we all expected her to come up with some sort of excuse, like she’d lost her passport and couldn’t get over from America, but she actually just admitted to us, ‘It’s not really my thing.’