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

by Sophie Ranald

  “Raffy,” I said. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  He laughed, then his face settled into seriousness again. “Gemma, I don’t know your ex – this Jack bloke – but I can tell you one thing with absolute, one hundred per cent certainty. Your relationship ending had precisely fuck all to do with how you look. Okay? So don’t even go there.”

  “No, but…” I said.

  “Gemma, you’re fishing. But if you insist, I’ll tell you something else. Even if Olivia looks like – I don’t know, like Emma Watson or someone – that still isn’t what this is about. And don’t go thinking it is, because that way madness lies.”

  I said, “What about you?”

  “What about me?” Raffy said. “Do I look like Emma Watson?”

  “No!” I put my elbow on the table and tried to prop my chin on my hand, as Raffy had done, and look at him alluringly through my eyelashes. But my elbow somehow slid off. I took another sip of my drink, but the glass was empty and Raffy didn’t fill it again.

  “I’ll fetch you some water,” he said.

  “Have you got a girlfriend?” I blurted out.

  “Nope.” He put a jug of water on the table between us. I couldn’t help noticing that, although he’d appeared to be drinking at the same rate I had, he was walking quite straight, unlike me. I sloshed water into our glasses, and rather a lot went over the table.

  “No girlfriend? Why not?”

  “I was seeing someone, a woman I worked with, until about six months ago. It didn’t work out. No big deal.”

  I reached out and brushed my fingers over his arm. It felt nice – hard and smooth and warm.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  Raffy said, “Here. In the flat above the shop. They’re between tenants, so I’m squatting here for the moment.”

  I said, “Can I see?”

  Raffy stood up again, and I stood up too, but somehow my feet weren’t where they were supposed to be, and I found myself tipping and almost falling. He put out a hand to save me, and I clutched it, then put both arms around his neck. I felt his arms around me, and the length of our bodies pressing together. Up close, I could smell his hair – it smelled of shampoo and coffee. Because I was wearing high heels, my eyes were almost level with his and I could see their colour, a pale greeny-blue like glass. I could feel his breath on my cheek, warm and quick.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for the moment when he would kiss me. But it didn’t come.

  “Gemma,” he said gently, “I think you need to go home.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I was having a dream about drinking water. A huge glass of water, cold from the fridge. Or maybe it was Sprite – sweet and fizzy and wonderfully wet. I drank and drank, but I was still thirsty. It was the thirst that woke me up, and I would have given anything to go back to sleep. My mouth tasted foul, my head was pounding and my stomach was churning.

  I curled up tighter under the duvet as memories of the night before came crashing back. Any hope I might have had about Jack changing his mind and coming back to me was gone. And I’d told Raffy about it – my God. A virtual stranger. I’d cried. And I’d got drunk. And – fuck. The duvet wasn’t sufficient to bury my mortification – I pulled the pillow over my head, too. I’d made a pass at him. A massive, stupid, drunken pass.

  And that wasn’t even the worst thing. The worst thing was that he’d turned me down. He’d walked me home and given me a hug and waited until the door had closed behind me, and then he’d gone home. I remembered the expression on his face as he gently untangled my arms from around his neck – sympathy and slight, carefully disguised amusement.

  Jack didn’t love me. Raffy didn’t want me. And I didn’t blame either of them one bit.

  “Oh my God,” I said to Stanley, my words muffled by the pillow. “I am the world’s biggest dick. No contest. I tried to hook up with the poor guy, and he doesn’t even fancy me. I’m totally going to have to find somewhere else to buy my coffee now.”

  I turned over and gingerly peered out at the morning, then checked my phone. It was half past six – too early to get up, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. I scrolled quickly through the comments on my vlog, then checked my email and my calendar, and said again, “Oh my God. Oh fuck. The bloody Berry Boys party is tonight. Do I have to go, Stanley?” My teddy regarded me silently from the pillow. “Yes, of course I do. But I definitely, definitely don’t want to. Everyone there will know one another. They’re ‘the gang’. But Sloane said I ought to go, and I don’t want her to know what a wimp I am. And I could do a vlog about it, I suppose. But I won’t know anyone. And I’ve got nothing to wear. And I’ve got the worst hangover in the history of the world, ever. Aaaargh, I don’t know! What am I going to do? And who are the Berry Boys, anyway?”

  Stanley was no help. Reluctantly, I got out of bed and dressed for work. I’d leave it in the hands of fate, I decided – I’d go to Topshop in my lunch break, and if I found something to wear that cost less than my remaining YouTube money, I’d go. If not, I wouldn’t.

  I knew as soon as I stepped off the escalator at five minutes past one that the shopping gods had made their decision. For once, I wasn’t going to have to rifle through rack after rack of dresses that all turned out to be too short, or looked fine on the hanger but then had some weird thing wrong with them like a belt that wasn’t in the same place as my waist or a corsage that sat right over one of my nipples. There, hanging right in front of me on a sale rack, was a pale pink midi dress with cutaway straps and a low back. It was gorgeous. It looked like it would cost a fortune but was exactly forty pounds. It even went with the silver flip-flops I was wearing. And so what if my black bra was completely unsuitable to wear with it – I’d just leave it off. For once, my flat-chestedness was a blessing instead of a curse.

  “You shall go to the ball, Gemma,” I told myself in the mirror, not caring that it sounded more like a threat than a promise.

  I changed in the ladies’ after work, topped up my make-up and made my way to the Tube, feeling increasingly nervous. I’d tried to snatch a moment to look at the Berry Boys’ channel, but I’d only glimpsed a couple of lads wearing masks running after each other brandishing water pistols and laughing uncontrollably. Then Jim came and asked me a question about my ‘Cats 1, Dogs 0 – See 21 Felines Totally Nailing It’ story, and I’d got caught up with work for the rest of the afternoon, so I was none the wiser.

  On the Tube, I pulled the invitation from its yellow envelope and read it again.

  They’ve taken YouTube by storm with their pranks, challenges and crazy collabs. Now, the twins who took over the internet have arrived in print. Join us at Wishy Washy for the launch of Two – the summer’s zaniest read.

  The rest of the invitation was taken up with details of the venue – Wishy Washy (housed in a disused launderette, obviously) was a bar so tooth-achingly cool that even I had heard of it. I tried to go there once with Jack, Olivia and some of their friends when we were on a night out in London, but we got turned away at the door with barely a glance. At least that meant I’d be able to find it without having to shamble along staring at the map on my phone like a tourist.

  There was no steely out-of-work model guarding the door tonight. Two friendly guys about my age, one with a massive beard and the other with his hair twisted into a topknot, welcomed me in with barely a glance at my invitation. For a second I thought, Are they the Berry Boys? But there had been no beard poking from under either mask in the few seconds of video I’d seen.

  I stepped inside and paused for a moment, tucking my sunglasses into my bag and waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was a faint but distinctive smell of freshly washed laundry in the air – could it be left over from the place’s former incarnation? That wasn’t possible – they must pipe it in somehow. Then I saw the lines of sheets and pillowcases hanging from the ceiling – presumably some staff member went to an actual launderette every few days to put them thro
ugh a boil wash and top up their scent.

  The room was already full of people, standing around in groups chatting and drinking. Almost all of them had a glass in one hand and their phone or camera in the other, and were filming their conversations. I wondered whether taking out my own phone would make me feel less out of place, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it – I was sure I’d be clocked as a newbie and a fraud straight away.

  Instead, I made my way to the bar and pretended to be engrossed in the menu for a bit. All the cocktails were laundry-themed too – it was seriously cool. For a moment, I imagined texting Jack and telling him about it, and then I remembered that that wasn’t going to happen, not now or ever again. God, I wished he was there right now. I wished anyone I knew was, even Olivia. I swallowed the sense of loss that welled up inside me and forced myself not to mind. I had to move on – I had moved on. I was here, wasn’t I, an invited guest in this most fabulous of places? I didn’t need them, I told myself. I didn’t need anyone. But I knew it wasn’t true.

  “I’ll have a Whiter-Than-White, please,” I said to the barman. A few minutes of measuring, shaking and squeezing later, he was done. Drink in hand, I turned to make my way into the crowd and try and locate Sloane.

  Then I paused.

  “Oh, and my friend asked me to get a drink for her, as well,” I said. “What would you recommend?”

  At least now people see me with a drink in each hand and think that I must, obviously, know at least one other person there. Or that I was a degenerate alcoholic, of course.

  “What kind of thing does she like? Fruity? Maybe a Fast Spin? Or something longer? A Pre-Soak? Or the Energy-Saver is alcohol free.”

  “I’ll go for a Pre-Soak,” I said. I watched as he scooped ice, measured coconut milk, added dashes of various spirits, stirred and shook. I willed it to take forever, but of course it didn’t. I now had the requisite two drinks, and I’d run out of excuses.

  The room had filled up some more while I was at the bar. I stepped tentatively out into the throng. I couldn’t see Sloane anywhere. But there, I was sure, was the stunning black woman I’d seen in the photo on Sloane’s wall. She was surrounded by chattering friends, juggling her camera and a bottle of sparkling water as she gestured and laughed. She looked impossibly confident and self-possessed.

  And there, leaning against the wall, talking into an actual, proper camera, not one of the small ones that almost everyone else seemed to have permanently welded to their hands, surrounded by microphones and lights, was… No. It couldn’t be. There was, like, literally no way I was in the same room, breathing the same air, as Harry Styles. Even though I was totally over my teenage crush on him, this was epic. It was immense.

  I was so transfixed by the sight of my former hero that I forgot to look where I was going. I took another step forward, heard a voice say, “Ouch!” and felt an icy wave of Pre-Soak splash down my front.

  “Fuck! Can’t you look where you’re going?”

  I tore my eyes away from Harry and towards the person who’d spilled coconut-based cocktail all over my brand new dress.

  “I was looking where I was going,” I lied. “You stepped right out in front of me. And look what you’ve done to my dress.”

  “Hmmm, yes,” he said. “Nice.”

  I glanced down and realised that the icy cocktail had made the thin satin cling to my skin, and I wished I hadn’t been such a complete idiot as not to wear a bra. I averted my eyes from my chest and, to his credit, so did the man I’d collided with.

  “Sorry,” he said. “My bad.” And he smiled a smile of such self-effacing charm that I couldn’t help smiling back. Even though it was so dark, even though Harry Styles was just a few feet away, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was as if there was a spotlight trained on his head.

  He was only a bit taller than me. But lots of guys are shorter, so any bit is a bit worth having. He was wearing what I guessed would have been proper black-tie gear, only the shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a white T-shirt underneath, and the bow tie was undone too. I could see a tattoo snaking over his collarbone from the top of the T-shirt. His hair was golden-blonde and seemed to reflect what little light there was as dazzlingly as his perfect teeth.

  Then he said, “But I haven’t thanked you. You brought me my drink.” And he took the Pre-Soak out of my hand and sipped it. “Yummy.”

  I thought about trying to defend my imaginary friend’s right to her cocktail, but decided against it.

  “It’s a Pre-Soak,” I said. “Appropriate, in the circumstances.”

  I saw him try not to look at my dress again and succeed, then fail. I felt a quick, delicious surge of power.

  “They ought to do a cocktail called a Dry-Clean-Only,” I said.

  “They probably do.” He drained the glass. “You’ve finished yours. Let’s go and find out.”

  He headed off into the crowd and I followed. But then a weird thing happened. People seemed to close around him like iron filings around a magnet, and I was distant enough to be excluded from the force field. There were two people between him and me, then six, then I bumped into a table and had to go around it, and I lost sight of his golden head in the gloom.

  It was fine. I’d make my way to the bar and find him there, and if I didn’t, I’d go home, satisfied that I had actually talked – even flirted – with a stranger. But then, heading towards me, I saw the familiar smiling features.

  “Gotcha.” I reached out my hand and clasped his. But, instead of the grin of acknowledgement I’d expected, I was met with a look of total bewilderment.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said. “Come on, let’s go and get that Dry-Clean-Only.”

  And then I looked again, and I realised that somehow, the bow tie had magically tied itself again. The tattoo had vanished. The smile that had lit the room was dimmed like it had been replaced with a low-wattage, eco-friendly bulb.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I thought…”

  I stumbled away, bewildered. I wasn’t used to drinking any more. A few shots of whisky the night before had knocked me sideways. And now I was hitting on random men for no reason at all. I was even – no. This couldn’t be happening. I was seeing double.

  “Augustus,” a voice laughed in my ear. “Step away from the girl in the pink dress. I saw her first. And anyway, she literally doesn’t know who we are.”

  Belatedly, I realised. I looked up and noticed for the first time the huge poster above the bar: the cover of the book everyone was there to help launch. It was the same bright, stinging yellow as the invitation, with the word TWO in huge letters at the top, and at the bottom in slightly smaller letters, By Gus and Charlie Berry, aka the Berry Boys.

  The rest of the cover was taken up with a photo of a man’s face, only it was split in half down the middle and if I looked hard, I could see that the two halves didn’t quite match up, although they almost did. The same way the faces grinning down at me were almost exactly the same, but not.

  “I so do,” I said. “Everyone does. You’re properly famous.”

  “YouTube famous,” Gus said. “Not quite the same thing.”

  I looked closely at him, trying to imprint in my mind the things that made him different from Charlie. I’d been caught out once; I was determined not to let it happen to me again. Making a fool of myself once a night was quite enough – more than enough. There was Charlie’s tattoo, obviously. Gus’s hair was a bit longer, styled into a high quiff while Charlie’s was a slick short back and sides. Gus was slightly taller, Charlie slightly broader shouldered. But they were tiny differences. If you ran into one of them in the street and the other wasn’t there, chances are you’d find yourself saying, “Hey Gus!” when it was Charlie, or vice versa.

  “Anyway, we know who you are,” Charlie said, interrupting my inspection of them. “Don’t we, Gus?”

  “Of course we do,” Gus said. “Gemma Grey. Not properly famous. Not even YouTube famous. But people have noticed
you.”

  “No wonder,” Charlie said, “in that dress.”

  I took a big gulp of my drink, hoping the icy cocktail would somehow stem the flood of hot colour I could feel creeping up my neck. “So, tell me about your book,” I said.

  “It’s the hottest read of the summer,” Gus said.

  “It’s a hilarious look at the madcap lives and stratospheric rise to stardom of two of YouTube’s most successful creators,” Charlie said.

  “It gives you all the low-down on what we get up to when the cameras are off.”

  “Plus never-heard-before goss about your favourite celebs.”

  “Hilarious pranks and gags for you to try at home.”

  “Fashion and gaming advice.”

  “And blank pages for you to fill in and make the book your own.”

  “Or so we’re told,” Charlie said.

  “We didn’t write it, obviously,” said Gus.

  “We’ve read it, though,” said Charlie, as if this was a major achievement.

  “Well, I read the front half,” Gus said.

  “And I read the back. Because, teamwork.”

  “But, to be fair, it did only come out today. And Sloane says it’s good.”

  “And if Sloane likes it, that’s cool with us.”

  “And it sold more copies pre-release than any other book published this year.”

  “Or this century. Or something.”

  I’d followed this rapid-fire exchange like someone watching a game of ping-pong, mutely gawping as the conversation bounced between them, waiting for there to be an opportunity – or a need – for me to participate. But now it seemed the point was over – who had won, if there was even a winner, I couldn’t tell.

  “Gemma needs another drink,” Charlie said. “And so do I.”

  “Go get one then,” Gus said.

  “I’ll go,” I said. “What would you like?”

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” Charlie said. “You’re going to stay with me, and I’ll tell you all the insider goss about your favourite celebs. You won’t even have to read the book. How lucky are you?”