Cheryl: My Story (26 page)

‘That has changed my life,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve never, ever felt like that before. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to die. Cheryl, I just can’t see the world the same way again.’

I didn’t feel my life had changed, but I knew I’d learned something about myself. I’d been in the first group of four to reach the summit, pushing though gale-force winds on that final stretch, and that had nothing to do with my physical ability. I was mentally strong, I realised. I didn’t crack easily under pressure, because I was so used to it. I’d spent my whole life careering from one pressurised situation to another, usually without much chance to breathe in between.

The journey home was torturous. It was a 12-hour flight, and I swear the little map and the clock showing our progress were moving in slow motion. It felt like a lifetime before we landed.

Mam had put up banners at the house to welcome me home. She and Ashley both started clapping when I walked in the door and the dogs were going crazy to see me. For a minute or two I felt quite strange; more like I’d just got off a spaceship than a private plane, because my home comforts felt so alien to me.

Mam had baked little sponge cakes in the shape of the mountain, which was really sweet, and Ashley presented me with a crystal vase, engraved with the date of the climb and filled with loads of flowers. I was glad to be home, and the worst of my disappointment about him not leaving me a message had passed. He didn’t have a clue how devastated I had been, and I decided I’d try to let it go.

‘Sorry about the whole police thing,’ he said nervously.

This was clearly the thing that was preying on
his
mind, and I asked him to tell me the details.

‘It was the paparazzi’s fault,’ he said. ‘None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for them.’

Ashley had been to a fundraising event with some of his Chelsea teammates on the night in question, and then he’d gone to The Collection bar in South Kensington. He told me he got annoyed because he was photographed talking to a blonde girl who came up to him, uninvited. He knew how this could appear if the picture was published and so he had a row with the photographer that continued when he left the club. There were police officers outside and Ashley swore at them when they got involved in the argument, because he was so frustrated by the paparazzi. He got arrested for being drunk and disorderly and was held for three hours and fined £80. I later discovered he had to pay a fine of £164,000 – two weeks’ wages – to Chelsea. I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time, because I’d have been more annoyed about how many mosquito nets that could have bought than about Ashley being arrested.

I just listened and didn’t judge him. I didn’t even bother questioning why he had gone out drinking after the charity event, as I knew it would have been one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions and not something he’d planned behind my back. I’d invested so much energy into the climb that I didn’t have much left, to be honest. It was obvious Ashley felt ashamed of himself, and that was his real punishment.

When he’d said his piece I couldn’t help telling him how I felt about the voicemails, because as I’d sat there listening to his woes I realised it was still bothering me, a lot.

‘Can I ask you something? How could you not contact me after I summited?’

He looked at me blankly.

‘I mean, how could you not know if I’d made it safely down? If it was me, I’d probably have a plane waiting for you.’

‘Sorry, babe,’ he replied.

He really didn’t know what to say, but I felt better for getting this off my chest. I wasn’t angry with him any more. I knew full well how bad he was at expressing his emotions, and I dismissed it as a man thing. In the past this would have eaten away at me, but I’d grown up a lot, and I’d learned to accept that other people see things in a different way to me. That was one of the lessons I’d learned on the mountain. Ashley hadn’t meant to upset me, and that’s what mattered.

I hadn’t physically recovered from the climb when I had to go and shoot the ‘Untouchables’ video with the girls a few days later. I still had the rash on my face, which the doctor had told me was a symptom of me not going to the toilet for a week. I was literally toxic, and that’s how my body had reacted. I had a black toenail and massive blisters too, but when I saw Kimberley I could see she was in a worse state than me. Her lips and feet were all a total mess, and the pair of us had to have make-up on an inch thick to cover our blemishes.

‘This is a joke,’ I said to Hillary when I realised we had to dance on racks in high heels. ‘We just can’t do it.’

I was literally dancing on raw flesh, seething with resentment at Hillary and threatening to walk out any minute. She knew I wouldn’t, and as usual we all just got on with it and got the job done. On the advice of my doctor I washed the toxins out of my system by doing the ‘lemonade master cleanse’, which meant drinking a mixture of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper in place of meals for a few days. It did the trick, which is just as well as our next tour was about to start and I needed to be fighting fit.

The
Out of Control
tour was our most ambitious yet, with 32 dates booked between April and June. Rehearsals started a week after the mountain and had gone well, and we were all very excited about the set, which would see us being popped up from under the stage on a mechanical device. I was particularly looking forward to playing the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle. We had two dates in May there, and we were ending the tour with another two Newcastle dates at the start of June.

‘Who’s that?’ I said to Kimberley when Nadine brought a bloke we’d never met before onto the tour bus.

‘No idea,’ she said. Nicola and Sarah didn’t seem to know either, and so we waited for Nadine to do the introductions.

‘This is Bruce, my manager,’ she said.

‘Oh!’ We all gasped.

It was no secret that Nadine was trying to launch a solo career in America. She’d been living in the States for several years by now and was forever travelling back and forth. My feeling had always been that we were lucky she was prepared to split herself in two, because we were a five-piece band and it took all of us to make it work.

This was different, though. Having her manager actually on tour with us was crossing the line, and that’s when I knew that it was finally time for us to take a break.

To be fair, I think we’d been heading that way for a while. Ever since Kimberley had appeared in
Les Misérables
for the
Passions
documentary she’d had her heart set on doing more acting and musicals. I knew that, as a woman, she was also just ready for a break, to have more time to herself and to spend with Justin.

Sarah also wanted to focus more on acting and had got herself a lead role in the latest St Trinian’s movie,
The Legend of Fritton’s Gold
, which she was shooting in the summer. She also just wanted to chill out, go on holiday, spend time with her new dog and enjoy just living for a change, instead of working all the time.

It was only really Nicola who looked at the rest of us blankly when the subject of taking a break was raised.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ she said. ‘Am I missing something?’

Nicola just couldn’t understand why anybody would want to stop while we were all still having fun as a band, and were enjoying a lot of success. I could see her point, especially as Girls Aloud ran like a well-oiled machine by now. Even though we’d reached the point where our costumes, videos and all the staging and production was more extravagant than ever before, every year we’d got better and better at managing how we did things.

Gone were the days when none of us could drive and we’d all turn up at the recording studio in one car and wait to do our individual vocals. In the beginning we’d often be sitting around doing nothing for two or three hours, but now we just went along to the studios in Kent separately. We’d stuck with Brian Higgins at Xenomania throughout, which is unusual, but there was no reason to change as he always came up with a new, winning formula and produced hit after hit for us.

By now Brian had a really good idea of who would be best suited to sing which vocals, which saved even more time in the studio. Once we’d all recorded our parts he’d decide whose vocals sat best in each part of the song. We wouldn’t know how the track was going to sound until he delivered it, which was kind of exciting. It meant that lots of our records were recorded without the five of us ever being in the studio at the same time. That’s how we’d managed with Nadine living in America. She would record all the demos and the rest of us would just add our parts afterwards.

‘We’re not splitting up,’ I said to Nicola. ‘It’s just a break. It’s not the end.’

She was still like the little sister I never had and I’m sure the fact she is the youngest in the group had a lot to do with her reaction, as well as that Nicola is so into her music she couldn’t understand why anybody would want to do anything other than sing and perform and make records.

‘We’ve gone from being teenage girls to being young women,’ I said. ‘I think we all need a minute to ourselves, space to do our own thing.’

‘What do
you
want to do?’ Nicola asked me. She knew
The X Factor
wasn’t the reason I wanted a break, as I’d managed to combine the two things already. I’d already agreed to do the next series, which didn’t take too much persuasion from Simon after I’d had a rest from the first. He’d given me a large pay rise and lots of compliments, and in true Simon style made it impossible for me to turn him down. ‘People love you,’ he said. ‘You’re unstoppable. Why would anyone in their right mind back out now?’

After my experience in the studio with Will, and how much I’d enjoyed it, I was planning on doing some more recording later in the year. Both of those things I could have done alongside being in Girls Aloud, though. What I
really
wanted was more time for my marriage.

‘You know what,’ I told Nicola. ‘I just want to be a wife. Above all else, I want to spend more time with Ashley, and think about starting a family.’

I was nearly 26; in my mind the perfect age to start having children. Ashley had been telling me practically since we got married that I should live my dream first and we could have kids later, but now I was more broody and impatient than ever. Where I come from the women have their children young, and I never wanted to be an older mother. I’d look at my nieces and nephews and my heart would
ache
to be a mother.

‘I just feel ready,’ I said to Nicola. ‘After all that’s gone on, I finally feel more settled again now, and I don’t want to keep putting it off.’

I also had another ambition, one I’d been thinking about ever since all the heartbreak with Ashley. When I was feeling really low, I’d found myself thinking about other people who were struggling with their lives too, in different ways. I decided that when I was stronger I would try to help them, and ever since the mountain I’d been thinking about this more and more, and wondering if I could set up some kind of charity.

I’d talked to Will about this recently, and he told me he was once paid $400,000 for a DJ-ing job and that he used the money to put three kids from an underprivileged school in his old neighbourhood of Boyle Heights in LA through college. That was so inspiring it gave me goosebumps, and I was starting to think about my own background and how I could bring a bit of light into the lives of disadvantaged kids in the North East, ones who were affected by drugs or poverty. It was definitely a challenge I wanted to take on.

For now, though, I was focused on the tour. I was determined to really enjoy it because in the back of my mind I was wondering if things would ever be the same again for Girls Aloud after this. We’d all had a discussion with Hillary and had agreed that we were going to take a break, but we hadn’t decided on how long we were taking off, which was quite scary. We’d grown up together as a group and we were so used to consulting one another and making joint decisions, all the time. I couldn’t imagine not having conversations about which two of us were in hair and make-up first or who was doing the sound check next, and I knew I’d miss the chaos of five girls all fussing with zips and tights and heels at the same time before a show. I loved all that girly stuff. It was bonding, and when we walked out on stage I always felt we were really together and close as a group. It was a fantastic feeling, and even when we’d decided to take a break I was very glad to find that vibe didn’t change.

We only had one disaster on this tour. It was when we played the O2, and my platform ground to a halt. I could see all the other girls getting higher and higher and I could hear the fans screaming, but only my head was popping up from underneath the stage. It was really embarrassing and I just wanted to talk to the other girls to find out what was happening, but I couldn’t. Instead I just stood there laughing, waiting until the machine started working again, and then got on with the show feeling like a lemon.

‘That was hysterical,’ Nicola laughed afterwards. ‘I would have totally freaked out if that happened to me, but you just carried on!’

Nicola had actually talked to a psychologist before the tour, as she’s terrified of heights and needed to get her head around the fact the podiums rose to about 50 foot. She knew that I thought seeing a shrink was a bit over the top, and it was so typical that I was the one who ended up having the problem.