Cheryl Cheryl - Cheryl - My Story

Cheryl

MY STORY

Epigraph Epigraph Acknowledgements Prologue 1. ‘Follow your dreams, Cheryl’ 2. ‘You need to get your head out of the clouds’ 3. ‘Open up now or we’ll take your kneecaps off’ 4. ‘I’m so proud of you I could pop’ 5. ‘You’re arresting me?’ 6. ‘Ashley treats me like a princess’ 7. ‘Will you marry me?’ 8. ‘You’ve come a long way, Cheryl!’ 9. ‘Something happened … but I don’t know what’ 10. ‘Everyone loves you. You’re a star. Well done!’ 11. ‘I just want to be a wife’ 12. ‘Unfortunately, you’re going to be number one next week’ 13. ‘Even if it kills me, I want to know it all’ 14. ‘I’m divorcing you’ 15. ‘Yes! This is what I live for’ 16. ‘You’re tryin’ to kill me!’ 17. ‘Do they not think I’m a human being?’ 18. ‘Cheryl, I know you’re laughing but this is really bad’ 19. ‘Get me into my music again!’ Epilogue Picture Section About the Author Picture credits Copyright About the Publisher

Keep Calm and Soldier On.

Contents

Title Page Cheryl MY STORY

Epigraph Epigraph Epigraph Acknowledgements Prologue 1. ‘Follow your dreams, Cheryl’ 2. ‘You need to get your head out of the clouds’ 3. ‘Open up now or we’ll take your kneecaps off’ 4. ‘I’m so proud of you I could pop’ 5. ‘You’re arresting me?’ 6. ‘Ashley treats me like a princess’ 7. ‘Will you marry me?’ 8. ‘You’ve come a long way, Cheryl!’ 9. ‘Something happened … but I don’t know what’ 10. ‘Everyone loves you. You’re a star. Well done!’ 11. ‘I just want to be a wife’ 12. ‘Unfortunately, you’re going to be number one next week’ 13. ‘Even if it kills me, I want to know it all’ 14. ‘I’m divorcing you’ 15. ‘Yes! This is what I live for’ 16. ‘You’re tryin’ to kill me!’ 17. ‘Do they not think I’m a human being?’ 18. ‘Cheryl, I know you’re laughing but this is really bad’ 19. ‘Get me into my music again!’ Epilogue Picture Section About the Author Picture credits Copyright About the Publisher Keep Calm and Soldier On.

Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Rachel Murphy – thank you for helping me write this. We’ve had laughter and tears, and I’m THRILLED with the result! Ha ha. Carole Tonkinson, Victoria McGeown, Anna Gibson, Georgina Atsiaris, Steve Boggs and everyone at HarperCollins – thank you all so much for making this such an easy and enjoyable process. Solomon Parker, Eugenie Furniss and Claudia Webb at WMA – thank you for giving me this opportunity and starting me off on the right path. Richard Bray and Ailish McKenna at Bray & Krais. Rankin. Seth, Sundraj, Lily and Garry – thank you! Thank you to my team, my loved ones and all the amazing people I have in my life – and lastly to all the arseholes who have crossed my path and made it so colourful!!!

Prologue

1. ‘Follow your dreams, Cheryl’

2. ‘You need to get your head out of the clouds’

3. ‘Open up now or we’ll take your kneecaps off’

4. ‘I’m so proud of you I could pop’

5. ‘You’re arresting me?’

6. ‘Ashley treats me like a princess’

7. ‘Will you marry me?’

8. ‘You’ve come a long way, Cheryl!’

9. ‘Something happened … but I don’t know what’

10. ‘Everyone loves you. You’re a star. Well done!’

11. ‘I just want to be a wife’

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

13. ‘Even if it kills me, I want to know it all’

14. ‘I’m divorcing you’

15. ‘Yes! This is what I live for’

16. ‘You’re tryin’ to kill me!’

17. ‘Do they not think I’m a human being?’

18. ‘Cheryl, I know you’re laughing but this is really bad’

19. ‘Get me into my music again!’

Epilogue

Picture Section

About the Author

Picture credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

Rachel Murphy – thank you for helping me write this. We’ve had laughter and tears, and I’m THRILLED with the result! Ha ha.

Carole Tonkinson, Victoria McGeown, Anna Gibson, Georgina Atsiaris, Steve Boggs and everyone at HarperCollins – thank you all so much for making this such an easy and enjoyable process.

Solomon Parker, Eugenie Furniss and Claudia Webb at WMA – thank you for giving me this opportunity and starting me off on the right path.

Richard Bray and Ailish McKenna at Bray & Krais.

Rankin.

Seth, Sundraj, Lily and Garry – thank you!

Thank you to my team, my loved ones and all the amazing people I have in my life – and lastly to all the arseholes who have crossed my path and made it so colourful!!!

Prologue

‘Can I have your autograph and a picture?’

I was totally stunned. Was this person really here, asking me to sign my name and pose for a photo?

‘Well … can I?’

The woman was staring at me hopefully, holding a camera up and pushing a bit of paper towards me.

‘No, absolutely not,’ I stuttered. I was flabbergasted. Disgusted, actually.

This wasn’t a fan at a Girls Aloud concert or someone waiting outside the X Factor studios. The woman was a cleaner at the London Clinic where I was being treated for malaria.

I’d literally nearly died just days before, and now I was lying in bed looking and feeling so weak and ill, and trying to get my head around what the hell had happened to me. The cleaner stuffed the camera in her apron pocket and looked quite put out, as if I’d turned down a perfectly reasonable request.

Derek was horrified, and he leapt up and showed her the door. He’s one of the most kind and sensitive and gentlemanly men I have ever met, but I swear from the look in his eyes he wanted to kill that woman.

I stared at Derek in disbelief. How had my personal life got so tangled up with my job and my fame that other people no longer treated me like a human being?

‘Am I going to die?’ I’d asked a nurse on my first day in intensive care. There was a pause before she told me plainly: ‘There’s a possibility.’

Her words didn’t shock me. I was so exhausted that I actually felt relieved. ‘If I am dying, just hurry up and make it happen,’ I thought. ‘I’m too tired. For God’s sake, make this end.’

I spent four days in intensive care at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and was now out of danger, but I was still very ill. My body felt incredibly weak and I’d been drifting in and out of sleep and consciousness for days. My head was heavy and foggy and it was so uncomfortable even just to lie down.

‘I’ve survived,’ I thought in the moments after the cleaner was shown out of the room.

‘But what’s happened to me? Who am I?’

Being in hospital is hell. All you can do is lie there and think. I couldn’t walk. I was stuck in bed with machines bleeping all around me, trying to make sense of how and why I was here, and what my life had become.

My life was crazy, and it had been that way for a long time. The way the cleaner treated me was just the latest proof of how mad it was. She didn’t stop to think that I was a living, breathing woman who had been at death’s door. I’d been asked for pictures at inappropriate moments many times before, but this one topped the lot in terms of cheek and weirdness.

I shut my eyes and thought back to earlier that day, when I’d been taken for a lung scan. I was dressed in a hospital gown and I had filthy hair that was so greasy it looked like I was wearing a cap with long pieces of hair sticking out from under it. I hadn’t showered or been out of bed for a week and my face was yellow with jaundice, but in that moment I didn’t care. It was just amazing to be on the move instead of lying in bed, attached to tubes and machines. As I was wheeled down the corridor I could feel the air blowing through all the hair that wasn’t stuck to my head. I honestly felt like a girl in a shampoo advert, wafting my hair about in the breeze.