Cheryl: My Story by Cheryl Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

to me going to Metroland on my own for hours on end, or to the local recording studios. It meant I didn’t have to lie or even sneak around when really I was going out with Dave.
    ‘Would you like to learn to drive?’ he said one night when he picked me up near school in his car.
    ‘I’m too young. How can I?’
    ‘I know where we can go. Hop in.’
    He took me to an empty car park in town, and that’s where I had my first driving lessons. It was so exciting. I’d still be in my school uniform, but I felt like a proper grown-up woman, madly in love for the very first time. It was a really amazing feeling.
     
    ‘Go on, have a smoke,’ Gillian said one day, passing me a joint. She was 19 and had left home by now and moved into a flat of her own, but she was in the kitchen of our house at Langhorn Close, smoking weed, with my mam standing right beside her.
    Mam knew Gillian smoked weed and just let her get on with it, saying: ‘You’re old enough to make your own decisions.’ But I was four years younger, and I would never have dreamed of smoking in front of my mam. I started shaking my head and looking at Gillian as if to say, ‘Are you mad?’
    ‘Go on,’ my sister said cheekily. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t smoke it, Cheryl. I know you do.’
    I was mortified, but Mam just looked at me and said very calmly, ‘If you’re going to do it, Cheryl, I’d rather know, and I’d rather you did it here.’
    Gillian passed me the joint and I had a smoke. I didn’t enjoy it and I was furious with Gillian, but at least we all knew where we stood. I think my mam’s open-minded reaction that day helped me confide in her about my relationship with Dave, not too long afterwards. I was relieved when she didn’t seem too bothered about his age and was only concerned that he was treating me well. ‘He’s amazing,’ I reassured her. ‘He can’t do enough for me. We’re so happy together.’
    It wasn’t long before Dave and I became intimate, and I wanted to take precautions. I confided in my mam again and she listened patiently and agreed to take me to the GP for the Pill.
    ‘I’m not one of those girls who sleeps around,’ I told her. ‘I’d never have a one-night stand.’
    ‘I know that, Cheryl. I’m glad you’re being sensible.’
    I was telling the absolute truth. I had always been ridiculously protective and respectful of myself, to the point where I’d been accused of being a prude many times.
    ‘We really love each other, Mam,’ I said. ‘He’s just the best.’
    ‘As long as you’re happy and safe, Cheryl, that’s what matters.’
    Dave and I were together for about 12 months, and he became the centre of my world. I lived and breathed for him, to the point where even my singing and dancing took a back seat. I’d write lyrics in my bedroom and I always had music playing, always. I couldn’t imagine a world without music, and R&B and soul were my favourites. I still loved pop music, especially anything by Destiny’s Child, but I’d been drifting away from Metroland for months now, and I’d also stopped going down to London.
    ‘What are you doing about your singing?’ Joe asked when I left school in the summer of 1999 and turned 16 a few weeks later, at the end of June. ‘Don’t you give it up! You need to sort your life out.’
    I’d tell him not to worry. ‘I’m working more days in the café and it’ll happen when the time is right.’
    ‘No, you need to make it happen,’ he’d argue.
    ‘I will … when the time is right.’
    Working in the café did leave me less time for my singing and dancing, but the real reason I wasn’t pursuing my career was Dave.
    Thankfully, nobody else questioned me like Joe did. I think other people in the family just assumed things had changed in my life because I’d left school. There was also plenty going on in the family to take the focus away from me. For one thing, we’d just found out that Gillian was pregnant. She had a really strong