Essex Boy: My Story (20 page)

But they said, ‘OK, Kirk, we’re really sorry, we were only doing what we were told by our manager.
He said it would make us popular in the UK if we took you and Frankie
apart.’

I just shrugged it off, but later, back at the hotel, Kristina came over and told me she really fancied me.
I just said, ‘Are you serious?
After everything in the house?!’

She got her phone out and started showing me naked pictures of herself, saying, ‘Come to my room and I’ll show you how much I fancy you.’

I was thinking, ‘This is the last thing I was expecting, but she’s a sexy girl – I’m hardly going to say no!’
So, well, I didn’t, and I went back to her
room.

Once
Celebrity Big Brother
was over, Frankie moved into my house.
He had no money, because although he had been on
X Factor
, he didn’t earn anything
straight away from that.
But he wasn’t thinking about it – he was still like a little kid when it came to his fame and everything surrounding it.
When we were in the
Big
Brother
house he would say, ‘I can’t wait to get out of the house, bro, so we can go clubbing here, holidaying there, partying here, shagging birds there .
.
.’

But I had taken on a bit of an older brother role with him, and I wanted to see him come good.
So I said, ‘Look, mate, you’ll come out of here with no money, so you need to work and
earn some, or you’ll end up poor, fucked up and in rehab.
Come and live with me for a bit, ’cos you’ll get picked up easier from there for jobs like PAs and that.’
He’d definitely have less trouble travelling to PAs round the country if he was in Essex, rather than in Brighton, where he was originally from.

Frankie lived with me for a month or so, and we blitzed the PAs for a bit, and we did have a proper laugh together.
I still hated doing PAs, but it was easier with Frankie there – people
were looking at two of you, not one.
It felt like I had no choice but to do them anyway, as it was all part of my
Celebrity Big Brother
work.

I was still seeing Natasha from time to time.
It wasn’t a one-night thing, but it wasn’t a proper relationship either.
Then again if I say it was a fling, that makes it sound like it
wasn’t important to me, and it was.
She is a really nice girl, and in a different situation, things might have worked out.
But she was in the middle of trying to sort out her marriage
problems and she needed some space for that.

Writing this I realize how it seems like I go between girlfriends quick, and I can’t deny it, because I do.
But I never cheat, I just don’t really have a gap in between.
I
don’t like being single.
Not just because I love sex, but also because I love being in the company of girls.
I don’t know if it was growing up with my mum, so that’s what
I’m comfortable with, but I always like there to be a girl in my life.
I feel really empty without one.
Not that I get with any girl for the sake of it – at least I didn’t once I
was out of my teens.
They all mean something to me.

Anyway, the work from
Celebrity Big Brother
died down really quickly.
The hype from the show doesn’t last long – everyone comes out of that house thinking they are set up
for life, but it always fades away.
And it didn’t help that my reputation wasn’t particularly good.
I wasn’t getting the love from the female fans any more, as they saw me as a
player, and it took me ages to move away from that image once the damage was done.
I still hated doing PAs, which didn’t help, and then I did a couple with Frankie that didn’t go too
well.
On the way to one of them he drank two bottles of Jack Daniel’s and was a right mess by the time we arrived.
He had started to annoy me a bit, and so he moved out in the end, as we were
getting on top of each other too much.

Looking for Love

Throughout all of this, Amy and I were still texting, and in spring 2012 she invited me round to her house.
As we were chatting like old times we found ourselves getting close
again.
The attraction was still there, as strong as ever, and before we knew it, things started happening, and then we were dating again.
It was the same pull of old – I couldn’t keep
away from her!
But now, for the first time, it seemed like both of us were really ready to get into a real relationship.
It felt like she had grown up a bit, and as far as I knew we were both
behaving ourselves with other people.
We were together all the time, just getting closer and closer.

There was only one problem.
By then Amy was managed by CAN Associates, run by a woman called Claire Powell, who told Amy that we had to keep our relationship secret.
She wouldn’t let her
go out in public with me, and said it wasn’t that they didn’t approve of me, but it was too soon after Amy’s last boyfriend – Joe, the guy she had been dating at the same
time as me on
TOWIE
, and then had openly been with – for her to be seen out with me.

I understood why they were doing it – it doesn’t look good to go from one relationship straight to another.
But on the other hand, it was making things hard for us.
We had to sneak
around to see each other, and could hardly ever leave the house.

At the same time, because everyone else thought I was single, I was approached about doing
The Bachelor
for Channel 5.
The show follows one single guy as he meets and dates 25 single
girls, slowly cutting them down each week until he finds ‘the one’.
Gavin Henson had done the first show the year before and it had been really good for his profile, so I was keen to do
it, and knew I would get a lot of work off the back of it.
Conversations had been going back and forth on it for several months, but at the same time I didn’t want to mess things up with Amy
when this was the closest our relationship had ever come to working out.

So I sat down with her and said, ‘Amy, I’ve been asked to do
The Bachelor
.
What do you reckon?’

‘No way!’
She was instantly against it.

‘Well, are we going to get serious?
I don’t want to turn it down if we’re only going to split up next week.’

But she promised me, ‘No, don’t do it, let’s give things a really good go with us and get properly serious.’

So I turned down the show, but Claire still didn’t want us to go out in public, and it was causing arguments as I was getting paranoid that Amy didn’t want to be seen with me.
Then
finally I said to her manager, ‘Claire, this is making our relationship bad now.
Can we do a quick press release and tell people we’re together?’

‘I’ll tell you what, Kirk,’ she said.
‘It’s her birthday soon.
How about we wait until then?
That night you can go out to her party holding hands, and everyone will
see it and know that you two are dating again.
I also suggest you leave your management and come to work with me, as that will make more sense when you two are openly together.’

And I thought, ‘Yeah, brilliant,’ and did what she advised.
I felt secure about things and just got on with enjoying my time with Amy.

We were always telling each other we loved each other, and I would buy Amy presents all the time.
She loves handbags, so I would buy her designer ones whenever I could.
I was really falling for
her and it was like she had grown up a bit, and was behaving more like we were in an adult relationship.
The power struggle wasn’t there as much between us, and it was like Amy was more
honest with me about her feelings.
She was always telling me how happy she was, and that she could see herself settling down with me.
Life was perfect, and I thought to myself, ‘I really
could marry this girl.
I think if she was my wife, we really could be happy for all our lives.’

I could see us having a family together.
I’d always wanted to settle down young and be a young dad, so I could play with my own children and still relate to them as they grew up, and then
one day I could go to my grandkids’ weddings.
Other than Gemma, Amy was the only person I had ever felt strongly enough about to see it as an option.
Maybe I was getting ahead of myself but
this is how I felt and I convinced myself Amy thought the same.

But then two things happened that caused horrible rows between us.
The first was when it came out that she and Frankie, who she had met through me, had been sending flirty texts.
Nothing had
happened, but it was more the principle.
I know Amy is a bit of a flirt, but I was actually more pissed off with Frankie than her over that, as I really thought he would have had my back and
respected me enough not to go near her.

Then a few weeks later, Amy went off to Liverpool to film for
Celebrity Wedding Planner
.
The idea was that she and Harry Derbidge were to help someone plan their wedding and it would be
filmed for Channel 5.
We were good at allowing each other to get on with work, as both of us would quite often be away, so I just left her to it.
But then the next day I looked at the
Daily
Mail
online, catching up with the news.
And there were pictures of Amy coming out of a hotel with this guy, and lots of details in the story about him and what they had done the night before.
It said he was David Peters, who had been on
Take Me Out
, and she had spent the night in a hotel room with him drinking wine.
My girlfriend, who was supposed to tell the world we were
together at a birthday in just two weeks’ time, had been spending time with this guy.

I started shaking as I read it.
I was so upset, and so angry.
I called her up straight away and said, ‘Are you fucking serious, Amy?
What the fuck are you doing?’

‘I’m so sorry, Kirk, but it ain’t like that.
Nothing happened – we were in the bar, Harry was there too, and the papers have got it all wrong!’

‘Bollocks,’ I said.
‘You’re a fucking idiot.’

And I hung up and refused to take her calls for the next few days, even though she was leaving me all sorts of messages, apologizing and asking me to forgive her, and saying she had done nothing
wrong.
At the time, deep down, I was sure something had happened with this David, and I felt like she had made a fool of me and broken my heart.

She had to go to Glasgow for an event called the Fake Bake Glitz and Glamour Ball, but she kept ringing and ringing, and I kept ignoring it.
Then Claire called me.
She said, ‘Kirk, I have
never seen Amy like this.
We’re at the airport and are supposed to be going to Scotland, but Amy won’t get on the plane unless you say you’ll get back with her.’

And that made me think that she really was telling the truth – maybe she had just randomly bumped into him and had a few quick drinks, and actually I should trust her.
Besides, I missed
her like crazy, and I wanted her back in my life!

So I called Amy and said, ‘OK, let’s get back together.
I’ll take your word for it, just don’t ever get pictured like this again in future, ’cos you made me look
stupid.’

Everything seemed right again for a couple of weeks.
I was looking forward to letting the world know we were a couple so we could start actually being seen out together, so the day before her
birthday I went round as usual, and asked her, ‘What do you want to do tomorrow?
I take it the party Claire talked about isn’t happening anymore as you haven’t mentioned
it?’

‘No, I don’t feel like that, I’m just going to stay in with my family.’

‘OK, if that’s what you feel like.
It’s your birthday!’
I said, thinking she meant I should come over and join them for dinner or whatever.
‘What time shall I come
round?’

‘No, I just want to do the family thing on my own, babe,’ she said, not looking me in the eye.

‘Well, I still want to see you.
It’s your birthday, and I need to give you your pressies and say happy birthday – and give ya a birthday kiss!
So can I come over at some
point?’

‘Maybe not on my actual birthday,’ she said.

So I left that day thinking there was something weird going on.
She would normally be really keen for me to be there.
But I hoped it was something else unrelated to me, and pushed ahead with my
plans.

For her birthday, which is on 7 June, I had bought her two bags – a Mulberry one, and a Chloé one, as she loves her designer handbag collection – and I had gone to the florist
and given him £1k as well, to have bouquets turning up at her house all day long.
It might sound daft, but I thought it was a romantic gesture!
And I decided to pop by in the morning
regardless, just to drop off her pressies and say happy birthday.
Her dad answered the door and said, ‘Oh, Amy’s in the shower.
It’s probably not worth you waiting, but I’ll
pass on the presents – thank you.’

This was weird, as normally they wouldn’t think twice about inviting me in.
So I gave the bags to her dad, and said, ‘Tell her to call me.’

I was getting worried.
There was definitely something going on.
And I found out what it was about a minute later.
As I got back into my car I got a text from her that said she didn’t want
us to be together any more.

I sat there and cried my fucking heart out.
For the first time Amy and I had really made a go of it, had both put our all into it without involving other people, and I had thought it was going
to work.
I’m not exaggerating when I say at that moment she broke my heart.

I was also confused as it seemed like everything had been going well.
She had got me to turn down a TV show, told me she loved me, and yet suddenly she was breaking up with me.
I wondered
whether I should fight to get her back, but I thought, ‘No, it’s her call, I’m not going to make a fool of myself.
She can work things through in her own mind in her own
time.’
I went home and just lay in bed, curled up and crying for the rest of the day.

The next day I went on
Daily Mail
online, and once again got the shock of my life.
There were pictures of David Peters walking up to her house on her birthday, carrying Victoria’s
Secret bags.
Suddenly it seemed to make sense.
She had blown me out because she had invited him around, and there really had been something happening with them.
That must be it.

I became obsessed with it, and started investigating.
When I went back through David’s tweets I saw that he had been in Vegas the week before.
As far as I knew, Victoria’s Secret
were mostly sold in the US, so he had clearly bought her presents then, hadn’t he?
He must have known her measurements to buy stuff for her, and he knew it was her birthday, so he would have
been talking to her a lot.
At the time I convinced myself that she must have been in a relationship with him as well as with me – maybe just since the night in the hotel, or maybe from much
longer before that.
Who knows the truth?
Whatever really happened, I felt like she had played me and made me feel a total fool.
So that’s when I went mad, and tweeted lots of things about Amy
that people didn’t understand at the time.
I said, ‘Everyone thinks Amy is a princess, but really she is a slut,’ and things like that.
It was harsh, but it’s what I was
feeling back then.

The problem with Amy is I think she did – maybe still does – love me.
But she likes too many people, and falls in love easily.
So do I, to be honest, and that is one of the reasons
we get on.
I can fall in love with a ham roll if it looks at me right!
But I have looked at pictures of her and David since, and they do look happy and in love, so in one way I am pleased for her
– at least I wasn’t played for some guy who she broke up with a week later.

We haven’t spoken since that day, and a part of me hates her for what she did.
But I would still take her back, because we were so good together.
In the end I know I would forgive her if
she asked me to, because everything was so perfect with her, and I feel so good around her.
I really did think she was the one, and that I would be married and have a kid with her by now.
Even
today, I am still in love with her.