Cheryl: My Story (25 page)

I really enjoyed having a different girl with us, but Kimberley just couldn’t relax at all. She was flapping and nervous and panicky about every noise outside and every detail of the climb.

‘Lighten up,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘I wish I’d never agreed to this,’ Kimberley said. ‘Anything could happen …’

‘Stop it! We’ll be fine. Get some sleep, we need all the energy we can get.’

As the days went on, I must admit I got where Kimberley was coming from. I had totally underestimated just how physically demanding it would be to climb and climb for hour after hour. My toenails were falling off and I had huge blisters all over my feet that absolutely killed me. I’d gone from being in sweltering heat at the start to enduring freezing temperatures like I’d never experienced before. Then the altitude started playing with my brain. The less oxygen there is in the air, the shorter your breath, and that affects how you function. My legs got heavy, I felt dizzy and light-headed and I became a bit delirious, laughing hysterically one minute and crying the next. It’s like I wasn’t in touch with my emotions, and I had next to no contact with the real world because my mobile signal cut in and out very randomly, so I literally felt like I was on another planet.

One night when we got to a camp I heard Fearne Cotton telling Denise Van Outen she was getting up to go to the toilet, and then I heard a loud crash as she keeled over. Fearne had severe altitude sickness and needed urgent medical help. Another time poor Alesha nipped out for a wee and actually fell down part of the mountain. I just couldn’t go to the loo behind a bush; I got total stage fright, especially when I saw a camera pointing at me one time. ‘Get out of me face!’ I shouted, taking a huge hissy fit.

Chris Moyles gave me his huge coat one day when I was shivering, and Denise was very supportive the whole climb. She is one strong woman, I can tell you. I listened to Denise’s words of encouragement and got on with it, but Kimberley was finding it much tougher. She would be all over the place, crying like a child does when you need to keep wiping their face and holding them.

The seriousness of what we were doing really hit me on the third day. We passed a guy from Leicester who was rocking on both legs and was so spaced out he was hallucinating. ‘If he doesn’t get down quickly he could die,’ his guide told us.

I had a sudden, sharp realisation at that point. The reason Kimberley was suffering worse than me was because she was used to her life running so smoothly. She’d been with her boyfriend, Justin, for six years, and nothing in her life was extreme or scary. She’d hardly even changed her hairstyle in all the time I’d known her, let alone anything else, while I had gone through all kinds of crazy dramas. This was the first time Kimberley had felt so frightened and vulnerable in her life, while to me it was all part of the journey.

I was probably hallucinating a bit, but I imagined seeing my life as one of those ‘colour by numbers’ pictures, the ones I used to do as a child. It was a kaleidoscope of vibrant, clashing colours that were painted everywhere. I’d had so much colour in my life I wasn’t daunted by this challenge at all. I’d gone through much more frightening things than this, and that was why this wasn’t so tough for me. I’d not climbed Kilimanjaro before, but I lived my life climbing mountains of other kinds, and I’d learned to expect the unexpected, because that’s what life always brought me.

My phone signal kicked in when I was literally up in the clouds, and I dialled my dad’s number as quickly as I could.

‘Hi Dad!’

‘I thought you were climbing the mountain?’

‘I am. You know when you used to say to me, “Cheryl, get your head out of the clouds?”’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, I’m ringing to tell you that I’m
in
the clouds!’

My dad was laughing his head off. The signal cut out, but talking to him really raised my spirits.

A bit later on, I was happy to see I had a voicemail from Ashley. We’d managed to speak once or twice, and now I dialled the number excitedly, looking forward to hearing his voice.

‘Babes, it’s me. Basically I’ve been arrested. I’m in the police station. Sorry. Call me …’

The battery died halfway through the message, and so did something inside me. I asked Denise if I could use her phone, telling her Ashley was in some kind of trouble. I couldn’t believe he’d got himself arrested, especially when his reputation was already so bad.

I didn’t get through straight away and I started getting agitated.

‘What the hell has he done now?’ I hissed. ‘I’m climbing a mountain for charity and he’s getting arrested. How does that work?’

‘I got f****** arrested for telling a police officer to f*** off,’ Ashley told me, when I eventually made contact.

I didn’t get the full story, but I heard enough to know he’d been drunk when he did it. That was all I needed to know. I tried to hold myself together, telling myself at least he wasn’t in danger, and that I would just have to deal with this when I got home.

It was emotional enough on the mountain without this. He wasn’t even meant to be going out drinking. How could he do this to me, now?

We’d been going for four days by this time and the altitude sickness really hit me in a big way. I started projectile vomiting as soon as I smelt the food in the camp, and I needed an injection in my bum to stop the nausea. It worked, thank God, because this was the toughest day ever, even without Ashley’s contribution.

The summit was in sight and it was minus 25 degrees.

I remember Denise talking about being in
Chicago
, the musical, to keep my mind off the pain in my feet. ‘I can’t do it,’ I told her, ‘You can, Cheryl. Get up! You’re a Geordie, come on, you’re meant to be tough.’

The wind was howling around me as I walked, and it reminded me of being in my grandad’s high-rise flat in Newcastle. It made the same eerie whistling sound, and I felt I was actually back there, which was so bizarre as really I was walking on frozen gravel, surrounded by stars that were more yellow than I’d ever seen, and looking at the snow-capped summit shimmering against a massive moon.

It’s very difficult to describe how testing it is to be up there, exposed to the elements. I used hand warmers to help me cope with the bitter cold, but nothing could help me deal with my emotions. I literally felt stripped bare, like my whole life was being tipped out around me as I took each step.

I had time to think about things I’d buried. Andrew, my brother, had given a long interview to a tabloid newspaper a few months earlier. I’d been too up to my eyes working on
The X Factor
to really think about it, and if the truth be known I really didn’t
want
to think about it, but here on the mountain there was no escape. Andrew had told the paper how I’d visited him in prison and pleaded with him to turn his life around. I didn’t read it myself, but I know he repeated what he had said to me: ‘I’m too far gone.’ That’s what he’d told me to my face, the last time I saw him. I’d offered to help him, but he said he wasn’t ready to help himself, and he didn’t want to let me down. He had 50 convictions by now, and was as addicted to alcohol and drugs as he was to crime. It had broken my heart to see how low he had sunk, and now I was feeling incredibly hurt and let down that he had sold a story on me. I don’t know how many thousands of pounds he got paid for it. Even taking a penny for his thoughts was insulting to me. I’d told Andrew I loved him and I would pay for him to go into rehab. He was my flesh and blood. The money was there to help him and all he had to do was agree to help himself, but instead he’d sold out. His life was bleak and hopeless.

I was crying as I neared the summit. Dawn was breaking, and the glacier was outstandingly beautiful, but when I actually summited it felt like an anti-climax. The landscape felt bleak and hopeless too, and I had to psyche myself up and tell myself it had all been worth it, because even if just one extra mosquito net could be bought because of me, it could save a life. I couldn’t save my brother, but at least I might be able to save someone else.

Just as I’d underestimated the climb, I had not anticipated how tough it would be to get back down the mountain. It was so steep I was running down vertical drops taking really fast steps, like a little kid running down a big hill. My feet were frozen and I felt like I had pebbles in my shoes. It was a horrible sensation, so I took them off and shook them but there was nothing there.

I passed Kimberley who was still on her way up and I told her she had about 45 minutes to go to the top, and gave her the biggest hug ever. She cried, and the tears froze on her cheeks. It was impossible to stick together because you just had to do the best you could all the time, which meant one of us was usually ahead of the other. I barely recognised Kimberley as I waved her off, because she looked so emotionally zapped. We just looked at each other as if to say, ‘Who
are
we?’

When we reached the next camp all the tents had blown away and we had to keep going for an extra three hours, which tested me in every sense. I was eating Kendal Mint Cake and Haribos for energy, and I was trying to keep myself mentally strong by thinking about talking to Ashley and all my family and friends when I finally made it down to base camp. There were black trees and clouds rolling past me, and I remember begging Gary Barlow to get us a helicopter.

‘We’ve done what we set out to do. We’ve summited. Please can’t we get a helicopter to pick us up?’

‘Cheryl, if you can get a helicopter to come out here, I’m in,’ Gary said.

I knew there was no chance, but I was feeling desperate, and I knew Gary was suffering too as he has a really bad back that had plagued him the whole time. It had taken us four days to get up the mountain and I knew the descent would take about two days. When we reached the second camp we still had 14 hours to go, and I’d absolutely had enough of everything and everyone. I was dreaming of having a shower and a blow dry and wearing lipstick, but I had to settle for sleeping in the dirt yet again, wiping my face with a flannel in the morning, padding out my shoes with anything I could find to stop my blisters rubbing, and then walking for another six hours.

‘Keep going,’ I told myself. ‘Think how many mosquito nets we’ll be able to provide for people.’

I filled up again when base camp finally came into view. I was desperate to use the toilet, as I’d not felt comfortable enough to go properly on the mountain for the whole week, but first I wanted to plug in my phone. It had been all over the news that we had summited. The cameramen had told us that, because they’d managed to get some footage out, and I knew everyone back home would have seen it. I wanted to listen to my messages and hear Ashley’s voice and all my family and friends, because I knew they would have all got in touch.

My phoned started beeping wildly as soon as it had some power. There were absolutely loads of texts and voicemails from everyone who cared about me. The names kept flashing up. Mam, Dad, Garry, Nicola, Sundraj, Hillary … everyone was so relieved I’d survived the ordeal. ‘Well done, Cheryl!’ ‘Proud of you, congratulations!’ ‘Ring when you can – can’t wait to talk to you.’ The messages were filled with love and relief.

‘Thank God!’ Hillary whooped in her voicemail. ‘I’ve watched
everything
. So glad you made it. Safe journey home.’

As I listened to the last message and read the last text, I felt absolutely gutted. There was nothing from Ashley. We were in a hostel now, and I went and knocked on Kimberley’s door and we both cried in each other’s arms.

I should have been enjoying the sense of achievement because this was by far the most gruelling thing I had ever done in my life, but instead I just felt devastated. I didn’t want to start unloading on Kimberley because she was already very emotional, but she knows me so well and I couldn’t hide how I felt because it bothered me so massively. If it had been Ashley climbing the mountain I’d have watched every second of coverage on TV and I’d have been trawling the internet looking for any bit of information I could find. I’d have been sick with worry and desperate for news, but he clearly didn’t feel or think like me.

‘You selfish bastard,’ I thought. ‘It’s two days since we summited. You’ve had all that time to send a message. Where’s your support?’

I gritted my teeth and sent him a text that simply said: ‘I’m down.’

‘Well done, babe,’ he replied, half an hour later.

Kimberley didn’t appreciate that at all, and I knew I was not going to forget it in a hurry. We still had his arrest to talk about too, so I think it’s fair to say I was deeply unimpressed by my husband.

We found out that our fundraising total hit £1.4 million when all nine of us summited, which was just incredible, so I tried to focus on that instead of my disappointment with Ashley.

‘Good news, team,’ Gary Barlow said. ‘We’ve got a private plane for the last leg of the journey back to London.’

I don’t think anybody cheered. We were all emotionally spent, and I for one would have got on any plane going, as long as it took me home as quickly as possible. I’d managed to have a shower in the hostel, but I still felt filthy and was itching all down my legs, and my face was a terrible colour and covered in a horrible rash. Poor Kimberley had cold sores on her lips that were weeping, and when we boarded the flight I was shocked to see she still couldn’t stop crying.