Cheryl: My Story (24 page)

Ashley was so happy for me, but he also said he was relieved it was all over. He’d seen how much the show had taken out of me. In the end I was skinnier than I’d been in years, and I was absolutely exhausted, to the point of collapse. The show had been a huge ratings success though, and Simon was absolutely over the moon and was already talking about the next series.

‘As I said to you at the start of this process, you are literally one of the best people I’ve worked with,’ he told me. ‘I knew you could do it. You’re a natural. Well done.’ Then he added: ‘Thanks for being great, and most importantly, thanks for making me look good in choosing you.’

I’d never set out to have this part of my career and I was amazed by what had happened to me.
The X Factor
had dominated the past six months of my life, and I’d been so caught up with the acts I hadn’t had any time to take stock of my own life along the way. It was like Simon had put me on a rollercoaster ride in June and I’d just stepped off with my head spinning, and gone, ‘Wow! Did I really just do that?’

Over the past couple of months I’d performed ‘The Promise’, our new Girls Aloud single, on
The X Factor
, as well as on
The Jonathan Ross Show
and Children in Need. It was great to be on stage with the girls again. This was our nineteenth single, it went to number one and we partied just like in the old days.

That was all I’d ever wanted, my whole life; to sing on the TV and have a number one record. I could hardly believe it was still happening all these years after ‘Sound of the Underground’ had first made my dream come true.

I started being praised all over the place, and I found it really embarrassing. I was also winning all kinds of polls – crazy things like
Glamour
magazine’s 50 Best-dressed Women in the World, or
FHM
’s World’s Sexiest Woman. It was ludicrous, really.

‘What do you think they’d make of me if they saw us like this?’ I said to Ashley one day.

We were having a rare Sunday off together, and I was wearing a pair of comfy old trackies and no make-up.

‘You still look gorgeous, babe,’ he said, and I started pulling silly faces at him, to make myself look daft.

Ashley and I had moved house by now, because I wanted a fresh start after all the heartache. I didn’t want to live in a house that had been filled with bad memories, and so we sold our place in Oxshott and were now living in Hurtmore House, a gorgeous six-bedroom mansion in Godalming, Surrey.

We were enjoying chilling out, eating grilled chicken salad and pitta bread we got from a restaurant up the road. After the
EastEnders
omnibus we watched a recording of one of my favourite shows,
Dancing with the Stars
. I loved the show not only for the dancing but for all the colours and sequins on the dresses, which I found really inspiring for costume ideas. Derek Hough was my favourite dancer, and every time he came on I said to Ashley, ‘That guy is such a great dancer. He’s the best one on there.’

Days like this reminded me of the early months of our relationship, when we used to spend time together in Ashley’s old flat at Princess Park Manor. The only difference was, in those days it was Domino’s Pizza on the menu and I was more likely to be dreaming about what I hoped to achieve than talking about success that had actually come my way.

‘We’re doing “The Promise” at the BRITs,’ I told Ashley. ‘We’re nominated for Best Single. Can you come?’

‘Yes, I’ll be there, babe.’

The BRITs were in February, and last year’s held bad memories, coming as they did just weeks after the cheating story first broke. Then, nobody knew whether I was going to stick by Ashley. I remembered there had been almost as much publicity about the fact I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring as there was about Nadine being missing from the group. It was a joke. That whole ‘on–off’ saga of my wedding ring was such a lot of nonsense and had really bugged me throughout
The X Factor
. ‘It’s a huge yellow diamond that doesn’t go with every outfit I wear. Get over it!’ I wanted to scream whenever paps tried to photograph my bare left hand.

This year I was definitely wearing it to the BRITs, and Ashley was coming to watch. It didn’t take a genius to work out that this was going to attract a lot of publicity too, but we didn’t discuss it. I didn’t want to pick at old wounds, and Ashley certainly wouldn’t have started a conversation along those lines. We both knew people were watching him and waiting for him to mess up again, but what could we do? He’d barely dared to go out in the whole past 12 months, and we couldn’t live like that forever. He was my husband and I wanted him with me on such an important night.

All five of us girls were so scared on the night of the BRITs it was ridiculous. We’d done arena tours with incredibly complicated sets and played the O2 with all the bells and whistles, but this was different because it was a huge production number and we were doing it in front of all the music industry bigwigs.

Thankfully the performance went down a storm and I somehow managed to get down the huge staircase wearing incredibly high Christian Louboutins and a massive bright pink feather without breaking my neck.

We actually won Best British Single. This was an award voted for by the British public, and as I said on the night, it was the cherry on the cake for Girls Aloud after seven years together. I was bursting with pride when I posed for photographs with all the girls, and I couldn’t wait to see Ashley after the ceremony.

‘You smashed it! I’m so proud of you,’ he said.

I felt ecstatic, like the pieces of my life were clicked back where they should be. I cuddled up to Ashley with a big smile on my face, and it seemed like a million pictures were taken of us together that night. For once I didn’t care about the paparazzi. I wanted the world to see we had got through the past year, and that 2009 was going to be absolutely amazing for us.

11
‘I just want to be a wife’

‘Remember when you gave me money for charity when I did
Celebrity Apprentice
?’

‘Yeeees …’

‘Well, I’m raising money for Comic Relief again. Can you make a donation?’

‘Sure. What are you doing this time?’

‘Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, with Kimberley and a few others.’

There was a long pause before Simon said, ‘You’re mad. I’ll tell you what, I’ll pay you
not
to do it.’

I started laughing but Simon was deadly serious, and for the first time I realised I didn’t have a clue what I was letting myself in for.

Kimberley had asked me to do the climb after she had already agreed to take part and then took a wobbler.

‘Please, Cheryl, I don’t want to do it on my own,’ she begged. ‘I’ve asked Sarah and she said no, she couldn’t cope. Will you come?’

I wasn’t used to seeing Kimberley like that. Normally I was the one who was panicking and needed calming down, and she was always the sensible one who kept a cool head and took control.

‘OK, I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind a challenge.’

To me it was just a charity walk. All I had to do was give up a week or so of my time and put one foot in front of the other, and we’d raise a load of money to help protect people in Africa from malaria. There were seven others taking part – Gary Barlow, Chris Moyles, Alesha Dixon, Denise Van Outen, Fearne Cotton, Ronan Keating and Ben Shephard from
GMTV
, all of whom I’d met before. I wasn’t bothered who else was going anyway; I was there to raise money for a good cause and help Kimberley do the same.

I was so busy in the run-up to the climb, in March 2009, that I had no time to prepare properly or even think about it.

At the beginning of the year I’d spent some time in a recording studio with Will.i.am, who had been telling me ever since I recorded my little part on his ‘Heartbreaker’ single 12 months earlier that I should record some solo material.

‘You know you’re gonna do a solo record, right?’ he said to me over and over again before I eventually said ‘yes’.

‘I don’t know how to do it on my own,’ I’d protested the last time I saw him, when we met up in London.

‘I’ll help you, every step. I want to be involved with your career. Come into the studio, write with me. I know we can do some great stuff. Say yes. You won’t regret it.’

He gave me one of his charismatic smiles.

‘OK. I’ll try, after
The X Factor
. But I’m really not sure about this.’

When the day came to actually go into the studio with him I was nervous but excited. I’d written songs before, but this was Will.i.am I was dealing with, one of the world’s biggest producers. How could I go into a studio – just me, Will and a pen – and write music?

As I stepped into that recording studio my stomach was filled with a million butterflies but if Will noticed how nervous I was, he didn’t say anything.

‘You go first – you write your bit,’ he said.

He was just so cool about the whole thing, while I was feeling very British and self-conscious. Physically putting pen to paper with Will beside me was one of the most daunting moments of my career. I was intimidated just to be there in the studio with him, but I took a deep breath and began to scribble down some lyrics.

‘I like it!’ Will said straight away. ‘That’s so good!’

I’d been worried about him not liking what I’d done but he got me straight away.

‘You’re good. I told you, you could do it.’

The next thing I knew I was in a booth, actually recording, and when I’d done it once it got easier each time. Will was so enthusiastic and encouraging that he made the whole thing seem so easy, and so much fun. We wrote six tracks together, and I loved working with him. It was exciting and new, and even though we hadn’t really spent much time together at all, he already felt like a really close friend to me.

Around the same time, in early 2009, I was also working on new material with Girls Aloud and preparing for our fifth tour. We had our single, ‘Untouchable’, coming out soon, and the
Out of Control
tour was starting in May.

As a result, practically the only preparation I did for Kilimanjaro was to ask my mam to wear in my hiking boots, as she’s the same shoe size as me. ‘Can you just put some thick socks on and wear them round the house?’ I asked her.

‘Aren’t you meant to wear them in yourself, Cheryl?’

‘Yes, Mam, but I can hardly walk round recording studios in those, can I?’

I had a setting that was actually called ‘Kilimanjaro’ on the treadmill in my gym at home and so I’d have a go on that occasionally, even though I hate running and usually gave up before I’d completed the programme. Ashley thought I was crazy for agreeing to the climb, but he didn’t seem worried like Simon was and he happily gave me some money and got his friends to make donations too.

‘Good luck, babe,’ he said. ‘Hope it goes well.’

There was no fuss, and my mam was just as laid-back. ‘Bye, Cheryl,’ she said, just as if she was waving me off to catch the bus to town. Besides Simon, my brother Garry was the only one who was really concerned about what I was doing, as he watches all those extreme documentaries and knew that people had died on the mountain.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘Statistically, what are the chances of things going wrong? We’ve got film crews with us and the best guides possible.’

We flew to Nairobi and had to take a little plane from there to Tanzania. Kimberley was taking the whole thing incredibly seriously, and she had lots of emotional calls from her family, who were all telling her they loved her and to stay safe. ‘If anything happens to me, remember I love you,’ I could hear her say.

A group of Maasai warriors appeared near the base camp, which was amazing as they literally came out of nowhere and started bouncing really high on their bare feet all around us. It was incredible, and seeing them gave me a sharp reminder of why I was there, to help people like them.

Kimberley told me that malaria kills a child every 30 seconds in Africa, when a £5 net could save them. They were the only numbers that lodged in my brain, because that was all that mattered to me. The fact the mountain is 19,340 feet above sea level and temperatures on the climb can range from 45°C to minus 25 didn’t register with me at all, until I was actually there, finding that out first-hand.

‘This is so scary,’ Kimberley said on the first night. We were sharing a tent with Alesha Dixon, tucked up together like three sausages in our sleeping bags. I hadn’t enjoyed the first day of climbing at all. I’d expected it to be more of a hike than a scramble up actual steep rock, but nevertheless I’d just put my head down and got on with it. I was relieved to finally be in the tent at our first camp, and I actually found it quite a novelty and was enjoying the feeling of being on an adventure.

Alesha is good fun and we had plenty in common, as she was in Mystique when we were starting out with Girls Aloud. We also had another link, though this one wasn’t fun at all. Her husband had cheated on her with Javine, the singer who very nearly made it into Girls Aloud. I didn’t know Alesha well but I knew that her ex-husband was MC Harvey from the band So Solid Crew, and that Javine had a baby with him. I remembered that Alesha had texted me to offer support when I went to Thailand after Ashley cheated, and I’d understood why, because she knew what I was going through.