Читать книгу Welcome to My World - Coleen McLoughlin - Страница 6

It’s been a relaxing break, which is a relief because the World Cup ended up being stressful. Wayne was gutted about losing, but I told him he’d just got to let it go, there was no point moping around. However, that’s easier said than done. For the first few days after he came back from Germany, Wayne was narky – well, he wasn’t narky exactly, but he was upset and he didn’t want to do anything. I told him that he should leave it behind, because he will have more World Cups coming up, and that one was over now.

It’s funny to talk about something being over because we’re still so young and things are just starting for both of us. We were only away for a week, but this holiday more than any other, and the weeks in Germany leading up to it, made me think about how much my life has changed over the last few years. Sometimes it’s easy to forget, but being away with friends and family makes you take so much more notice of everything – the good and the bad.

It was floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, not far from the beaches of St Tropez, only a couple of days away from going back home to Liverpool, that I decided to start writing this book. I wanted to put down on paper what the last four years have really been like – never mind what you read in the newspapers and the pages of magazines. Because everyone I meet asks me the same question: What has it been like, going from that sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in the lower sixth at St John Bosco High School in Croxteth to the amazing life I’m fortunate to live now? ‘That must be an unbelievable feeling,’ they say. ‘What does that big change feel like?’

That’s what I’m always asked, and I have never really answered before. Not what it’s honestly been like. Not how it feels deep down to be this ordinary Liverpool girl who, all of a sudden, found myself in the spotlight. Then living this dream, because sometimes it still feels like a dream: appearing in magazines like Vogue and Marie Claire; waking up to find myself on the front page of the Sun and the Daily Mirror because the day before I’d been out shopping (shopping!); the paparazzi following my every move; columnists from all the different nationals talking about me like they know me. It’s a good and bad dream, with the good thankfully outweighing the rest.