Cheryl: My Story (21 page)

‘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 to 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.’

I can remember a sort of stunned silence, like we’d all been slapped in the face, but I was so cut up about my marriage this didn’t really make the impact it probably should have.

I met Ashley at home after the BRITs. I actually had butterflies in my stomach, but not the ones I was used to feeling when I looked at my husband. I felt sick and nervous at having to deal with this nightmare, and I could see he felt exactly the same.

‘I’ve come to the conclusion you obviously don’t care about me as much as I care about you,’ I said.

It was painful to say the words, and Ashley looked pained when I said them.

‘It’s not true,’ he said, shaking his head, and he made it clear he didn’t want the marriage to end.

He was very quiet and sad, and I told him that I didn’t want us to split up either, but that for us to move forward three things had to happen.

‘Just tell me,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll do anything.’

‘I don’t want you drinking. I don’t want you socialising with footballers or the people you were with that night. And I don’t want you to deal with that agent of yours any more.’

He agreed to all three in a heartbeat.

‘There is one other thing,’ I said. ‘I’m warning you that if anything like this
ever
comes up again I’m divorcing you. You’re lucky I’ve come back this time and if you
ever
disrespect me like this again, it’s all over, I’m out of here, and I mean it.’

Ashley looked relieved but was still very quiet and withdrawn, and for days and weeks and months afterwards he was not himself at all, and nor was I. It was like starting all over again, except we didn’t have the blank canvas we had when we were courting, we had one with dirty marks on it that we had to keep trying to wipe away.

I was straight back into rehearsals for the next Girls Aloud tour, which was good in one way as it meant I had no time to sit around and dwell on what had happened to my marriage. Hillary had calmed me down after my initial threats to leave the music industry, and had very sensibly told me that I shouldn’t make any rash decisions, especially when I was in such an emotional state.

The downside of going to work was that actually just leaving the house each morning had become a total nightmare, because I was being chased ferociously every day by the paparazzi.

‘Have you forgiven him, Cheryl?’ ‘Ashley’s a love rat – why have you taken him back?’ ‘Can you ever trust him again?’

It was relentless, and it was draining. They wanted pictures of me looking miserable because it went with the story, and they certainly got plenty of me looking that way because that’s how
they
made me feel, regardless of what mood I was in when I left the house.

I was working really hard with the girls. When we started the
Tangled Up
tour, which was our third arena tour, we wanted it to be bigger and better than anything we’d done before. There had been even more rumours about Girls Aloud splitting up after Nadine failed to show at the BRITs, but it wasn’t true and this was our chance to show we were not just together, but we were at our peak. Millions were spent on the set and the outfits, and we had 24 dates booked, performing to 300,000 fans.

My phone rang during a sound check one day. ‘Hi Cheryl, it’s Sundraj.’

‘What’s the problem this time? Has the rest of the tour been cancelled?’ I was trying to make a joke of the fact he had become my official bearer of bad news as well as our head of publicity, and his reply came as a shock.

‘Well, actually, some guys have put out a story, and they’re saying they have a video of you, Kimberley and Nicola partying in a hotel room in LA.’

‘Jodeci? Oh God, no. I was howling drunk and had mascara all over my face.’

‘It’s worse than that.’

‘Tell me.’

‘They weren’t Jodeci. They were a couple of guys making an American TV show called
Parking Lot Pimps
. Their job was to chat up as many pretty girls as possible and get them to say “Hi PLP” on camera, and you did it.’

‘You
are
joking!’

‘Unfortunately not.’

I knew it was all very innocent but I was still devastated when I eventually saw the film the guys had made, after it turned up alongside the story on the
News of the World
website. I was mortified, in fact, not least because I had kissed one of the guys on the top of his bald head, which sparked all kinds of stupid stories about how I was taking revenge on Ashley. It caused so much trouble, and Kimberley and Nicola’s boyfriends went absolutely bazooka.