Cheryl: My Story (43 page)

‘It’s arrived,’ Lily said to me one morning, handing me a large envelope.

It was November 2011. Inside was a copy of my official 2012 calendar, which I’d shot in the South of France several months earlier. I flicked through the pages, looking at each month in turn, and felt butterflies in my stomach.

‘What’s the matter?’ Lily asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m pleased with it, really pleased.’

I loved the pictures, but what I was really thinking was that I had all these blank pages in front of me in 2012, and I wasn’t quite sure where my life was going.

There were events in the diary, of course. It was Girls Aloud’s tenth anniversary, which we all wanted to mark in some way. We’d promised to talk about it at the beginning of 2012, to make sure we came up with something really special by our big day in November.

I’d created a range of shoes for Stylistpick, which had been pure pleasure. I’d chosen the materials and helped with the designs, and I’d be doing a signing to launch them in London in February. I’ve always loved shoes and that was real girly fun for me, not work.

I also knew there would be a couple of red carpet events to look forward to. I was attending the Cannes Film Festival for L’Oréal in May, and the premiere of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
was taking place at Leicester Square the same month.

Kimberley was finishing her run as Princess Fiona in
Shrek
in the spring too, and I was definitely going to her last performance, and Gary Barlow had been in touch about doing something at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June.

Before I knew it my next single would be out, then the new album … and I would be turning 29 on 30 June.

I stared at that date on the calendar. I could barely believe that I was going to be 29, and it brought mixed feelings.

I had all these exciting events to look forward to, but nobody to share them with. I should have been looking forward to celebrating my sixth wedding anniversary with Ashley, but now he wasn’t even in my life. I hadn’t seen him since my
last
birthday. Occasionally I’d seen him on an advert on TV or his face would pop up on Twitter, but I had not physically seen him for half a year. I’d moved on in many ways, though. I was happy again, and I was finding myself as a person.

I had a heart to heart with my sister Gillian not long after this. We spent a fantastic family Christmas together and I looked at her and the kids and wished for so much more normality in my life.

‘I want some balance in my life,’ I told my sister. ‘I don’t want any extreme highs any more.’

‘Are you sure you mean that?’

‘Yes, because whenever things are going right, something goes wrong. It’s like the happier I am, the worse the crash.’

Perhaps I had tempted fate in saying that, who knows?

***

Literally a few weeks later I received one of Sundraj’s dreaded phone calls, the kind that starts with: ‘I’m sorry, Cheryl, but …’

‘Go on, what now?’

‘MC Harvey is claiming you had a secret relationship with him in 2010. Is it true?’

‘You’re joking? MC Harvey? Are you crazy? I don’t even know him, and I haven’t even set eyes on the guy for years.’

‘He’s saying you got close after your divorce.’

‘You
are
joking! I think I met him once, when I’d just got in Girls Aloud.’

I’d seen him with So Solid Crew at a party God knows how many years ago, but we never even had what you could call a conversation.

‘He’s given an interview to
Now
magazine, and he’s alleging it started in 2010, after your divorce, and ended when you went off to do American
X Factor
.’

‘You mean when I was having my nervous breakdown? This is sick.’

I started thinking about how Harvey cheated on Alesha Dixon and how she had texted me a message of support when Ashley first cheated on me.

‘Sundraj, nobody in their right mind is going to believe I left my cheating husband to go with somebody else’s cheating husband and, just for good measure, picked someone whose ex-wife I actually know personally, and have bonded with over how we’ve both been hurt.’

‘He has emails.’

‘Right, I’m not having this. I am just not having it!’

I went on Twitter and tweeted to Harvey: ‘Was this “relationship” happening in your head?’

I didn’t know if he’d made the whole thing up for publicity as I’d heard he had a single coming out soon, or if he’d been had, and had been duped into swapping emails with somebody posing as me. That was the only other possible explanation I could come up with, but to my surprise he responded on Twitter and stuck by his story.

I was so furious that somebody could make up something like this out of absolutely nothing,
and
think they could get away with it. It was a complete and utter fabrication and I decided to sue the magazine’s publishers for libel. I was absolutely stunned when they published a second story a week later, making things worse by saying their lawyer had seen the emails, proving Harvey’s claims were true.

‘Are you sure about suing?’ my brother Garry asked. He knew first-hand what a draining and long-winded process it is to sue for libel, because he’d done it himself, successfully, the previous year after a magazine and a newspaper had printed a story saying he was a convicted criminal.

‘The thing is,
I
had no choice,’ he said. ‘I mean, when I apply for another job in the future I’ll need proof of the truth. But there are thousands of stories out there about you that aren’t true. Is it worth the hassle?’

We had a bit of fun listing some of the silliest and most annoying stories: the supposed boob job I’d had that upset my dad; the weight-reducing wind tunnel I’d apparently installed in the gym at my old house; the raw salmon and peppermint tea diets I’d somehow survived on and the ‘extensive’ dental surgery I’d vainly undergone.

‘None of those things are worth losing sleep over,’ I said to Garry. ‘What does it really matter that I’ve actually never had plastic surgery and I’ve only ever had two teeth capped? I understand that journalists have papers to fill and are under an immense amount of pressure to make headlines, and I get that people don’t want to read that I’m just a normal girl who plucks her own eyebrows and has her nails done once a fortnight.’

The Harvey libel case was very different to anything I’d experienced before, though. Other stories linking me to different men were simply journalists adding two and two together and coming up with five. This was not like that at all. This was one person in the limelight saying things about another human being on a very personal level.

I thought about Ashley now too, and how I’d seen him tormented by the stories about his cheating. I’d believed enough of the stories to end my marriage, but I had never believed every single claim. For one thing, I had been on a Virgin flight once and heard an air stewardess actually admit that she’d sold a kiss-and-tell on another footballer, just to make money. ‘Who cares if it’s true?’ she bragged to her mate. ‘It’s worth a lot of money to me.’

I’d also had a text from Tulisa recently. I’d offered her support when she first joined
The X Factor
the previous year, because I knew how young she was and what she was letting herself in for. I’d invited her to my birthday party at the Sanderson Hotel too, even though it was only for very close family and friends, because I wanted her to know I was there for her.

‘I don’t want to stick my nose into your business, but I think you should know this,’ Tulisa had texted. ‘I have just met one of the girls who claimed she slept with Ashley, and she’s admitted to me it wasn’t true, but the newspapers just printed it anyway.’

I’d gone beyond looking for evidence that Ashley
hadn’t
cheated on me as I had done to begin with. I knew he had, and so this news didn’t comfort me in that respect. What it did do, though, was make me understand Ashley’s fury and frustration at some of the claims that weren’t true. His words ‘They’re out to get me’ took on a new meaning because now I was experiencing first-hand how infuriating it is to be wrongly accused. I was the victim of a false allegation about an affair now, and I was learning exactly how hideous that is.

I was very glad I’d decided to sue, because Harvey then took things to another level. Next he claimed that not only did he have emails from
me
that proved we’d had a relationship, but from my
mother
too. Garry phoned Mam up.

‘Mother, you’re not gonna believe this, but this guy Harvey is saying
you
sent him a email as well.’

‘Eee, that’s the first I’ve heard,’ she replied.

Garry and I laughed, because we both know you’re lucky to get a text out of Mam, let alone an email, but it really wasn’t funny. She was at Langhorn Close, my old family home, and the thought of this poison spreading up to Newcastle really annoyed me. To get my mother mixed up in this was unforgivable.

One of the stories that had most upset me when Ashley and I got divorced was the one about my mam being part of our marriage problems, because she lived with us. I was so upset about that because my mam only ever came to stay to help us out and to look after us and the dogs when we needed her. She spent most of her time in Newcastle, because she’s a grandmother of 10 and they all want her up there. When she was down south she didn’t even live with us properly either, because she always stayed in the flat on the side of the house.

I hated that she’d been wrongly accused in the past, and I hated that she’d been dragged into this latest drama too. I lodged my libel case at the High Court, suing IPC Media, the publishers of
Now
magazine. The magazine responded by standing by Harvey and their story, and saying: ‘The article is not defamatory and was published in good faith – we will strongly defend it.’

My mother was sent an email from my lawyers, with an attached letter that she had to print off and sign, to say she had never had any email contact with Harvey. She went straight to the post office and paid £6 to have it delivered the next day, but when she got home she realised she’d made a mistake.

‘Eee, I’m sorry Cheryl, you’ll never guess what I’ve done. I’ve printed off the email and signed that, instead of the attachment.’

That said it all. It was perfect, really, because it showed what an utter load of nonsense this all was. My mother wasn’t even technically minded enough to print off an attached letter, let alone get involved in sending emails about some secret affair I was meant to be having.

‘You know what,’ I said to Garry, when I put the phone down to my mam. ‘That’s it. I’m sick of people writing lies about me. I’m not only suing, I’m going to do my book. Bring it on!’

I had offers from publishers on the table to write my autobiography, and now I knew for certain it was the right time for me to do it. The lies and the speculation had to stop. All that media scrutiny had nearly turned me crazy, and there was no way in the world I was going back there again. I was in a happy place now, and I was not going back into the darkness.

I opened my laptop and started work on this book, right there and then. I was ready to tell my story exactly how it is, straight from my heart.

I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

Epilogue

‘It’s being broadcast to two billion people,’ I heard someone say.

I was due to perform a duet with Gary Barlow at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert, and I had been quite calm until this moment.

‘Did I hear that right? Two billion people?’

It was true, and suddenly I went from enjoying the vibe backstage to buzzing with nervous energy.

When Gary and I actually stepped out on the stage in front of Buckingham Palace I felt completely overwhelmed. The royal family was sitting over to my left and the Mall was swaying with hundreds of thousands of people. I’d literally never seen anything like it, and I tried to just take it in for a moment.

‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘It doesn’t get any bigger than this.’ If ever I needed proof that dreams can come true, here it was, stretched out for miles in front of me.

Gary and I sang Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’, which was a song we had originally planned to perform as a surprise for Children in Need in November 2011, but I’d had to pull out because I was poorly and lost my voice.

‘We should do it for the Jubilee instead,’ Gary had said.

‘That’s a good idea.’ It was that casual and easy to arrange that I don’t think the magnitude of the occasion really hit me, until I was there, being watched by the biggest audience of my life.

At the end of the concert all the performers were lined up on stage before the Queen and Prince Charles were brought out, and it was pure chance that I happened to be standing right behind Her Majesty as Prince Charles made his speech. It was a moment I will never, ever forget. I knew my family would all be watching, filled with pride, and that meant everything to me.

The party in Buckingham Palace afterwards was
incredible
. Just being inside the palace on such an occasion was an honour, and everywhere I turned I saw amazing artists, people I’d admired for years. I looked at Tom Jones, Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney and Elton John and thought: ‘What is my life all about? Music!’