I closed my bedroom door and crept downstairs, pulling my Nokia phone out of my pocket and calling my friend Patsy. ‘You’ll never believe who is in my bed!’ ‘Who?’ she said, excited. ‘JC!’
‘Oh my God! Why? What is happening? TELL ME EVERYTHING!’
I explained how everyone had left the club to go to a party and how, by the time I made my way outside, everyone had gone. The only person left was JC, who was so drunk he couldn’t stand up. I hailed a taxi, and JC jumped in and slurred, ‘PartttttttyYYYYY. We?’
I called my friend Nic who we’d been with to find out where everyone had gone, but her phone was off. I didn’t have anyone else’s number, and JC had lost his wallet. I said I’d drop him home and kept asking him where he lived, and he kept replying, ‘England!’ I didn’t want to leave JC drunk in the middle of the street on his own. We had the World Cup coming up. I couldn’t leave a valuable player stumbling around the streets of Mayfair.
I tried to take him to Nic’s boyfriend’s apartment, but no one was home. So I did what I thought was the next best thing to do and brought him back to my council estate.
I carried him out of the taxi over my arm and made him drink tons of water in the hallway. Then, I walked him to my bedroom, took off his coat and shoes, and put him to bed.
‘I’m coming over,’ said Patsy.
Keeley Hazell reveals the true story behind the 2006 headlines about her night with Joe Cole
Five minutes later, she arrived. We peered through my bedroom door at JC like he was some sort of exotic zoo animal.
We were both drunk and giddy with excitement. We made our way downstairs to the kitchen, leaving JC to sleep. My mum wasn’t home. My sister Deborah’s bedroom door was locked, so I had no idea if she was there.
Then, my phone rang. It was Theo – my boyfriend.
‘What should I do?,’ I asked Patsy.
‘Just answer it.’
‘But what am I going to say about JC being in my bed?’
‘Don’t tell him.’
I gave Patsy a sideways glance and answered. Theo’s car key was inside my house. He’d been waiting until I got back to collect it. He said he was coming over. I tried to find an excuse for why he should wait until morning, but all I had was, ‘Patsy is staying over’. He replied, ‘So?’
Before I could mentally untangle myself, he arrived. I kissed him hello, trying to act sane while freaking out on the inside at the very real possibility that JC could wake up at any moment, shuffle down the stairs, and, well, ruin my life. Patsy and I had agreed under no circumstances would I mention JC, but when Theo asked about my night I found myself wanting to.
One, the idea of not telling him and him finding out was too much to bear.
Two, I was drunk.
Three, I was incapable of lying.
So, quickly, I explained the madness of the evening.
‘You’re lying,’ he said. ‘There’s no way he’s in your bed. I’m going to take a look, just to see if you’re telling the truth.’
‘I’m telling the truth!’ I replied, and handed Theo his car key. But he started walking towards the stairs.
‘Theo. It’s 3.30 in the morning. Let the guy sleep.’
‘I just want to see for myself.’
‘Fine. See that I’m not lying,’ I said. ‘Just don’t wake him up.’
‘I promise. I won’t,’ Theo said. He was a convincing liar.
I walked back into the kitchen and sat down opposite Patsy. Then there was a loud bang from upstairs. We froze. There was the sound of a door opening, then voices.
We rushed upstairs to investigate. That’s when I saw Theo on top of JC, throwing punches at JC’s head. JC’s arms flailed, trying to shove Theo off, but Theo kept pinning him down, landing punch after punch.
JC was curled into a ball, his hands shielding his head as Theo circled, his fists clenched, waiting for him to get up just to knock him down again. I screamed at Theo to stop, saying he was going to kill him if he wasn’t careful. This wasn’t some scrappy little bar fight; JC’s shirt had been ripped off; he was bruised and bleeding.
I had no idea how to stop this horror, but, in miracle-like fashion, JC fought back. He hit Theo on the side of the face. Theo swung back and he ducked out of the way. The pair began rumbling around my room and then, at a speed I didn’t know was possible, JC zoomed past Patsy and me, and before any of us had moved he was gone. That is why he was a professional football player, and Theo wasn’t. JC was fast. He was out of the house in only his trousers, and we had no idea how.
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked Theo.
‘Man needs to learn a lesson. You don’t sleep in my girl’s bed… simple as.’ And with that, he walked out, car key in hand.
The following day, after worrying about JC’s whereabouts, I found out that he was safe when he appeared on the front page of a tabloid newspaper with a black eye. The press got wind of the story after he’d run out of my house. It turned out he had escaped through the living room window, sprinted to the local cab office, explaining to a cabby who he was and they drove him home. (I assume he had sobered up enough to remember where he lived.)
The papers reported that I had a party at my house with the rest of the England football team. I’m not sure why a bunch of millionaires would have travelled all the way to my council estate in Southeast London, when they could have just as easily partied in a hotel suite. But I was no stranger to false narratives.
This is an edited extract from Keeley’s book Everyone’s Seen My Tits, which will be published on Tuesday by Little Brown, £22.
