Soon, more and more people began to arrive. Someone brought a bottle of Pimm’s and we raided Hannah’s herb garden for mint. Someone else brought a massive cake with a Metropolitan Police logo iced on it, putting my dodgy cupcakes to shame. Amy’s sister brought her guitar and played ‘I Really Like You’ totally beautifully, and a few of us sang along less beautifully. It was all very civilised, and I felt quite guilty that I’d been worried, but relieved that my worries had proved unfounded.
As the day turned to evening, though, I realised that it was Amy herself I should have worried about. I’d never seen her drink before, and although she occasionally mentioned having been to the pub with colleagues, I’d never seen her drunk. But now she was clearly determined to make up for all those months of long shifts and hard work and not knowing whether she was going to be among the few to make the grade.
She laughed and danced and chatted and ate, but mostly she got cheerfully shitfaced, and by ten o’clock, when just about everyone had left, her cheerfulness suddenly deserted her.
I came downstairs from the bathroom to find Amy, Amy’s sister and Kian in the kitchen. Amy was holding the salad bowl and sobbing her heart out.
“I forgot about the coleslaw,” she said. She had to say it a couple of times before we understood. “I made it specially and I forgot it in the fridge.”
“Babe, it doesn’t matter,” Amy’s sister said. “Everyone’s had an amazing time. We’re all so proud of you.”
“Does matter,” Amy said. “It’s Nan’s special recipe and I wanted everyone to try it and I forgot.”
“Love, you’re knackered,” said Kian. “Come on, you need to go to bed.”
“I don’t want to go to bed,” Amy said. “No one’s going to bed until we’ve eaten all this fucking coleslaw. Right?”
Amy’s sister and I looked at each other and I saw her mouth twitch in just the same way Amy’s did when she was trying not to laugh. It was an enormous bowl and absolutely full of the cabbage, carrots, celery and apple I’d watched Amy painstakingly shred that morning.
“We’ll have it tomorrow,” I suggested, even though I knew that Amy would be in no state to face cold, mayonnaisey vegetables the next morning. “Or we can save it for Hannah and Richard, like a welcome home present.”
Amy started to laugh, although she didn’t stop crying. “Rannah and Hichard,” she said. “What a pair of nutters. You know, I’m fucking sure he…” Then she paused, and her face turned a weird shade of khaki.
“Babe?” Amy’s sister said.
“Are you okay?” Kian said.
“Going to be sick,” Amy said, suddenly not slurring at all.
Then lots of things happened at once, but seemingly in slow motion, like the reverse of when I speeded up a make-up application video to make it less tedious. Amy dropped the bowl of coleslaw on the floor. It was plastic, so it didn’t break, but its contents splattered everywhere. She made to run for the stairs and the loo, but slipped in the mess and went flying, hitting her head on the corner of the marble worktop.
Then, as abruptly as it had slowed, time returned to normal speed. Amy was lying on the floor in the ruins of her salad. Kian, Amy’s sister and I were looking at her, horrified. I thought, She didn’t put beetroot in it, did she? and then I realised.
“She’s cut her head,” Kian said, squatting down and carefully moving Amy’s hair out of the way.
“Jesus,” Amy’s sister said, looking at the rapidly spreading red stain. “Do you think…?”
“A&E, definitely,” Kian said. “I’m a first-aider at work, and head wounds always need to be looked at.”
“Right.” Amy’s sister did a brief hand-flappy dance around the living room before finding her handbag and her phone. “I’m calling a cab. We’ll take her.”
Kian found some ice in the freezer and a clean tea towel in a drawer and did his best to staunch the blood that was oozing, slowly but persistently, from Amy’s head. Amy’s sister stood looking down and saying, “Oh my God. Oh my God,” with none of Kian’s imperturbability. I just stood, numb with horror.
I was still standing there like an idiot when the taxi arrived and the two of them bundled Amy into it, assuring me that they’d text and let me know she was okay. After they’d gone I stood a bit more, surveying the carnage.
As parties go, as I said, it had been pretty civilised. The barbecue was still smouldering in the garden, and would need to be scooped out and cleaned in the morning. There were paper plates and glasses scattered about, half-eaten hot dogs and crisp crumbs to throw away. If I took the whole clearing up thing seriously, I might even pick the bits of cucumber out of the flowerbeds, where people had chucked them out of their Pimm’s glasses.
That would all have been fine.
But this was something entirely else. The kitchen floor was a morass of mayonnaise, soggy cabbage, the water Kian had spilled from his bowl of ice and – horrifyingly – blood. All the blood. My flip-flops and the hem of my long dress were splattered with it. It was like a scene I might have written in one of my little horror stories when I was a teenager, except I wasn’t worried about the Slender Man coming to get me – I was worried about our landlords, who’d trusted us to look after their home and who we’d betrayed.
I didn’t know what to do. Well, I did, of course – I knew I was going to have to sort all this out, because Amy wasn’t there to help. But for now, I was paralysed by the enormity of the task. I went out into the warm, dark garden and fished the last beer from the bucket that had been full of ice earlier and was full of water now. I sipped it, staring into the embers of the fire. I tweeted, OMG. Carnage. #sendhelp. Then a few minutes later I realised how stupid that was, and deleted my tweet. I leaned forward and rested my cheek on my knees, staring at my pretty silver toenails and my ruined dress, and started to cry.
I was still crying when I heard the crash of the door knocker.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Oh fuck,” I said aloud, jumping to my feet. “If that’s Hannah and Richard, they are totally, legit going to kill me, and I won’t blame them.”
Then I remembered Hannah checking her handbag that morning, making sure she had her keys and then looking again a minute later to make even surer. It couldn’t be them. They were in Greece, drinking ouzo on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, or exploring some ancient monument in the dark, if Richard had his way. Then I thought, What if they got mugged on the way to the airport, and their bags, passports and keys were stolen, and they’ve just managed to make their way home? I felt a flood of cold dread, the way I imagine it must feel to do the ice bucket challenge. I walked quietly through the house and stood by the front door, wishing there was a peephole so I could see who was on the other side. I waited, but I couldn’t hear anything at all. Then the knocker crashed again, making me almost jump out of my skin.
I was going to have to answer it – there was nothing else for me to do. Besides, I thought, it was probably Kian, or Amy’s sister, coming back with news of Amy.
But it wasn’t. When I opened the door, there stood Charlie and Gus.
I don’t even want to think what I must have looked like, in my dirty dress, gawping open-mouthed at them.
“How did you get here?” I said stupidly.
“Uber, obviously,” Gus said.
“We stalked you,” Charlie said. “Our fans do it to us all the time. They watch our videos and look on Google Street View to work out where we live, and then they turn up at midnight wanting selfies.”
“But they don’t get past the concierge,” Gus said.
“We started with your coffee shop,” Charlie said. “Daily Grind – you’ve vlogged about it, and you’ve filmed yourself walking there in the mornings. So once we found it, the rest was easy.”
“Unfortunately it was closed,” Gus said, “so we couldn’t even get a coffee. But that’s okay, because you were just about to put the kettle on, weren’t you?”
“Gemma’s got more important things to d
o than be your personal barista, mate,” Charlie said. “She needs help, remember? She tweeted.”
I said, “But I deleted that tweet, like, straight away.”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “We saw. Charlie’s been glued to your feed all day, but that’s the only thing you posted apart from one lousy five-minute vlog. You’re going to need to raise your game, Gemma.”
“What happened at the barbecue?” Charlie said, suddenly serious. “Are you okay?”
I said, “You’d better come in and see.”
I led them through to the back of the house, and the three of us stood in silence and looked at the chaos of Hannah and Richard’s kitchen. I felt my eyes sting with fresh tears, and sniffed loudly.
“Blimey,” Gus said. “Do you always invite Lindsay Lohan to your parties?”
I started to laugh, but the laughter quickly turned to tears, and the next thing I knew Charlie’s strong arms were around me and I was sobbing into his shoulder.
“My flatmate got pissed,” I said, when I’d recovered enough self-control to actually talk and blown my nose on the wad of paper napkins Gus handed me. “And she fell and hit her head, and her boyfriend’s taken her to hospital, and our landlords are away and they don’t know we were even having a party, and I feel so terrible about it, and… well, look.”
“I’m looking,” Gus said. “Impressive night’s work. Just as well we came over, isn’t it, mate?”
“Definitely,” Charlie said. “Right, we’re going to need bin liners, bleach, a mop, Marigolds…”
“We don’t want to spoil our manicures,” Gus said.
I opened the cupboard under the stairs, where Hannah’s enormous hoard of cleaning products was stored. There was a Post-it note on the inside of the door that said, If you finish it, please remember to replace it or add it to the shopping list, with a smiley face underneath. I felt a fresh wave of guilt.
“Bloody hell,” Charlie said. “Not only do you invite LiLo to your parties, you’re renting a room off Kim and Aggie. Why didn’t you say?”
“What’s all this stuff even for?” Gus said. “Baby oil? Kinky.”
“It’s for polishing the stainless-steel splashback,” I said.
“Yeah, I bet that’s what they tell you,” Charlie said. “Dirty bastards. Right. I’m going in.” He pulled on a pair of yellow washing-up gloves and chucked another to Gus. “Why don’t you stick some music on, Gemma? I need tunes while I work.”
“Like a brain surgeon,” Gus said, gloving up. “Scalpel, sister!”
“Look, you two…” I said. “I mean, it’s so sweet that you came over…” Sweet or creepy? I wondered. But I didn’t have time to analyse it. “But you really don’t have to do this. You really, really don’t.”
“Someone’s going to have to,” Charlie pointed out, “and since we’re here, it may as well be us. We can’t take you out clubbing if you’re going to be fretting about the state of your kitchen floor all night, can we?”
“Anyway, we’re awesome at cleaning,” Gus said. “Our mum always made us do chores. She brought us up to be new men, didn’t she, Charles?”
“She did indeed,” Charlie said. “With our steam mops, we will smash the patriarchy!”
“So you see, Gemma, you really ought to be glad we stalked you, and not anyone else,” Gus said. “You wouldn’t get this level of service from Thatcher Joe, would you now?”
I could see that resistance was going to be futile – and besides, I didn’t actually want to resist. It was taking a bit of time to sink in, but Charlie was here – actually here, in my home. It wasn’t the romantic reunion I would have imagined, if I’d allowed myself to imagine there being a reunion with him at all, ever, but here he was. His smile was at least as dazzling as I remembered. His hair even shinier and blonder; his blue eyes even more sparkly. The bits of his arms that I could see between the gloves and the sleeves of his brilliantly white T-shirt were lean and muscly, and I couldn’t help remembering how they’d felt around my body.
“Well, now you put it like that…” I said, pulling on a pair of gloves of my own and making a mental note to stock up on new ones. “Let’s crack on.”
It took us two hours, but at last, at one in the morning, the house was restored to its pre-Amy’s-party condition. Every last glass was washed, dried and put back in its place. Gus had chucked water on the coals and cleaned the barbecue. We’d filled two black rubbish bags and three clear recycling ones and stashed them, furtive as burglars, in the neighbour’s wheelie bin. We’d mopped the kitchen floor until it gleamed, and you wouldn’t notice the tiny bloodstain on the grouting unless you knew it was there. Gus even polished the splashback with baby oil and said, “Look, it comes up a treat,” waving an e-cloth in high camp style.
I’d received a text from Amy’s sister telling me that Amy had had two stitches in her head and was fine, but she was taking her back to her place for the night, and asking whether I was all right, and I’d been able to reply saying that she should tell Amy not to worry, I had everything under control. I didn’t mention that that was only thanks to the timely intervention of the Berry Boys, YouTube’s hottest double act. Apart from anything else, Amy’s sister would almost certainly have no idea who they were.
“Well,” Charlie said at last, peeling off his Marigolds and pushing back his hair. “Looks like our work here is done.”
“Thank you both so, so much,” I said. “Honestly, you’ve been so totally amazing. I don’t know what to say.”
“Any time you need us,” Gus said, “just beam the Berry-signal into the night sky. We’ll see the feather duster lighting up a passing cloud and arrive in the Berry-mobile.”
“Bruce Wayne doesn’t have Uber, that’s what cramps his style,” Charlie said. “The Batmobile’s instantly recognisable. We can do our good deeds in secret.”
“You know what?” Gus said, a delighted, wicked smile lighting up his face. “No one knows we’re here. Not even Sloane. I haven’t been on Snapchat for four hours.”
As if compelled by some hidden force, both of them pulled their phones from their pockets and, with identical gestures, pressed and swiped the screens to life. With identical expressions of intense concentration on their faces, they scrolled and tapped. I watched for a moment, feeling suddenly superfluous and forgotten, then took out my own phone and scrolled and tapped too.
There was no further update from Amy’s sister. There were a few comments on my YouTube channel from people saying they hoped I’d have a fun night. If only they knew, I thought. There was nothing more. It took me a couple of minutes to get my social media curation up to date; Charlie and Gus looked like they could be at it for hours.
“Holly’s at the Queen of Hoxton,” Gus said. “Fancy a drink?”
“Is Glen there too?” Charlie said.
“Dunno,” Gus said.
“Wanker,” they both said together. Then they both pocketed their phones again and looked at each other.
“Right,” Gus said. “Shall we?”
All at once, the mood of cheerful, almost manic camaraderie had melted away. Charlie and Gus were a unit again, and I wasn’t part of it – I was excluded from the magic circle, a newbie, an interloper. Even though it was my home they’d descended on, I felt like an outsider. I had no idea whether their plan to go drinking included me or not, but I suspected it didn’t. And even if it did, I was in no fit state to go anywhere near the Queen of Hoxton without a shower, a change of clothes and half an hour in front of the mirror, and I knew without having to ask that they wouldn’t be willing to hang around while I got ready.
“There’s still some wine in the fridge, if you’d like a glass,” I said pathetically, knowing even as I said it that Amy’s choice of Blossom Hill white Zinfandel would cut no ice with the Berry Boys.
Charlie looked at Gus, and Gus looked back at Charlie. I had no way of interpreting whatever wordless conversation they were having, and it didn’t matter anyway. They’d decide regardless of what I wan
ted to do.
Then Charlie said, “I’m knackered. Cleaning’s fucking hard work – I’d forgotten. And anyway – the Queen of Hoxton? Meh.”
I couldn’t begin to read the expression on Gus’s face. He looked just the same as he had a minute before, casually smiling, but his blue eyes seemed just a little more opaque, his smile a little less carefree.
“Right then,” he said. “Bat-Uber for one it is. Unless you want to head back to the flat?”
I saw Charlie hesitate, and knew I shouldn’t say anything at all.
“I’ll have that glass of wine, if you’re still offering, Gemma,” Charlie said, turning the laser beam of his smile on me.
“Course,” I said, relief and excitement making me tingle all over. “We’ve got four bottles to get through, because I’ll have to destroy the evidence before Hannah and Richard get back.”
“Piece of piss,” Charlie said, opening the fridge. “Augustus? May we tempt you with a splash of Blossom Hill?”
But Gus was already looking at his phone. “Four minutes,” he said. “I’ll wait outside and have a fag.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Laters, then.”
“Laters,” Gus said.
I said, “I’ll see you out.”
I walked with him to the door and we stepped out together. It was still warm, but a thin drizzle was falling, glossing the pavement and enveloping the street lights in a misty halo.
“Gus?” I said.
“Mmm?” His eyes didn’t move from the small screen. “Here he is now. Mohammed in a Škoda Octavia.”
“Listen,” I said. “Thanks so much for everything tonight. Really, thank you. You were amazing. I’m so grateful. I…”
“No worries,” he said. “Laters, Gemma.” I watched as he opened the car door and swung his long legs into the seat, and I heard him say, “Yeah, The Factory, thanks mate.”
Then Charlie’s warm, strong arms encircled me from behind.
“How about that wine then?”
The Truth About Gemma Grey: A feel-good, romantic comedy you won't be able to put down Page 14
