Читать книгу Welcome to My World - Coleen McLoughlin - Страница 14

From the very first day I appeared in the newspapers, people have been talking about my clothes and my fashion. That picture of me in the lower sixth, walking to St John Bosco High School, is always going to be with me. I look at it now and can’t help but laugh. It’s not something that makes me cringe, or that I’m ashamed about, because that was me back then. A sixteen-year-old, strolling to school with my puffa jacket on.

I’d been going out with Wayne for a good few months by then, and that day he was heading off to play for England. He’d been round to our house in the morning to pick something up, I can’t remember what it was, but the paparazzi must have followed him. Not that I was thinking about newspapers or photographers when I set off for school that morning. It was just a normal day. I’d meet up with my friend Kate and the two of us would take the same route as always, maybe chatting about last night’s telly or something similar. Then, that day, a man jumped out from behind some bushes and started taking photographs of me. Photographers really do hide behind bushes! He was snapping away, and I was shocked, but what do you do in that kind of situation? I sped up and kept walking. It just felt really weird.

Further up the street there was a block of flats with a car park in front. Kate and I passed it every day. You wouldn’t normally look twice at it, except on that day there was a car there with its bonnet open and a man peering inside, fixing his engine or something. That’s the way it seemed, except that the moment we walked past, the same man had a camera in his hand, pointing it at me over the top of the car bonnet, clicking away, taking pictures of me.

‘That’s unbelievable!’ That’s all I could say. That’s all my mates could say when I got to school. There was just this girly panic among my friends, like, what was happening? The buzz and chatter was still going on throughout assembly, so much so that one of the teachers came over to have a word. When she found out what had happened her first thought was to call my mum as soon as possible.

Mum went ballistic, but not quite how I’d imagined. I was on the phone telling her all that had happened that morning and her first worry was whether she would make the front pages the next day! ‘What if they got me?’ she asked me. ‘I’ve just been on the drive with nothing but my nightie on, pushing the wheelie bin out for the bin men!’

I said, ‘Oh, Mum! What do they want a picture of you for? They don’t want a picture of you and the wheelie bin.’

Maybe they did! But it made sense at the time and calmed Mum down a little.

But that was the end of the calm. The following Sunday one of the Sunday newspapers had printed a big picture of me. The telephone didn’t stop ringing, with aunties and my nan, everyone, calling up asking whether we’d seen it. Me in my puffa jacket right down to my knees and my school uniform underneath. Whatever I feel about the press now, there’s no denying that when you see yourself in the newspaper for the first time like that it’s an exciting feeling. You laugh at yourself being in this national newspaper, and it’s strange, and funny, but it’s exciting too. That day, I must have looked at that same picture at least fifty times. At least. But not once did I think what it would mean or what to expect in the years to come.

That was 2003, and although it seems like ages and ages ago it really wasn’t that far back. But things were different. In those days I can’t remember there being the same interest in footballers’ wives and girlfriends. Yeah, there was Victoria and David, and there was Footballers’ Wives on telly, but in real life the newspapers weren’t interested in taking pictures of footballers’ girlfriends for no reason – there had to be a story to go with it. Sure, I was seeing Wayne, and the way things were going with us I expected we’d be pictured together at some stage, but no way did I ever expect the press to be interested in just me.