The Truth About Gemma Grey: A feel-good, romantic comedy you won't be able to put down

by Sophie Ranald

  “Thanks for coming round, Gemma,” Hannah said at last. “We’ll be in touch as soon as we can.”

  “Look forward to seeing you again soon,” Richard said, and I felt a little surge of hope and excitement. They liked me!

  I said goodbye and walked out into the sunny evening, and began making my way back towards the station. On the corner was a shop I hadn’t noticed before, with a blackboard outside that said, Daily Grind – East London’s best coffee. Vinyl records. Cycle repairs. Free Wi-Fi.

  I looked in through the window. The place was seriously stylish, with battered wooden floorboards and face-brick walls hung with vintage movie posters. There was a mixture of comfy sofas, small round tables and tall benches surrounded by long-legged metal stools. I imagined myself coming here on a Saturday morning, meeting friends for brunch or sitting alone and working on my laptop, as I could see several people doing. I imagined bringing Jack here, when he came home, and them knowing my name and my regular order, and him being impressed by the coolness of the area where I lived and, by extension, me.

  Lured by the smell of coffee, I went into the shop and joined the small queue at the counter. I noticed a pile of leaflets with pictures of the estate I’d passed, printed with bold red capital letters. Save our homes! Save our community! Save the Garforth Estate! I read. I picked one up, glanced at the dense type inside, then put it down again.

  I was going to get home so ridiculously late anyway, I might as well text Mum and tell her I wouldn’t be back for dinner, and grab something to eat here. There were two guys taking orders and making coffee, one of them shortish and gingerish, the other tall and dark. As I waited to get to the front of the queue, I watched them.

  The ginger guy seemed to be in charge; the other one looked like he was new on the job, and his first day wasn’t going too well.

  “Skinny chai latte, madam?” He handed a cup to the woman at the front of the queue.

  She sniffed the plume of steam emerging from the vent in the lid and said accusingly, “This is coffee. I asked for chai.”

  “So you did. Then where…”

  “I think that one’s mine, mate. Cappuccino with an extra shot?”

  “Cappuccino with an extra shot, yes. So this must be the chai latte… Wait. Maybe it’s this one. Never mind – I’ll make them both again. I’m so sorry – these are on the house.”

  While he sorted out the muddle, his friend sprang into action and started taking orders.

  “Espresso, please,” said the man at the front of the queue.

  “Would that be Guatemalan, Brazilian, Colombian or Rwandan?” asked the ginger guy.

  The customer looked bewildered. “Um… what would you recommend?”

  “Depends on your taste, sir. All our coffee is fair trade and sustainably sourced. The Guatemalan is a light roast, with notes of honey and cinnamon. The Brazilian is darker, richer – more of a morning coffee, I feel. The Colombian is mellower. And the Rwandan is our special this week – it’s got notes of raspberry jam and raisins, with molasses on the finish. Really excellent stuff.”

  “I’ll go for the middle one,” the customer said, clearly in the grip of choice paralysis.

  I could sympathise – who knew ordering coffee was suddenly so complicated? I studied the blackboard while I waited. It listed the usual lattes and cappuccinos, alongside a load of things I’d never heard of. Cold-brewed coffee. Nitro coffee. Pulped natural coffee. I made a mental note to suggest to Tom that he do an article about all this, if he hadn’t already. He could call it ‘15 Signs We’ve Reached Peak Coffee’.

  “One Colombian espresso,” the ginger guy said. “And for you, madam?”

  “Coffee and tonic, please.” Clearly the woman ahead of me in the queue knew what she was about – or maybe not, if coffee and tonic was anything like as horrible as it sounded.

  The other guy – the tall one – seemed to be getting his act together after his shaky start. Bless him, I thought, he must be a student, scrabbling to get together a bit of extra cash to spend in the pub. Or an out-of-work actor. Or someone like me just a few weeks ago, working for minimum wage while waiting for his big break. Anyway, the coffee confusion was over, and the woman who’d ordered the chai latte and the man who’d ordered the extra shot cappuccino were carrying their drinks to their tables, mollified.

  And I could see why they hadn’t been able to stay cross for long. The tall guy was actually quite hot, with the most amazing blue eyes that seemed almost too pale for his tanned skin. His teeth were very white and straight when he smiled – which seemed to be most of the time. He was a bit older than I’d thought at first – a couple of years older than me, I guessed, so not a student. Unless he was doing a PhD.

  “What can I get for you, madam?” he said, and I realised I’d been staring at him and speculating about him instead of deciding what I wanted to order.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I said, blushing furiously. “I was miles away. A cappuccino, please, and… um… avocado on toast.”

  His smile really was distracting – I don’t even like avocado. Normally I’d have ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to reveal my embarrassing lack of culinary sophistication.

  “Oat milk? Almond milk? Coconut milk?” he said.

  “Am I allowed normal milk?”

  “Of course you are – but if I don’t ask, I get in trouble with Luke. He doesn’t approve of unreconstructed coffee. Although our milk isn’t ordinary; it’s high-protein milk produced specifically for coffee.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “What, like, is it made from special coffee cows?”

  “You’ll have to ask Luke,” he said. “Probably. It’s organic, I know that much. And unhomogenised, whatever that means.”

  The queue behind me was building up a bit, and I saw the guy glance anxiously over at his boss, so I said, “Wow, that’s really interesting. And thanks.”

  “We’ll bring your food to your table as soon as it’s ready,” he said, and I paid and went to find a place to sit.

  Ten minutes later, I was crunching my way through my dinner – which was actually really nice, in spite of the avocado and weird seedy wholemeal toast – and checking my social media. Someone had linked to a vlog I’d done about exploring shops in Soho during my lunch break, and I’d gained two hundred new followers since the weekend, which was pretty amazing. My latest post on Clickfrenzy (‘This Cat Was Separated From His Dog Bestie For Two Years. Their Reunion Will Make You Cry Actual Tears’) had twenty thousand likes on Facebook. Jack had posted loads of pictures of fish on Instagram, but I didn’t want to see fish – I wanted to see Jack. I clicked over to Olivia’s feed, and then froze, my finger hovering over the screen.

  This was weird. Where just the day before there had been a flood of images of Olivia doing downward dogs on the beach in a bikini, the fruit platter Olivia had eaten for breakfast, Olivia’s feet in flipflops showing off her immaculate primrose-coloured toenails, now there was nothing. Just a blank screen with the message, No posts yet.

  She’d blocked me, and I had no idea why.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come in?” Mum said, making a move to open the car door.

  “No!” I said. “I mean, no thanks, Mum, it’s really sweet of you to offer and thanks so much for driving me here, but I can manage. Honestly I can.”

  I thought of the bulging blue Ikea bags filled with clothes and my recent homeware purchases, my backpack stuffed with yet more clothes (some liberated from Mum’s wardrobe), my laptop and camera bags, and Stanley perched on top of it all in the boot of the car. Managing was going to be a bit of a challenge, but we were parked right outside Hannah and Richard’s house and it was unlikely that the few steps to the front door would wrench my arms out of their sockets. I was feeling awkward and nervous enough about moving in without Mum fluttering around wafting scent and looking far more glamorous than any mother had any right to look. I love he
r, obviously, and mostly I’m proud of her, but sometimes she does have a way of making me regress to being a sulky teenager and this was one of those times.

  “Well,” Mum said, “if you’re sure? Then I suppose I’ll say goodbye.”

  She pushed her sunglasses up on to her head, sniffed and ran a finger under her eye.

  “Mum! For God’s sake. I’ll only be two hours away on the train. And there are these things called phones. You know, you can send text messages with them and everything.”

  “What, you think I’m going to miss you?” Mum said. “I can’t wait to have the flat to myself again and not have you banging on the door as soon as I’ve got into the bath and leaving crumbs in the butter. You’ll have to clean up your act when you’re living with this Hannah and whatshisname – from what you say they won’t put up with that kind of thing.”

  “I have lived away from home before,” I said. “I survived three years of uni, remember, without getting an ASBO.”

  “I know, I know,” Mum said. “You’re a grown-up. I hadn’t forgotten. This just feels so… Never mind.”

  She shut up, to my relief – if she’d said anything more I reckon I might have cried too. I undid my seatbelt and gave her a brief hug.

  “I’ll call you soon, okay?” I said.

  “Okay, sweetie,” Mum said, pushing her sunglasses down and sniffing again. I got out of the car very quickly, took a deep breath, manhandled all my stuff to the front door and tapped the knocker.

  Hannah opened the door almost straight away, as if she’d been hovering behind it.

  “Gemma!” she said. “Welcome. Welcome home, I guess. Wow, that looks heavy. I’ll get Rich to give you a hand upstairs. We’re in the kitchen. Amy, the other lodger, arrived this morning so we thought we’d wait for you and then all have a little chat and get to know one another. Take your time, get settled in – I’ll stick the kettle on. Rich! Gemma’s here.”

  Richard appeared from the kitchen and there was a bit of an awkward tussle while he tried to take the heaviest of my bags and I tried to insist that I could manage, which I let him win because I knew I couldn’t really. I followed him upstairs into the back bedroom that was going to be mine – was mine already, I supposed, since I’d transferred three months’ rent into his account (a loan from Mum – the last one I’d ever need, I promised myself). We put my stuff down and I immediately started to worry about leaving scuff marks on the spotless mushroom-coloured carpet or staining the new pale grey mattress.

  Richard didn’t immediately turn to go back downstairs, but stood in the doorway, more or less filling up the space that was there, and looking at me.

  I looked back, trying to get a sense of this man whose home I’d be sharing. He was okay looking – no Jack, just an average, pleasant-looking guy in his early thirties. I noticed again how tidy – almost formal – he looked; even though it was a Sunday, the bits of his face that were outside the precise lines of his beard were as smooth as if he’d just shaved. He was wearing a blue and white striped shirt tucked into his very clean jeans, with a brown leather belt. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up and his arms were brown and strong – I’d noticed the lean swell of muscle between his watch and his sleeve when he carried my bags up the stairs.

  He smiled at me and I smiled back. He had a bit of a gap between his front teeth – it was the only thing about him that wasn’t all squared away and perfect. But there was something else about his smile that wasn’t perfect – it was a bit too lingering, somehow. He kept looking at me a bit too long, and his eyes did a sort of leisurely up-and-down assessment of me, stopping at my chest for longer than they should.

  I said, “Thanks for helping me. I’ll get my stuff sorted and come down.”

  Richard said, “Sure.” He stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, then turned and went away.

  I unpacked my clothes into the wardrobe, arranged my make-up collection on the dressing table and put the framed photo of Jack and me next to the bed. I draped my new fairy lights over the headboard and made the bed with my new duvet cover, sheets and pillowcases, and propped Stanley up against the pillows. I went to the bathroom and put my toiletries into the half of the cabinet that wasn’t already filled, taking the opportunity to have a bit of a snoop at Amy’s stuff and discovering that she used macadamia oil on her hair and owned a set of fluffy fuchsia pink towels and an impressive collection of Bobbi Brown skincare.

  Then I couldn’t think of anything more to do, so I said to Stanley, “Cover my back, I’m going in,” and went.

  Hannah, Richard and Amy were sitting around the kitchen table drinking tea out of spotty pastel-coloured mugs, evidently chosen to match the tablecloth. Or perhaps the tablecloth had been chosen to match the mugs. The teapot was pale pink and the spoons had mint green handles. The door was open to the garden and I could see a perfect green rectangle of lawn and a rose bush in a stone pot. It was all so immaculate it was almost creepy.

  “Amy, this is Gemma,” Hannah said. “Gemma works in new media; Amy’s training to be a police officer.”

  Amy stood up and held out her hand for me to shake. Her nails were painted white, with silver glitter on the tips. Her hair was a mass of sleek braids twisted together into one chunky plait. She was wearing a denim mini skirt, a Hello Kitty T-shirt and silver gladiator sandals. Honestly, if you’d asked me to describe the person least like a trainee police officer in the whole world, it would probably have been Amy.

  “Hello,” I said. “I love your nails.”

  Amy said thanks, and that it was nice to meet me, then she sat down and took another sip of her tea. She seemed totally poised and calm, not like me – I felt all untidy and ungainly in this pristine house, as if the milk jug might jump into my hand and then on to the floor at any moment, and it would be my fault.

  Richard said, “Well. Now that you’re both here, Hannah and I just wanted to run through a few housekeeping things.”

  He reached behind him and handed us each a sheaf of A4 printouts, held together with plastic binding combs.

  “We just wanted you both to know from the outset where everything is, and how things work,” Hannah said. She sounded apologetic – almost embarrassed. “I mean, it’s just going to be easier if we all understand what’s expected.”

  I flipped through the pages and saw PDF printouts of the operating manuals for the washing machine, dishwasher, coffee maker and cooker. A whole page was devoted to the broadband, how it worked and who to call if it didn’t. All four of our email addresses and mobile numbers were in there. There was a list headed ‘Guidelines’ that ran to more than fifty points, from how often to clean the crumbs out of the toaster to what to do if the carbon monoxide alarm went off.

  My face must have given something away, because Amy caught my eye and winked.

  Hannah said, “I’ll put the kettle on again, shall I? Would you like a tea, Gemma? There’s Earl Grey, peppermint, chamomile and vanilla, lemon and honey – take your pick. I’m a bit obsessed with tea. And would anyone like some cake?”

  From a shelf next to the fridge, she produced an Emma Bridgewater tin, levered off the lid and lifted out a cake piped with pink and white icing saying, Welcome, Amy and Gemma.

  So of course then there was no way I could say that I preferred coffee to tea, and no way of saying no to the cake – although when is saying yes to cake ever a problem? We drank our tea and ate our cake (with actual cake forks, for real), and Hannah talked us faux-casually through all the pages of the book of rules.

  When eventually we got to the end, and we’d all had a second slice of cake and declined a third, I said, “Would anyone like… I mean, shall we pop out for a drink, maybe?”

  Hannah looked at me like I’d suggested going down the local Satanic temple to slaughter a few kittens.

  “I’d love to,” Richard said. “But, you know, school night. We have a team meeting at eight on Monday mornings.”

  “And I’m on earlies this week,” Amy sighed. “I
n fact, I was about to head up to bed.”

  And so, over the next few days, I discovered that, far from finding myself in a real-life season of Girls, I’d moved into in London’s most sedate houseshare. Hannah only seemed to go out to the local primary school where she worked and to her Stitch and Bitch knitting group on Wednesdays. Richard’s job kept him at the office until after seven thirty almost every night, and glued to his laptop most of the weekend. Amy’s shift pattern meant that she was rarely home when I was, and her idea of a fun time seemed to be kicking the shit out of her fellow tae-bo enthusiasts at the gym.

  Don’t get me wrong – they were the perfect housemates in many ways. No one came home pissed and threw up in the sink. No one tried to get out of doing their share of the chores. No one had screaming rows. No one ever even opened the fridge, for God’s sake, without asking whoever else was there if they wanted a glass of orange squash. They were the Stepford Wives of the housemate world.

  Still, getting home night after night and finding the house empty and quiet except for Hannah listening to Radio Four in the kitchen and painstakingly preparing some gourmet feast for her and Richard’s dinner, and then setting the table with flowers and candles and waiting for him to come home so they could eat it together, didn’t exactly make for a welcoming vibe.