Cheryl: My Story (41 page)

Simon got booed on
Britain’s Got Talent
every night that week and was really being shown the public’s wrath. I still hadn’t spoken to him, so after a few days I decided it was time to get in touch.

I wrote the longest text ever. I apologise about the bad language, but this is how he made me feel, and this is what I sent to him:

‘F*** you. F*** Fox. F***
Britain’s Got Talent
. F*** the orange and purple outfit. F*** big hair. F*** the UK
X Factor
. F*** you all. I hate you. I understand you’re a businessman, and what I’ve learned from this is that business means more to you than friendship. I’m sad it’s got like this and I wish you the best of luck, but count me out.’

Simon texted back: ‘Can I talk to you?’, which I ignored. Then I switched the phone off and didn’t speak to anyone, unless it went through Lily.

Then things got even messier. Seth had rung Fox and was told by Pete Rice, their Chairman of Entertainment: ‘This is Simon’s call. It’s his show and he has control over who sits on the panel. We
love
Cheryl over here. We chose her because she’s a star and this has nothing whatsoever to do with Fox. We’re sad it’s gone like this.’

Next, we got a call from a girl asking who I wanted to fly with and which hotel I wanted to stay in when I returned to the States for the next set of auditions in New York on the following Wednesday.

Will went bananas, all over again. ‘Excuse me? This is highly disrespectful. It’s all over the press what’s happened. Are you taking the
piss
?’

‘No,’ the girl said. ‘I’m just doing my job and I’ve been told Cheryl is expected on Wednesday, to render her duties as a judge.’

Seth got involved again, and it soon became obvious what game they were playing. When Richard had delivered the news, he had chosen his words very carefully and had not actually told me I was fired. He had said I was being
replaced
, which meant I was still employed by Fox. This meant that, legally, I was contracted to be back on the show in a few days’ time.

Will phoned Simon and they had a blazing row.

‘As if she’s gonna rock up after all that’s happened. What are you doing? She trusted you.’

‘Is she coming back on Wednesday or not?’ Simon asked.

‘Are you
joking
? Is this all about contracts? Is it that you don’t wanna
pay
her?’

There was no answer to that, and so Will ended the call by saying, ‘She’s a professional person. She doesn’t break contracts. She’ll be there on Wednesday.’

In the meantime Mike Darnell, one of the top bosses at Fox, and Cecile Frot-Coutaz, the producer, had been on the phone, making it crystal clear this had nothing to do with them either. ‘Sweetheart, darling,’ Cecile said. ‘We all want you back. We’re so sorry this is happening. We’ll see you on Wednesday.’

The last thing I wanted to do was fly to New York under these circumstances, and so Will issued an ultimatum to Fox, asking for written confirmation I’d been sacked. ‘If we don’t get an email in twenty-four hours, she’ll be there, because she doesn’t break contracts,’ Will said.

‘We can’t do it. It’s a Sunday,’ was the response we got back.

I was all over the place by this time. I had to get ready to return to the States just in case, not knowing what I would be going back to, and hoping I didn’t have to.

Will phoned me from the gym. He was on the treadmill and I could hear him breathing heavily. ‘You’re not fighting this alone, I’m fighting with you,’ he said. ‘I know it’s hard, but the good guys always win. I’m standing next to you the whole way and I’m not watching anyone trample all over you.’

It was such a comfort to have Will’s support, and I believed what he said. The good guys do win in the end, but I just wondered how long it would take for the end of this particular drama to get here.

I decided it was time to text Richard Holloway. Not only had he done Simon’s dirty work, but
he’d
been the one who had chosen his words carefully when it came to delivering the bad news, which was now causing me no end of trouble.

‘What did I ever do to you to deserve this treatment?’ I asked.

We’d worked together for three years, and now it had started to sink in that I actually felt more hurt than angry about what he’d done.

‘This is the saddest day of my working life,’ was his reply.

This was so not funny any more. The nervous laughter had stopped, and everything felt deadly serious. We received no email confirming my sacking, but in the event I didn’t have to fly back to America because Simon issued a formal statement to the media, announcing my departure from the American
X Factor
. Thank God!

I was just so relieved I wasn’t going back. It was like a massive weight had been lifted from my shoulders as soon as I heard that news.

I decided, almost immediately, that I wanted to move house. Too much misery had gone on in the house I was renting in Hadley Wood. Every time I looked at the staircases I was reminded how I’d broken down on them during the end of the last series of
The X Factor
, and over Christmas. I’d expected to be spending most of my time in my new place in LA, but instead I was here, with bad memories all around me. I would always remember this as the house I was living in when I got sacked, as well as when I moved out of our marital home, and I had to get out.

It felt exactly the right time for a fresh start, and I started to look for another place to rent. It took a little while, but the house I eventually found was absolutely perfect. It was in the Hertfordshire countryside and Rupert Grint, the actor who played Ron in the Harry Potter films, used to live there. It was old and rambling, and I just loved it the minute I set eyes on it.

The best thing of all was that it was set in acres and acres of land and had a massive space in the back. Not long before I moved in I was finally granted the injunction against the paparazzi I’d applied for. It was July now, and I’d gone through months and months of legal proceedings, with me having to prove to the courts that my privacy was being invaded by the press.

It’s a very tough thing for a celebrity to do, and only a handful of people have successfully applied for it, Sienna Miller and Hugh Grant being two of them.

I had to show that I was not one of those people who played with the media by having people tip them off about when I was on a beach in a bikini, for instance. I also had to produce evidence of how I was hounded, and how the press camped outside my house twenty-four hours a day. This meant turning the tables on the paps for a while, and Lily would step out of the car and take photographs of
them
, to show the courts how many of them followed me, and how aggressive they could be.

I can’t explain the relief I felt when the injunction was finally granted. It meant the paps were allowed to photograph me on a red carpet, for instance, or coming out of a restaurant, but they were not permitted to follow me or pursue me in a car or on foot, and they were not allowed to stay outside my house and keep me under surveillance.

When I got the news it was the best thing I’d heard in years and I actually jumped for joy. It meant I could now run down the fields at the back of this new house with the dogs, knowing
nobody
could take a picture.

The first time I did that I was barefoot and the sun was shining. The feeling of freedom was so amazing I literally felt like singing: ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’. It was
that
idyllic,
that
liberating. It was like being let out of jail.

My sister and some of my nieces and nephews came down to stay with me and the feeling of normality overwhelmed me. I called my new home the ‘happy house’. It was amazing, and I felt like myself again for the first time in years and years.

I sat in the garden one day talking to Gillian, and it was honestly like being a kid again in Newcastle, I felt that free.

‘Remember that time Dolly fell out of the wheelchair?’ I said, and we both had tears running down our cheeks as we remembered the story together.

The more I had got to know Dolly when I was a teenager, the more she had started to rely on me. She got quite clingy, actually, and didn’t like it if I wasn’t at her beck and call.

‘Eee, Cheryl, take me down to our Kenneth’s,’ she said one day.

‘But Dolly, I’ve got a hair appointment in 20 minutes and I’ll be late if I have to push you down there …’

‘Come on, Cheryl, it won’t take long. Fly like the wind! I know you can do it!’

There was no arguing with her, and so I gritted my teeth and pegged it down the road, pushing Dolly in her wheelchair as fast as I could.

‘That’s it! Run like you’ve never run before!’ she called out as I navigated the winding pavement. ‘Go, Cheryl! Go!’

‘I’m gonna kill you for this, Dolly, I swear!’ I said, as I got faster and faster. As I spoke there was suddenly a bump and a crash. The wheelchair had hit an uneven paving stone, and Dolly was catapulted out. I was running that fast though, still clinging to the wheelchair, that I couldn’t stop.

I eventually skidded to a halt about two minutes later, falling over and ripping my jacket and trousers down the whole of one side of my body. I was bleeding and aching, and this gorgeous lad pulled over in a car and helped me up while his girlfriend looked down her nose at me.

I was absolutely mortified, but when I hobbled back down the road to find Dolly it got even worse. She was sprawled out face down on the pavement, in a
Superman
position.

‘Me knees have gone to mush! Me knees, Cheryl! Arghhh!’

It wasn’t until I’d hauled her back into the buckled chair, deposited her at Kenneth’s and run to the hairdresser’s looking like I’d been dragged though a hedge backwards that I saw the funny side, and now me and Gillian were roaring our heads off all over again.

It was a real tonic to spend time like that with my family, and I was enjoying myself so much.

My name was still appearing in the media, especially when Nicole’s job was officially announced on American
X Factor
, and again when the UK line-up was revealed, but with no new pictures of me the coverage got less and less.

I had no real feelings towards Nicole, by the way. I was pretty sure she had pitched for my job because she is very, very ambitious, but I didn’t know the full facts back then. If anything, I felt sorry for her because she was the one who was going to be under scrutiny in the press, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. I didn’t know the whole truth until earlier this year, 2012, when Simon confirmed in his biography that Nicole actually did go after my job. I couldn’t have cared less by that time. It was almost a year later, I’d moved on and in fact she probably did me a favour.

One day, in the summer of 2011, I sat in the garden of my happy house with Buster and Coco and a realisation hit me, like a bolt of lightning: ‘I’ve not been happy like this since before the first allegations about Ashley.’

That was so true. I only knew it now because I felt so different to how I’d been for years. The first stories about Ashley’s cheating had come out in January 2008, three and a half years earlier. Three and a half years! Even when we were together, before the second lot of allegations in 2010, I’d not been right. I could see that now, for the first time. I had tried so hard to move on, but I was aching inside the whole time because I was not fully healed. Now, at last, I could feel myself starting to heal, completely, as a person.

It was my twenty-eighth birthday on 30 June and I decided to have a big birthday party. I wanted to celebrate life, basically, and I wanted all the people who were special to me to be there. Everyone I invited was either family or like family to me – the girls, Lily, Will, all the people close to me.

Not long before the party I heard that Ashley went on holiday to LA, and there were more stories in the press about him being with other women. I can’t even remember how I was told about them, but it was my reaction that sticks in my mind.

‘So what?’ I thought. ‘He’s a single man. We’re divorced now. He can do what he wants. I’m over him, it doesn’t matter to me any more.’

I wanted to invite Ashley’s mam, brother and sister-in-law to the party because they are people I care about, and I still considered them part of my family, despite the divorce. It was tricky, though, because I wasn’t sure how they would feel coming along without Ashley.

As soon as those latest stories came out, I realised there was nothing to stop me inviting Ashley to the party too, just as a friend. It was another hugely liberating moment in my life. I’d got shut of the paps, and I felt I had finally, finally accepted my marriage was over.

I texted Ashley and said, ‘Come to the party. Come and show your face. I don’t care what people think.’

Ashley agreed and I was so pleased. We’d been to a lot of really good parties together over the years. There was one time when I dressed as Catwoman and he was Batman at a Chelsea Christmas party, which was a laugh, but the times when we got together with close friends and family were always the best. We’d always had a great time partying together, and when he arrived at my birthday party it didn’t feel awkward at all. I could see a few people looking at him, thinking, ‘Oooh! Ashley’s here.
OK
then …’ but it didn’t bother me. I introduced him to Will for the first time, who told me afterwards, ‘Ashley’s so cool. It’s cute you’re willing to do this.’