In 2006 Wayne Rooney, then a 20-year-old Manchester United forward, signed a £5m deal for five autobiographies to be published over the next 12 years. But two books never surfaced; instead we got kiss-and-tell memoirs from Helen Wood and Jenny Thompson, whose company he bought while his wife, Coleen, was pregnant with their first child, Kai, now a record-breaking goalscorer in United’s youth academy. Her new book skimps on none of that, even if its headline attraction is naturally last year’s legal tussle with Rebekah Vardy, who unsuccessfully sued for libel after Coleen told 1m Instagram followers that the tall tales she’d been posting online had ended up as tabloid scoops after being made visible only to Vardy’s account.
While the story of that coolly executed sting never gets old, let’s not pretend we don’t already know every last detail, from Coleen’s 10-point ellipsis to the iPhone 12 Pro Vardy’s agent “lost” at sea. The lasting allure of My Account – brilliant title – lies rather in its clear-eyed testimony to the craziness of life beside the century’s most gifted English footballer, as Coleen lays bare the guts of a bond forged in their teens when Wayne asked for help with his contact lenses outside their local chippie in Croxteth. Soon she’s the face of Asda clothing and Argos jewellery while being shot in Gucci for Vogue. When Coleen was a girl, her dad would bring home their McDonald’s takeaway in a poly bag to avoid upsetting poorer neighbours; as a young adult, throwing a party can mean hiring not only the Sugababes or the Stereophonics, but a camel (“my mum and mum’s cousin... were surprised and slightly confused”).
Domesticity, not celebrity, fuels the most candid passages. “Wayne drinks to be invisible,” Coleen writes. “If there’s too much going on in his head, he’ll drink to blot it all out and disappear from the world. What happens, of course, is the opposite.” After the nth red-top feeding frenzy in 2018 – sparked by a drink-drive fiasco with another woman – he uproots the family to start anew at a club in Washington DC. Coleen, isolated, ferries her sons to playdates with the kids of Swiss diplomats, sitting in the pantry of her rental home “seeking solitude among the jars of pasta and peanut butter”. Finding a babysitter lets her attend Wayne’s evening matches, never mind that she’s solo: “I’d get myself a hotdog and a beer, sit back under the night sky and enjoy the game. No kids to run after, no errands, no one to drive here or there... those nights on my own were special.”
Coleen, assisted by Terry Ronald, previously a collaborator on books by Sarah Harding, Will Young and Bananarama, narrates in a matter-of-fact style with deadpan timing. Eager to get back to the UK for the Christmas hols, she’s anxiously awaiting Wayne’s return from a personal appearance in Saudi Arabia so they can set off with their four sons, the youngest still a baby. She can see his plane has landed, but there’s no word. She’s already nervous when he calls: “I can’t speak long. I’ve been arrested.”
“What do you mean...?”
“I opened a door I wasn’t supposed to at the airport...”
Kai keeps her on her toes too. “Mum, Mum! Did you see me score that free kick!” he asks after a match. She says yes “enthusiastically”. “Well, that’s where you’re lying... You were talking to all the other parents the whole game, and I never even scored a free kick.”
Like mother, like son. Coleen, we learn, said nothing to Wayne about her Instagram sting. “There was no point... He’d have said, ‘Stop wasting your time and forget it... There’s something wrong with you! You need to get a grip and move on with your life!’” While her nearest and dearest, including Wayne’s “family and friends”, all get shoutouts in the acknowledgments, he’s thanked merely for his role as a trial witness. The dedication (to their sons) ends by telling him: “I loved you then and I love you now x.” She can’t help it, in other words, but the Wagatha antics sound a warning shot: Coleen is nobody’s fool.
• My Account by Coleen Rooney is published by Michael Joseph (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
