WORLD EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT FROM CHERYL'S NEW BOOK
***No, this is not a fanfic from GAM. This an actual extract from Cheryl's new book...***
GORGEOUS Cheryl Cole has confessed that the “sadness, physical pain, sickness and fury was like I’d never experienced” after she discovered her husband Ashley had been unfaithful.
The 29-year-old says she attacked him like a ‘lunatic’ - “shaking him, kicking and scratching his face” - after The Sun revealed his cheating in 2008, less than two years after they wed.
In a world exclusive extract from her new autobiography, Cheryl: My Story, she tells how she found herself yelling at the footballer: “I hope she was worth it. It’s the end of your marriage. It’s f***ed!”
ASHLEY asked: “D’you want a cup of tea?” He hardly ever made tea, and I sensed something was off.
We were in the bedroom, it was about 11pm on Thursday January 24, 2008, and he’d been acting weird all evening.
I said I didn’t, but Ashley went downstairs anyway, and I decided to follow him. I found him on the phone in the hallway and he was clearly flapping. I could tell he was talking to his agent, which set my heart beating ten to the dozen.
Then my phone rang, “Can you talk, Cheryl? I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.” It was Sundraj Sreenivasan, the head of publicity for my record company Polydor.
“What is it?” I replied.
I was standing just a few feet away from Ashley now, staring at him - and I could feel my body going into shock. Ashley was looking straight back at me with a worried look, still talking to his agent.
“I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you,” he said. “A girl has come forward and said she’s had sex with Ashley.” I just froze.
I was still staring at Ashley, and I could hear him asking his agent what would be in the story. At the same time as I was hearing it would be on the internet at midnight, and in tomorrow’s Sun newspaper.
The claims the girl was making went back to December 2007 - the day of a Ricky Hatton boxing match in Las Vegas when Ashley had arranged to be out all night.
I put the phone down and Ashley carried on talking. I felt the colour fall out of my face as I stood rooted to the spot. And then I started trembling uncontrollably.
“What’s going on?” I shouted the second Ashley got off the phone. I was expecting, wishing, him to say: “It’s a lie” - but he didn’t.
“Like I told you before, it was a horrible night. I got too drunk and I can’t remember it.” I was in proper shock now, convulsing and wanting to vomit. To me that was like he was admitting it.
“I don’t believe you can’t remember anything at all,” I said. “It’s just not good enough. You need to start remembering - and fast.”
“I’m telling you,” he said. “I was so drunk. I wish I could remember but I can’t. Something happened - but I don’t know what.” I was in such a terrible state. I went and switched on the computer, alone, waiting for the story to appear on The Sun’s website.
Ashley was upstairs now, in the bedroom. He was lying to me and couldn’t bear to see me read the truth. I was shocked on so many levels when I saw the story online.
Seeing the girl in question was the first blow. She looked horrible to me. But it was what she had told the paper that was really disturbing. I was looking for something that just didn’t add up, but that isn’t what I got at all.
The girl said Ashley had been so drunk he couldn’t walk straight - that he was incoherent and that he was vomiting during the sex. I was absolutely disgusted. My mind was filling with questions.
Physically, how do you even get turned on, let alone have sex, when you are that incoherent? I’d never questioned sisterhood before. In my world, girls stuck together. Now I was asking myself how one woman could do this to another.
“You need to read this,” I shouted to Ashley. “You need to get your a*** down here now.” He came down quietly but wouldn’t read it. “I’m not,” he said, looking at the floor and shaking his head. He looked appalled and upset with himself.
My whole body was shaking and now my head was exploding. We had everything and now our trust had gone and we’d lost it all. That’s how it felt. It was such a waste of absolutely everything good that we ever had together.
I totally lost it then. I felt every emotion possible: confusion, sadness, physical pain, sickness and fury, like I’d never experienced.
Before I knew it, I was lashing out at Ashley in every way I possibly could. I hit him in the face - I couldn’t help it. I was shaking him, kicking him, scratching his face, pushing and shoving him like I was a lunatic, and he just took it as it was obvious I’d gone crazy.
In fact, the more I pushed and provoked him, the more Ashley clammed up. “I hope you enjoyed it!” I screamed. “I hope she was worth it! It’s the end of your marriage! You don’t understand what you’ve done. It’s f***ed!” After hours of me ranting, screaming and crying uncontrollably, I was exhausted.
A day or two later I went to my Girls Aloud bandmate Kimberley’s in the middle of the night. She cried when she saw me. I was still in shock. I wasn’t in control of myself at all. I needed medical help.
I got pills off the doctor to calm me down and lay on Kimberley’s sofa. But I still couldn’t sleep. We had a videoshoot for our new single coming up and my doctor gave me a vitamin injection in my bum to perk me up, but it didn’t work.
It had got worse too. Over the next few days I heard two more girls had come forward to say they’d had sex with Ashley. I didn’t read the stories, but I knew one was saying it happened when Ashley and I were courting, and another said she slept with him a few months after our wedding.
I told myself they must be lies. I just wanted to run away and hide, and I asked Kimberley and Nicola Roberts if they’d come away with me on holiday somewhere far away.
I booked us a villa at a private resort in Thailand and, as soon as our flight took off, I had this overwhelming feeling of “f*** the world”.
I could have fallen out of the sky from the plane and I was certain nothing would have been as painful as what I was feeling inside.
It was now about two weeks after the initial allegations and, looking back, I was out of my head on tranquillisers. As soon as we got there I crashed out for two full days.
When I finally came out I sat on my own overlooking the beach. I didn’t know who I was any more, I thought. I was a heartbroken girl, but who was I now without Ashley by my side? I knew I loved him and I didn’t want to end my marriage. I still felt that very strongly.
My initial gut feeling remained, that I couldn’t justify leaving my marriage because of one drunken mistake. I’d known something was up after the night of the fight because Ashley acted so weird.
But he’d never behaved like that before, and surely I’d have known if he’d been hiding secrets for years?From Thailand I flew to LA where I was filming a video with Will.i.am. Once the video was done I felt ready to go home.
Despite the hell Ashley had put me through, I felt very strongly now that I just wanted my life to go back to normal. Splitting up was unthinkable to me. I’d been torturing myself for weeks, going over and over events in my mind. I had no real proof Ashley had been unfaithful. All I knew for sure was that he’d gone out and got blind drunk and met that girl, and my gut reaction remained the same.
I had made the choice to go back to Ashley, and I would not throw all this in his face. He’d been texting me ever since I left, asking me to come home. I’d ignored most of his messages or told him to leave me alone, and I knew he was panicking about what I’d do next.
After I landed I went straight to the Brits and met Ashley at home afterwards. I felt sick and nervous at having to deal with this nightmare and could see he felt the same.
“I’ve come to the conclusion you obviously don’t care about me as much as I care about you,” I said.
It was painful to say the words, and Ashley looked pained as I said them. “It’s not true,” he said, shaking his head, and he made it clear he didn’t want the marriage to end.
He was very quiet and sad and I told him I didn’t want to split up either, but that for us to move forward three things had to happen. “Just tell me,” he said. “I’ll do anything.” “I don’t want you drinking. I don’t want you socialising with footballers or the people you were with that night,” I said. “And I don’t want you to deal with that agent of yours any more.”
He agreed in a heartbeat. “There’s one other thing,” I said. “If anything like this ever comes up again I’m divorcing you. You’re lucky I’ve come back this time and if you ever disrespect me like this again, it’s all over. I’m out of here, and I mean it.”
Ashley looked relieved. It was like starting again. Except we didn’t have the blank canvas we had when we were courting, we had one with dirty marks on it that we had to keep trying to wipe away.
To be continued... in tomorrow's new article, "My fury at Simon Cowell".
SOURCE: The Sun