Kimberley Walsh is "very protective" with Cheryl Cole after after helping her pal through a 'messy divorce' from husband Ashley Cole in 2010.
Kimberley Walsh struck up a close friendship with Cole when they were in chart-topping band Girls Aloud from 2002 and that friendship has strengthened ever since with Kimberley standing by Cheryl through her divorce with Ashley Cole.
Walsh was quoted in Hello magazine, as saying: "I'm very protective of Cheryl and if she hasn't wanted me to address her split from Ashley [in my new autobiography 'A Whole Lot of History'] I wouldn't have done. But she was quite happy for me to speak about it from my side. In fact, she encouraged it.
"All I could really do was be there for her, physically, 24 hours a day. I'd been through it with my sister, so I knew what someone's mental state is like when they've had that sort of shock and I didn't want her to be on her own.
"What was frustrating was that I couldn't understand why it happened, so I couldn't say, 'Well maybe it's because...' I couldn't help her in that way because I couldn't make sense of it either."
Walsh is confident she and Cheryl will remain friends for a long time and is looking forwardto being able to share the fond memories with their future children.
She explained: "Cheryl's in a great place now. She lives closer to me when she's here in the UK and that's great... We're friends for life and often joke about how we'll be reminiscing to our kids and grandkids in year to come about how were in a band and how we climbed a mountain together."
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