Cheryl: My Story Read online

  ‘Are you awake, Cheryl?’ Mam would shout. ‘Yes, but I’m just resting my eyes,’ I always replied. I was late and tired all the time.

  One night, Andrew had been out with no key and so he smashed a window to get back in. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and I listened as a huge row kicked off between him and my dad.

  I didn’t care about the shouting; I was just glad Andrew was home, even though the whole house started to stink of glue once he was inside. The fumes rose up the stairs and hung in the air, and to this day I still feel sick at the smell of glue.

  ‘Get to bed, go on with you!’ Mam would shout, and I’d lie there wide awake and on red alert for a long time after the house fell quiet.

  This wasn’t the first time Andrew had been in trouble. He was done for thieving when he was 13, which was a year or so before all this kicked off with my mam and dad, but to be honest I don’t really remember that being a big hoo-hah. The bizzies, as we usually called the police, were always knocking on doors all over our estate. If someone got arrested or even sent to prison the neighbours were more inclined to sympathise and ask if there was anything they could do to help the family, rather than to judge or look down their noses at you. It was practically an everyday occurrence, which must be why Andrew’s early problems with the police really didn’t stick in my mind.

  ‘Who’s that now?’ I remember my mam snapping whenever the police hammered on the door.

  ‘Can’t you tell?’ I always thought, because to my ears the ‘bizzie knock’ was instantly recognisable. It always made my nerves tense and my stomach sink as I wondered what would happen next.

  Andrew became more and more volatile and unpredictable after he found out about his real dad, and before long he was completely unrecognisable as my funny brother who used to tell silly, exaggerated stories and make us all laugh.

  ‘I got struck by lightning,’ he told us once, when he came home soaking wet in a rainstorm at the age of about 10. ‘Really, Andrew?’ we all asked. ‘Really,’ he replied with wide, serious eyes. I remember we all laughed our heads off because he actually thought we would believe him, but that Andrew just seemed to vanish from our family, almost overnight.

  My mam and dad split up not long after the family history had been laid bare. My dad had an affair and my mam tried to take him back, but they couldn’t make it work any more. I was still only 11 years old and that’s about all I knew. Mam went absolutely crazy for what felt like a long, long time, understandably so with all the trauma she had gone through. She was still only in her mid-thirties but the stress of bringing up five kids on her own, with the police banging at the door all the time, must have been very hard to cope with.

  It was around this time when I first noticed my mam starting to become what you might call ‘spiritual’. She was always floating round the house being unbelievably calm when all hell was breaking loose, saying stuff like: ‘things happen for a reason’ and ‘live one day at a time, that’s all anyone can do’. Even if there was absolute hell going on in the house, with Andrew off his head on glue, ranting and raving, she’d stay incredibly calm.

  Mam’s got lots of sisters and sometimes I’d hear her saying to one of my aunties, ‘Eee, there’s no good telling the kids what to do or they just want to do it more, don’t they? What can you do but hope they’ll grow out of it?’

  When Andrew was 15 he stabbed someone in a fight. This guy had punched Gillian in the face in a pub and so he stabbed him. That’s what Gillian told me when she eventually came home, crying and in a terrible state, and without my brand-spanking-new trainers she’d borrowed from me that night.

  ‘Sorry about your trainers, Cheryl,’ she sobbed.

  ‘When will I get them back?’ I moaned, telling her I wished I hadn’t lent them to her because I wanted to wear them that weekend.

  ‘The police took them away for forensics. They got splattered with blood. Could be six months.’

  ‘What? They’ll be out of fashion by then. Anyway, as if I’d want them, after they’ve had blood on them.’

  I was 12 years old and by now I was well used to Andrew being arrested regularly for thieving and stealing cars. That meant the seriousness of what he had done this time round didn’t hit me at all until I saw the rest of the family just crumbling in front of me. Everyone was in pieces and it was so painful to see. Mam cried a lot. People were talking about sentences and prison, and I was lying awake yet again, worrying myself sick.

  ‘We’ll go and visit him as much as we can,’ my mam said after the court case. ‘He’ll not serve the full sentence years, I’m sure.’

  I hoped not. My brother had been sentenced to six years and was being locked up in a young offenders’ institution to start with as he was too young for an adult prison. I’d be 18 by the time he was released, so I felt like part of my childhood was taken away that day too.

  By now Joe had left home and me, my mam, Gillian and Garry had moved into a three-storey house in Langhorn Close, Heaton, which was not far from our old family home in Byker.

  Once a week I’d pop over and see my dad. I’d either get a bus over to his new house, which wasn’t far away, or I’d see him at my Nana’s. There was never any formal arrangement in place or anything like that; I was old enough to see him whenever I wanted to. Whatever my mam thought of my dad after their split, she never tried to poison our minds against him and I don’t really remember my relationship with my dad changing that much; he just didn’t live with us like he used to. ‘Want to listen to some Level 42?’ he’d ask, just as he used to when he lived with us.

  It was my relationship with my mam that changed more, probably because she altered so much in herself. Without Dad there, I think me and Mam started to become closer, like friends as well as mother and daughter, and it’s more or less stayed that way ever since.

  ***

  Throughout all this upheaval I carried on dancing every week. Whatever was going on in the rest of my life I always smiled when I was performing. It wasn’t my way of escaping the bad things that happened at home or anything as deep as that; dancing was just a part of my life I really enjoyed, while the family problems were something I accepted and got on with, because I had no choice and that was the way it was.

  ‘There’s a panto coming up, I’m gonna audition,’ I said to my mam one day.

  ‘That’s nice. We’ll go and see Andrew after.’

  I’d go on my own to shows and auditions now, taking buses or getting lifts from other parents, because Mam couldn’t drive and we never had a car. Sometimes I’d still be in a sparkly costume when we visited Andrew in the young offenders’ institution. It was like a kind of foster home, with a lounge and a place you could play pool, but I knew Andrew was locked in his bedroom at night, which was a horrible thought.

  ‘Tell Andrew about your next show,’ Mam would say. She never seemed to get upset, blame Andrew or ask him why he had committed crimes, and we’d just talk about normal stuff, as if we were sitting in the kitchen at home like we used to.

  ‘It’s a panto but I haven’t got the part yet. I’ve made up my own dance routine, though, and I’ve done a tape of the music for the audition.’

  ‘What have you picked, Cheryl?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘“No Limit”, from 2 Unlimited. I got it off one of them “Best of” tapes my dad got me for Christmas. You know the one: “No, no, no, no, no, no, there’s no limit!”’

  I sang the words a bit too loudly, which made everyone smile. Then we said our goodbyes and went home to have chips and egg for our tea. With Andrew inside, life seemed a lot more simple, and once I got used to the idea of him being away, I was glad I didn’t have to worry about what he was getting up to or what time he would come home.

  ‘Good luck, Cheryl,’ Andrew said, and I told him I didn’t need luck. ‘Thanks,’ I shrugged. ‘If I don’t get this one I’ll get another one.’ My belief that I was going to succeed as a performer was the one constant in my life. It was not a question of ‘if’ I was
going to make it, just ‘when’.

  2

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

  ‘Cheryl Tweedy,’ the teacher called out at afternoon registration. ‘Yes, Sir. Here, Sir,’ I replied. ‘Oh, and by the way I was late this morning. Sorry, Sir.’

  The teacher rolled his eyes as if to say ‘not again’ before giving me a late mark for the morning, even though I had not even been there, and then marking me in for the afternoon. After registration I walked straight out the back doors of Walker School at the first opportunity, as cool as you like, wagging off for the afternoon with my best friend Kelly, who’d pulled the same trick.

  ‘Can you believe he fell for that again!’ we both cackled before pegging it down the road.

  Kelly was as feisty as hell and I loved being with her. Usually we went back to her house because her mam and dad both worked, but if we heard someone come in the house we’d run out the back door and go and sit on the train tracks at the bottom of her street, or hang around Walker graveyard. God knows why we went to the cemetery; it seemed quite cool at the time and nobody would ever see us there.

  I had no interest in being educated. My life took place outside the school gates, not inside them. I was always more focused on getting the next dancing part than wasting time working out why x equalled a plus b or whatever my teacher was on about.

  ‘Cheryl Tweedy, you will amount to nothing!’ the maths teacher exploded one day. I was chewing gum and rehearsing my dance moves in my head. The audition for the Christmas panto I’d made my ‘No Limit’ music tape for was tonight, and all I wanted to do was get out of school and practise.

  ‘Amount to nothing?’ I thought cheekily. ‘Just you wait and see. I’ll show you!’

  I couldn’t have cared less what any of my teachers thought of me, because I knew for a fact I was going to make my living by performing. Nothing and nobody was going to stand in my way.

  It’s just as well I had that attitude, because at break time I went to find the music tape I’d left in my locker and found it had been stolen. I was really annoyed because I’d gone to all the trouble of making the cassette myself, and there was no time to make another one.

  ‘What will you do?’ the man at my audition asked later that day, looking worried for me.

  His name was Drew Falconer and he’d come into the dance school to watch a few of us.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna sing the song meself,’ I said. Then I just started singing and dancing in front of him, giving it my all.

  ‘The poor guy must have thought I was mental,’ I laughed to our Gillian that night.

  ‘He sat there lookin’ at me gobsmacked while I was bustin’ these moves and singin’!’

  I was offered a part in the panto the very next day, but my excitement was short-lived because it turned out they couldn’t fill the other places and the show had to be cancelled.

  ‘There’ll be another one, Cheryl,’ Mam said.

  ‘I know,’ I replied. I was disappointed but I wasn’t too bothered. I didn’t ever feel I had to chase my dream, because I firmly believed I’d make it happen one day, when the time was right. It wasn’t about being famous or rich, I just wanted to dance and sing and entertain people, because it’s what I loved to do. It was that simple, that clear.

  I remember explaining all this to Dolly one day, who was an old lady who lived across the road from us. Dolly had six kids and lots of grandkids and I’d known her and her family all my life. After I started at Walker School I’d begun to spend a lot of time with her, partly because she didn’t care if I wagged off school and her flat was another place to go to during the day, if I wasn’t with Kelly.

  ‘Eee, Cheryl, it’s lovely to see you,’ Dolly would say every time I knocked on her door, even if it was clearly during school hours and I was in my uniform. ‘Come in, and stay with us for a bit of company.’

  Being with Dolly was far more interesting than being at school. She told me stories about the war and I was absolutely fascinated by her. She didn’t have a tooth in her head and her language was shocking, but also very funny to listen to because she couldn’t pronounce an ‘f’ through her gums.

  ‘Who’s that knocking on the buckin’ door!’ she’d shout whenever someone came to her flat.

  I soon learned why she reacted like that, as it was often the police asking questions about one of the colourful characters in Dolly’s large family.

  ‘You haven’t got a warrant!’ she’d shout, knowing all the spiel. ‘You can’t come in here!’

  Whenever a woman came in from social services or the home help service, Dolly always made a point of telling them proudly that I was her granddaughter.

  ‘Hi darlin’,’ she always greeted each helper warmly. ‘Do you want to put the kettle on an’ we’ll ’ave a nice cup of tea? This is me lovely granddaughter, Cheryl. She’s going to be a pop star, you know.’

  Whenever the visitor was out of earshot Dolly’s smile would fall from her face and she’d whisper to me behind her hand: ‘Watch that one, she’ll be all nice to me face but she’ll be dippin’ in me purse when me back’s turned.’

  I found out many years later that when my back was turned Dolly would often say, ‘Cheryl? She’ll never be a buckin’ pop star!’ That was typical Dolly, and I don’t mind at all, not now.

  I’d push Dolly in her wheelchair to the shops along the Shields Road, which was the big main road separating our estate from Walker, or I’d go out and pay her rent or get her some teabags and milk if she needed me to.

  Dolly would forget all about cups of tea when the helpers weren’t around, mind you. She liked vodka and Irn-Bru, and even when I was just 12 or 13 years old she’d be trying to give me tumblers of the stuff. I’d take a swig just to keep her happy even though I didn’t like the taste at all, but sometimes I’d go home feeling drunk and dizzy at 5pm.

  Her daughter lived in the flat upstairs and if there was any noise Dolly would take a broom and bash the ceiling like a mad woman, making dents in the paintwork and shouting, ‘Keep the buckin’ noise down!’ I’d often stay the night at Dolly’s, and my mam was quite happy with that. She knew Dolly well and she always knew where I was, so she didn’t mind. It wasn’t out of the ordinary where we lived to be in and out of each others’ homes like that. Besides, Mam had her hands full being a single mother, especially with Garry still at primary school, and she was always happy to let me come and go as I pleased.

  One afternoon Mam told me there was a little festival on, just two minutes down the road. ‘Let’s take our Garry,’ she said. ‘There’s hook a duck, toffee apples and all that. Shall we go and have a look?’

  As soon as we got there I saw someone I recognised. ‘Mother,’ I hissed. ‘That’s that guy that auditioned me for the panto.’

  ‘Never!’ Mam said.

  The man started walking towards us, smiling. ‘It’s Cheryl, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘I’m Drew Falconer,’ he told my mam, shaking her hand enthusiastically.

  ‘We were very impressed by Cheryl’s audition. It was a real shame the panto never went ahead. Your daughter is very talented. I reckon she has it in her to be a pop star.’

  I couldn’t believe it when I heard that because it was absolutely amazing to hear someone as important as him confirming what I already felt in my heart. It turned out that Drew ran a local talent management company and was always looking for young acts to bring on. He put up-and-coming singers on the stage at Metroland, which was like a big indoor theme park within the Metrocentre shopping complex in Gateshead.

  ‘What d’you think?’ my mam said when he left us with his card, asking us to get in touch to discuss giving Metroland a try.

  ‘As long as I can still do me dancing as well as singing, I’ll do it,’ I said. Even though I’d been telling people for ages I was going to be a pop star, dancing was still the biggest thing in my life; the singing just came along with it.

  ‘You’re a weirdo,’ Kelly said when
I told her I was going to meet Drew to listen to music and plan some stage routines the following week. ‘What d’you wanna do that for?’

  ‘Why not? It’s brilliant,’ I told her. ‘I love all this.’

  I don’t think any of my friends really understood how passionate I was about music and dancing, or how I could be so convinced that was where my future lay. My dad was the worst, forever repeating what he’d said to me for years.

  ‘Cheryl, sweetheart, you need to concentrate on getting a proper job. You need to get your head out of the clouds.’

  ‘No, Dad, being a pop star is a proper job. I’m going to be on Top of the Pops one day and I’ll be number one. Watch.’

  None of my mates took the mickey or anything like that. I was never bullied or picked on for doing something different, but neither was I ever one of the in-crowd, or the ‘it’ girls as we called them. I was somewhere in the middle, and I liked it like that. I had just a few close friends, and when I wasn’t singing or dancing I spent my time either with Dolly, hanging around with Kelly, or messing around with another good mate of mine, Lindsey, who was a year older than me and lived up the road.

  Lindsey was always up for a laugh, and it was around this time that she suggested we should sneak out one night and go camping with some of the boys we knew on the estate. I readily agreed, but I was just 13 and I knew my mam wouldn’t let me go out camping at night with boys.

  ‘We need a plan,’ I said. ‘You tell your mam you’re staying at mine, and we’ll sneak out when my mam’s asleep.’

  Why I didn’t just say I was staying at Dolly’s I don’t know, but I suppose Lindsey had to say she was staying at mine so her parents would let her out. When the big night came, Lindsey and I pretended to go to sleep in my bedroom, but underneath our quilts we were fully clothed, waiting to make our escape at 2am.