Cheryl: My Story (44 page)

Just when I was thinking the day couldn’t get any more incredible, Prince William and Kate came over to me for a chat.

‘Did you know you’ve got a bit of competition?’ Wills said with a cheeky look in his eye.

‘From who?’

Wills looked at Kate and they both started laughing before Kate confessed that she dressed up as
me
on her hen night, in a body suit and split trousers, and sang ‘Fight For This Love’. She even learned the dance routine and was step perfect by all accounts, as her sister Pippa and brother James also came over and told me all about it.

‘Well, I’m very flattered’ I said. I could just imagine her, and it was so surreal.

Prince Harry came over to say hello, and we had a laugh about the daft stories that had appeared about us recently. It was my fault. I’d made a joke in a magazine that I’d had a dream about marrying him, which had been blown up out of all proportion.

‘I
was
only joking,’ I reassured Harry.

‘I found it all very funny,’ he replied. ‘At least you can now put the record straight. I hear you’re writing a book. Whose should I buy – yours or Simon’s?’

I smiled. ‘If you want the truth – mine, of course.’

As I come to the end of my book I can’t describe how therapeutic and liberating it has been to tell my story. I got lost in darkness for a long time, but now I feel strong and happy again.

I turn 30 next year and I’m really looking forward to it, because I know who I am again, and what I want out of my life.

I’ve rediscovered my first love and passion – music – and I feel excited and inspired by it. Having my single, ‘Call My Name’, go to number one in June, becoming the fastest-selling single of the year, was a massive moment for me. With my first two solo albums I always had critics claiming they only did well because of Simon or
The X Factor
, but now I’ve done it all by myself, and that makes me feel very proud.

I have never claimed to be the best vocalist in the world. I’m a performer, and putting on a show is what I enjoy most of all. That is why I started to plan my first solo tour as soon as my album,
A Million Lights
, came out after the single. It’s all I ever wanted, from when I was a child. I dreamed of making number one records and being up on stage, singing and dancing and entertaining the audience, and I’m so happy to back doing what I love.

I got together with Girls Aloud several months ago, which was another high point of this year. We’ve put up with so much speculation about our three years apart, but now we’re proving that we haven’t had the fall-outs the press would like to think we have. We’ve simply grown into women, and have different lives to the ones we had as young girls. I hadn’t seen Nadine for two whole years and had only seen Sarah a few times, but when the five of us were together again it was like we’d never been apart.

By the time this book is published Girls Aloud will have recorded this year’s Children in Need single, which is also a celebration of our tenth anniversary as a group, and we’ll hopefully be working on a tour and greatest hits album. Then I think that’s it for Girls Aloud. We’ve achieved far more than any of us ever dared to dream of and, whatever happens next, I know we’ll always be in each other’s lives.

***

I feel incredibly lucky to have had 10 successful years in the music industry, with the girls and as a solo artist. Every day I wake up and I want to go to work and do the job I love, and I know that in this economic climate that is an absolute gift and a privilege.

I hope I’m lucky enough to have children one day, and I want a stable, happy home. That, and keeping going with my music and making my family proud, are my priorities now. My family are my real world; they’re not in the dream that my life becomes sometimes, and when I need a leveller I turn to them. They’ve watched me have a dream, pursue it and live it, and now having a family of my own is my next big dream.

Simon actually phoned me up in April this year and asked me if I wanted to do the American
X Factor
again, and I think you can guess what my answer was. It would take me away from my family and my reality, and throw me back into the craziness again. That’s not what I want right now, not at all.

My twenties have been full of the highest highs and the lowest lows, but now it’s time for me to find some balance, and my happy place.

Picture Section

This is me aged six weeks with my mam, Joan. She was twenty-four when I was born, making her a mam of four.

Here I am in 1986, coming up for three, posing with my siblings. Joe, ten, is at the back, Andrew is six and my sister Gillian is seven.

I’m three here, posing for the camera in Boots. Mam entered me for loads of ‘bonny baby’-type competitions.

Mam took me into a passport photo booth while I was still in the pink dress I’d worn in Boots. She wanted a photo for her purse.

Here I am sitting on my dad’s knee aged four. This is in our old family home on Cresswell Street in Byker, where my dad, Garry, always had music playing.

This is me aged seven and my little brother Garry, aged three, posing for my dad. He was a painter and decorator but wanted to be a photographer at the time.

This is me at home in June 1993, just before I went to the Royal Ballet’s summer school. I nearly didn’t go because Mam and Dad couldn’t afford it.

Here I’m showing off my ballet skills on a photoshoot for
Gimme 5
, a popular Tyne Tees children’s television programme when I was growing up.