Cheryl: My Story. Cheryl

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      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!’ СКАЧАТЬ