Cheryl: My Story (27 page)

‘At least I provided a little distraction for you,’ I joked. ‘I’m glad you found it so funny.’

Playing Newcastle for three nights running was a really great way to go out on a high. The Metro Radio Arena was somewhere I’d passed on the bus every week as a child, always dreaming that I’d be on the stage there myself one day. Every time we played Newcastle over the years it was amazing. Members of my family would come down to see me when we were sound checking, and I just felt so at home hearing Geordie accents everywhere, or walking past the kitchens and catching familiar cooking smells in the air. Even the chips have a unique smell up there, and I remember one night the cooks made stottie, a type of bread, which took me right back to my childhood. When I looked in the mirror in my dressing room I honestly half expected to see my teenage self looking back, and to find that this was all a dream, and really I was about to go on stage at Metroland.

The crowd went wild every night, and when they chanted my name I could just feel the Geordie pride filling the whole arena. It was an absolutely mind-blowing experience, and I felt so proud of us and myself. It was amazing to feel appreciated as a fellow Geordie. The way the media treated me, it was as if I wasn’t a human being sometimes, but here I felt so different. I was Cheryl, a local girl made good. I was one of their own who was flying the flag for Newcastle, and that meant the world to me.

12
‘Unfortunately, you’re going to be number one next week’

‘Was I right?’ Simon asked.

He was talking about Kilimanjaro, and his advice that I shouldn’t do it. I could tell by the way he was puffing out his chest and raising an eyebrow expectantly that he wanted me to say, ‘Yes, Simon. You were right, as always. It was hell. I shouldn’t have done it.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? I did it, and we raised millions.’

‘Mad,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You are completely crazy.’

That conversation is typical of the way Simon and I spoke to each other. I always refused to play ‘Simon says’ and dance to his tune, but he refused to let me dent his ego and always made sure he got the last word in.

I was talking to Simon because the
X Factor
auditions were starting again soon and, just like last year, I was now wondering whether I’d done the right thing in agreeing to do the show. As planned, the girls and I had announced at the end of the tour that we were having a break from Girls Aloud, and I was now putting together my first solo album,
3 Words
. The record label wasn’t at all sure about this, because statistically it doesn’t work when one member of a girl band tries to go solo, particularly one who was not even the lead singer. Will.i.am was having none of it, though.

‘I think you believe in me more than I believe in myself,’ I told him.

‘That’s because I am right. You watch. You wait and see. You are going to be a big solo star, and you need to start believing it, because it’s happening.’

Ashley was really supportive and encouraging too. He knew I’d always loved R&B and soul and he told me, ‘This is your chance to do the music you love. It’ll be amazing.’

I knew it was a great opportunity, but I couldn’t shake off worries about how I would manage without having the girls around me. Team spirit spurs me on, and I’ve always found it easier to be strong for other people than for myself.

‘Maybe I should have turned Simon down,’ I fretted. ‘Perhaps I should just be concentrating on my album.’

Ashley and I were taking a holiday in the South of France, between the end of the tour and the start of
The X Factor
. This worked out well, as June was the only month Ashley ever had time off in the football calendar.

‘Will you stop worrying and chill out!’ Ashley said. ‘You’ve
got
to do
The X Factor
. You’re too good at it.’

I’d learned that with footballers, the amount of money they are paid is directly linked to their level of skill on the pitch, like a reward for their talent. As Simon had given me a big pay rise to do this series, in Ashley’s eyes that meant I was absolutely amazing at my job and therefore could not turn it down. I wasn’t convinced. I knew that in Simon’s world, money is seen as the biggest
motivator
, rather than reward. If Simon wants something he’ll pay a high price. He expects to be able to ‘buy’ people because he can’t understand why anybody would not be as motivated by money as he is. I had a different view to both Ashley and Simon. If something doesn’t feel right, I turn it down, and now I really wasn’t sure how I felt about
The X Factor
.

‘Look, don’t invest so much,’ Ashley said. ‘I told you this on the last series. Don’t get so emotionally involved.’

‘I can’t help it,’ I said, but I knew Ashley had a point, because I was already worrying about the competition before I’d even got there or met any of the contestants.

Thankfully, we had a few distractions on the holiday and I did manage to relax. One day we met Roman Abramovich, who told me he was planning to climb Kilimanjaro and asked me all about my experience. I could see he was a big fan of Ashley’s, which made me feel very proud of my husband. It felt just like old times, actually. Ashley and I were loved up, having a laugh and soaking up the sun.

We also met up with Ashley’s England teammate Wayne Bridge and his fiancée Vanessa Perroncel, who were on the beach with their very cute little toddler. Seeing Ashley play in the sand with him made me feel even more broody than ever. I
desperately
wanted to have babies with Ashley.

‘Can’t we just start trying now?’

‘No, babe. Live your dream. Make your solo record. There’s time for all that later.’

I was dying to be a mam but I also had commitments, and I reluctantly listened to Ashley because I knew that when I had kids I wanted to be able to take time out and bring them up myself.

When I got back to work on
The X Factor
I believed it was going to be my last series, because then I was going to get pregnant and start my family. That’s what I wanted, more than anything else in the world, and thinking like that helped me deal with the madness of the next few months.

After the first auditions in Glasgow, Simon decided to change the format and bring in a live audience, which is something he hadn’t done before at the audition stage of the show. This bothered me massively, because I imagined how I would have felt if I’d had to audition for
Popstars
in front of members of the public, and I knew the pressure would be immense.

I was right. I felt sick with worry when the contestants started coming out in front of the huge, noisy audience. My legs turned to jelly for them, just as if I were up there myself. Also, I hated being on show to the audience all day myself, because the auditions are long and tiring at the best of times, and you just don’t want a camera in your face for that length of time.

I got over it after a while, and when some of the stand-out acts came on I really started to enjoy myself. I remember laughing my head off at John & Edward and thinking, ‘You two are TV gold’. I really liked Olly Murs and Stacey Solomon, and my heart melted when Joe McElderry first spoke and I found out he was from South Shields, the same neck of the woods as me. He even looked like my brother Garry, and I was willing him to be good. I’ll never forget him singing the Luther Vandross song ‘Dance With My Father’. I had goosebumps, and I was suddenly right back in the zone, emotionally immersed in the contest all over again.

‘Why aye!’ I said when it was my turn to vote, and I couldn’t stop smiling. ‘You just did me really proud,’ I told Joe.

I got the boys’ category that year, which I had mixed feelings about. I was really happy because Joe was in it, but I was nervous and felt out of my comfort zone because I’d never worked with boys before. When we went to Marrakech for the judges’ houses stage, the gifts the boys bought me in the local market said it all. I got a size 20 T-shirt and a dried snake in a box. I remember laughing about it with Holly Willoughby, but deep down I was feeling very anxious about how the hell I was going to mentor boys, because I wasn’t on their wavelength at all. Your relationship with your contestants is as important backstage as it is on the live shows, and I’d never worked that closely with boys in my life.

I also had something else to deal with while I was in Morocco: Jason Mack had done a story about me.

‘What’s he saying?’ I asked Sundraj when he called to alert me. I was in the most beautiful surroundings, staying in a luxurious villa, but the second I heard Jason’s name I was transported right back to our grubby little flat in Heaton.

I felt my stomach flip over, imagining all kinds.

‘He’s saying you pleaded with him to stop taking drugs, and that you were so worried about him, you couldn’t eat or sleep. He also says you lost so much weight people thought you must have been on heroin …’

‘Heroin? Sundraj, this is really important. What exactly does he say about heroin? I want to know precisely what he’s saying.’

Sundraj was scanning the article again now and I made him read the quotes, word for word.

‘When I first met Cheryl I was doing a lot of cocaine. Some days I’d blow £200 on the stuff. But she’d sit with me for hours to talk me out of getting drugs …’

‘Go on.’

‘I went from having everything to living on a giro … Cheryl stuck by us when I didn’t have a penny … but I started taking heroin because I wasn’t getting any further forward.’

‘Yes!’ I shouted triumphantly. I felt an incredible, immediate sense of relief.

‘Cheryl, are you alright?’ Sundraj asked.

He was understandably confused by my reaction, and I had to explain to him that this was the first time I had
ever
heard Jason admit to taking heroin.

‘You don’t know how much this means,’ I sobbed.

Tears were rolling down my cheeks now. It felt like an old wound had finally healed after all those years. I had not even realised how much it still bothered me that Jason had never made this confession before. He’d always admitted to taking cocaine, but continually denied he was on heroin. I
knew
he was lying, because I had seen the silver foil, the cold turkeying and the junkie friends he disappeared with for days on end. But I never once caught Jason red-handed, actually taking heroin, and he had used that against me time and time again, telling me and my friends and family that I was crazy and paranoid.

The truth was that I was a naïve, vulnerable teenager who thought she was in love and believed she could save her boyfriend from ruining his life with the devil’s dust. I counted back through the years to when we split up in 2002 and I realised I’d carried this resentment around for seven whole years. The relief I felt now was absolutely indescribable. The fact Jason must have made money out of selling his story and had effectively betrayed me all over again hardly even bothered me. Nothing he did now could hurt me as much as his lies and mind games had hurt me in the past, and having the truth out there at last overshadowed everything.

***

There were all kinds of other dramas waiting for me when we got back to London for the live shows. I had Joe, Lloyd Daniels and Rikki Loney in my final three. Lloyd was only 16 and had some private stuff going on in his life that I was finding extremely difficult to cope with. Simon knew all about it, but he can completely separate himself from his emotions when the cameras are rolling. One week he criticised Lloyd’s rendition of ‘Bleeding Love’ saying, ‘It’s like a mouse trying to climb a mountain. I’m going to put the blame for this on the girl on my right, who’s not working with you properly.’

This was so mean of Simon to blame me, because he had actually told me to pick that song for Lloyd, and he knew I was struggling behind the scenes emotionally. I started to cry on the show, and I remember Rikki Loney making a comment about me being in more of a state than the contestants, which was actually true. All the boys would be trying to calm
me
down before we went on air, instead of the other way around.

Looking back, I was investing too much emotionally all over again, and I was also doing too much generally. I’d not long taken on my contract with L’Oréal, which meant scheduling in several days to make the ‘Because I’m worth it’ TV commercial.

‘Wow, Beyoncé has done this!’ I thought. It gave me the same buzz I’d had when Girls Aloud had Barbie dolls made of each of us, back in 2005. That was my all-time favourite product endorsement with the girls, because Barbies are just so iconic and were something I’d grown up with. I had the same feeling about this L’Oréal campaign. It was an honour to be chosen for it, and it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I really enjoyed making the advert, but it happened at the same time as I was putting the finishing touches to my album, so I was working flat out. The record label wanted me to perform my first single off the album, ‘Fight For This Love’, on
The X Factor
too. I could totally see the logic. Artists were desperate to get on the show and I was in a position to walk straight out of my judge’s seat and perform. I’d worked hard on the album and it would be foolish not to take the opportunity, but of course it was another pressure to worry about.