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

by Sophie Ranald

  I carefully picked the puppy up and stroked her silky ears. She made a little whining sound, then curled up in my arms and closed her eyes.

  “See?” Charlie said. “She loves Gemma already, too.”

  I carried the small, warm body over to the sofa and sat down next to Gus. Despite the undeniable cuteness of the puppy, deep down I knew I agreed with Sloane. Responsibility was not a quality my boyfriend and his brother had in abundance.

  “I can help,” I said. “I can take her for walks before work, maybe.”

  “You have more than enough on your plate already, Gemma,” Sloane said. “Look at you – you’re exhausted. Although perhaps if this means the three of you will spend more time at home and less time out on the lash, it won’t be such a bad thing.”

  “We can get puppy babysitters when we go out,” Charlie said.

  “Or take her with us,” Gus said. “We can pretend she’s an assistance dog. She can lead us home when we’re pissed.”

  “She can do no such thing,” Sloane said. “She’s tiny – she needs to be at home, when she’s not being appropriately socialised with other dogs. You’re not hauling her around to clubs like Paris Hilton.”

  “I wouldn’t mind hauling Paris Hilton around to clubs,” Charlie said.

  “Don’t be obtuse,” Sloane snapped. “Well, I reckon the first thing is to get her to the vet and have her properly checked out. You didn’t buy her from some dodgy puppy farm, I hope.”

  “Of course not!” Charlie said. “We got her from a lovely woman who advertised on Gumtree. She was the last one left from the litter. Apparently she was the smallest and no one else wanted her.”

  “We basically rescued her,” Gus said.

  “From an ad on Gumtree!” Sloane said. “Christ, it’s worse than I thought. You two just have no…”

  Then she stopped. I could see her reining in her annoyance, remembering that these were her clients, and there was only a certain amount of telling off she could do without risking them flouncing off to another agent.

  “I’m sure it’ll all be fine, Sloane,” I said. “Look how precious she is. Look at her little face. Imagine if they hadn’t taken her – anything could have happened to her.”

  Sloane shook her head. “Anything could happen to her now,” she said. “Poor baby. Well, it’s done now, so we’ll just have to make the best of it. Your viewers will love her, of course.”

  “They already do,” Charlie said. “We put up a video earlier of us collecting her, and it’s had fifty thousand likes already.”

  “Which is significantly more than you were getting from your Elite Dangerous gaming vlogs,” Sloane said. Clearly, she hadn’t managed to completely switch off castigating mode. “As I keep telling you, it’s essential to keep your content fresh and creative. Losing subscribers is far, far easier than gaining them. There’s no room for complacency in this environment.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re bored of Elite Dangerous now,” Gus said.

  “We went to, like, fifty solar systems,” Charlie said. “And then we realised they were all basically the same.”

  “Space is a bit shit, actually, when you think about it,” Gus said.

  Sloane rolled her eyes. “You got bored of virtual space exploration, so you bought a puppy. I see. Can’t fault the logic there, boys.”

  Charlie and Gus were both slumped on the sofa, looking increasingly truculent. I could tell that they were getting pretty bored of being bossed around, too.

  In an attempt at emollience, I said, “You can’t get bored of pets, though. Not unless you’re just, like, a really horrible person. The puppy – Taylor – will make amazing content. Look at her – she’s got total star quality, even when she’s asleep. The guys can vlog her whole education and growing up and stuff. It’ll be amazing.”

  “Yes, thanks for that little tutorial on how to create successful content, Gemma,” Gus said. “We have actually been doing this for, like, six years, as opposed to four months.”

  I felt myself physically flinch at his words. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that Gus might resent my increasingly pervasive presence in his life – that he might, quite simply, not like me. But now that his words were out there, it was so obvious that I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to realise.

  What possible reason did he have to like me, after all? I was his brother’s girlfriend – he hadn’t chosen me, Charlie had. And the whole world the two of them had created together, all their routines and habits, even Gus’s own privacy, had been fundamentally disrupted by my arrival in their lives.

  Charlie, I realised, hadn’t mentioned any previous girlfriends. And Gus hadn’t, either, apart from saying he’d been on a few dates with Maddie. I had no idea what Gus’s private, internal life was like; he was just a sort of accessory to Charlie. No wonder he went off on his own while we stayed home, or at the end of our nights out together. He must hate not having his twin to himself any more. Perhaps he even hated me, and up until now he’d just been incredibly careful not to show it.

  I said, “Okay, I’m sorry. I was just trying to be helpful. Next time I’ll know to just shut the fuck up.”

  “Yeah, maybe you should do that,” Gus said. “Maybe try sticking to your core skill. I can’t speak for Charles so I couldn’t possibly comment on how well you do it, but you certainly do it often.”

  Sloane winced. “Gus, that was completely uncalled for. I think you should apologise to Gemma.”

  I said, “Don’t apologise. Please don’t. Not when you don’t mean it. I think it’s probably best if I go back home tonight, to Hackney. You’re right, Sloane, I haven’t been getting enough sleep and these two want to bond with the puppy. And anyway, I was going to film a wardrobe tour, like you suggested, and I need my actual wardrobe to do that, obviously.”

  I stood up, still holding Taylor in my arms. She was fast asleep, warm, floppy and undisturbed by all the drama. Sloane took her from me and made some cooing noises.

  “Precious baby, you’re going to miss your mommy tonight,” she said. “I’ll email you tomorrow, Gemma. You guys, we should get on with our meeting, and let’s try not to stray too far from the point now, right?”

  I picked up my bag and started to walk towards the door. It seemed even further away than usual. A deep, tense silence followed me, which I knew would be filled as soon as I’d left the flat. I didn’t say goodbye; I just kept going. I felt the time and the distance and the silence stretch out like chewing gum as I approached the door, then quiver and sag as I opened it, then finally give way when I heard the latch click shut behind me.

  Charlie had let me go without saying a thing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hi everyone!

  So, I promised you a wardrobe tour, and that’s what I’m going to film tonight. One thing I’ve been doing a lot lately is reading about how organising your clothes properly can help you not only locate things more quickly when you’re in a hurry, but also find new and interesting outfit combos you hadn’t thought of before, and… Oh fuck, I can’t do this now.

  I didn’t post a video that night. I tried, but whenever I looked at the camera lens and thought about saying my usual cheerful, “Hi everyone!” the words just didn’t come out right. My voice sounded hollow and insincere; my face on my camera’s screen looked tense and anxious.

  And yet, I couldn’t enjoy this rare evening alone, either. I thought of all the things I could be doing: going for a walk or to the gym, ordering a takeaway and finding something to watch on telly; having a long soak in the bath. I didn’t really feel like doing any of them, but in the end I settled for the last.

  I’d received a delivery of a load of bath products a couple of weeks before, and they’d been gathering dust in the pile of untested samples that was gradually taking over a corner of my bedroom. I rummaged through them and chose a scented candle in a glass holder and a huge, glittery bath bomb that smelled like the inside of a sweet shop. It wasn’t my kind of thing, real
ly, but the packaging said it had soothing and relaxing properties, and soothing and relaxing was totally what I needed right now.

  I filled the bath with boiling water and, holding my phone ready so I could post a video on Snapchat, I dropped the bath bomb in. It fizzed and spun, shooting around like some sort of aquatic meteorite – like something Charlie and Gus would have seen on their virtual space travels, before they got bored of the game. I watched the water fill with sparkles, turning pink and then purple. Once it had completely dissolved, I took off my dressing gown and lowered myself into the hot, fragrant water. This is me-time, Gemma, I told myself firmly. This is that pampering thing that everyone always goes on about – yourself included. But even though I felt the tension in my shoulders ease as I sank down deeper into the water, even though the scent was much less sugary than I’d expected, more like violet cream chocolates and actually quite delicious, it wasn’t enough to make my brain switch off.

  I couldn’t erase the memory of Charlie’s face as he watched me leave the flat – first bewildered, then hurt, then accepting. I couldn’t forget that he’d said nothing – made no move to call me back. And I could picture Gus’s expression exactly, too – something that was almost triumph.

  I didn’t know if I was in love with Charlie; I didn’t know if I was ready to be in love with anyone. Up until that evening, I’d felt confident that liking him, having a laugh and great sex with him, was enough. And, if I was honest with myself, the relationship gave me what I needed in other ways, too.

  For years, I’d made YouTube content that had only been seen by a few thousand people – but I’d had a sense of real community with the small handful of people who commented on my videos, and whose comments I could read carefully and respond to. Now, I had more than five hundred thousand subscribers, the number was increasing in huge jumps every day, and it was all I could do to press Like on a few comments. Of course, what I’d posted about Jack back in August was part of that – the catalyst that had lifted me from total obscurity to being the girl who made that video about being dumped that went viral for a day. And Sloane had helped me to continue that process – her advice, her contacts, and above all her insistence that I work relentlessly hard at promoting my channel and myself.

  But I knew that my success wasn’t just about me. It was about me and Charlie. It was there in black and white every time I checked my stats: people didn’t click on my videos by chance, they clicked on them because they were Berry Boys fans and I was Charlie’s girlfriend. When people googled my name, they didn’t just google ‘Gemma Grey’; they googled ‘Gemma Grey + Berry Boys’. When they watched me make some random paleo food thing, it wasn’t because they wanted to know how to make tasty meals based on grated cauliflower – it was because seeing Charlie’s girlfriend use Charlie’s cheese grater in Charlie’s kitchen made them feel they were gaining a deeper insight into Charlie and Gus’s lives.

  I knew that if I carried on as I was, I could be successful. I could make money – not the kind of money Charlie and Gus made, not for a long time, anyway – but enough that I could afford to rent a flat of my own, make vlogging my full-time job, maybe even have my own range of eyeshadows on sale in Superdrug. I could live the dream.

  The problem was, I wasn’t sure whether it was my dream. I wasn’t sure whether buying clothes and trying them on, buying make-up and applying it, buying food and doing things to it before throwing it away, was how I wanted to make a living. But then, I knew for sure that writing clickbait headlines about cats wasn’t, either.

  And Charlie himself – Charlie had told me he loved me. He’d said the words and maybe, at the time, he’d meant them. But if he loved me, surely he would have defended me when Gus sniped at me? Surely he wouldn’t have thought it was funny to see me getting into bed with Gus? Surely if the choice was between me and Gus, he’d choose me?

  But Gus was his brother – his twin, for God’s sake. Of course I couldn’t expect him to make that choice, ever. It was unfair – it was impossible. The two of them had a bond that went back to before they were even born, whereas I’d just been sleeping with him for a few months. In relationship terms, I was the ultimate newbie.

  I wished I had someone to talk to – a best friend to agonise with about the whole situation. But I didn’t – until recently, that person would have been Jack, or it would have been Olivia, if the thing I wanted to agonise about involved Jack. I could talk to Amy, I thought – she was sensible, she’d give me good advice. But Amy was just my housemate – she’d think it was totally weird if I marched downstairs and sat at the kitchen table while she ate her instant noodles and asked her whether I should split up with my boyfriend because… Because what? Because I didn’t love him enough? Because I thought he loved his brother more than he loved me?

  I could ask the internet. I could go on to Reddit, on my phone, right now, and ask the relationships board for its collective wisdom. WWYD – weird triangle with boyfriend, twin brother and YouTube? But it would be impossible to give enough information without giving too much, and I knew that making myself and my situation identifiable would be fatal.

  I couldn’t talk to Hannah – I rarely saw Hannah without Richard, and the idea of Richard knowing anything private about me felt all kinds of wrong. I wanted to talk to Stanley, even though he couldn’t talk back, but Stanley wasn’t there – he was in Charlie’s bedroom, probably face down under the bed where he’d fallen when we had sex the night before.

  The bath water wasn’t hot any more and the whole relaxing and soothing thing clearly wasn’t going to happen, so I pulled out the plug with my toes and waited for the water to drain away before standing up. I blew out the candle and tugged the light pull, and heard myself gasp with horrified laughter.

  I was covered in glitter, and so was the bath. And not only that, it was stained, too – a pink, glittery tide mark on the smooth white enamel, with a gap where my shoulders had rested. There was glitter on the bath mat, too, and on the floor, and even on the wall.

  “Holy glittery shit,” I said aloud. “So much for zen tranquility.”

  I stepped back into the bath and sluiced it and myself with the shower attachment, but it was no match for the stubborn sparkles. I imagined Amy having her shower the next morning and going off to arrest a drug dealer or whatever, covered in glitter – not so much ‘It’s a fair cop’, but more ‘It’s a fairy copper’. I imagined the sticky note Hannah would leave: Please refrain from using products containing glitter in this bathroom.

  It was no good – I was going to have to do a proper clean-up job, even though all I wanted, more than anything in the world, was to go to sleep. I pulled on trackie bottoms and a T-shirt and went downstairs in search of some serious housework ammo.

  I opened the cupboard under the stairs and rummaged through Hannah’s housekeeping supplies. There was all sorts in there – kitchen cleaner, glass cleaner, furniture polish, stuff for polishing stainless steel, stuff that apparently dissolved burnt-on grease from ovens, unopened packs of rubber gloves, sponges, dusters and scourers. I realised with a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t done anything like my share of cleaning since I’d lived there – had barely done any at all, in fact, since the night of Amy’s party. I hadn’t really thought about it – I’d been too busy, too distracted, too not there. Too selfish.

  I found a spray bottle of bathroom cleaner and a cloth and closed the cupboard. I’d give the whole room a good clean, I told myself, then make something to eat and go to sleep. It was only half past nine, but I was practically falling over with tiredness. My wardrobe tour video was going to have to wait for another day. But before I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the front door open and the sound of Amy’s work boots on the floor.

  “Hiya, stranger,” she said. “You all right? We haven’t seen you in ages. I was wondering whether you’d moved out.”

  I said, “No, I’ve just been at Charlie’s. I came back here tonight because… I don’t know. I just felt like having my own s
pace for a bit.”

  She looked at me curiously and I could tell she was thinking we’d had a row.

  “We didn’t have a row exactly,” I said. “But… you know.”

  “Spaces in your togetherness,” Amy said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, those,” I said.

  She grinned, and I thought again how good a friend she could be.

  “I was meant to be working a night shift,” she said. “But I think I’m coming down with something. There’s this summer bug that’s doing the rounds and we’re all going down like flies. My sergeant told me to go home to bed and that was an offer I totally couldn’t refuse. What’s with the late-night housework?”

  I told her about the bath bomb, and she laughed.

  “Those things are fucking lethal,” she said. “Seriously, Gemma, at your age you should know better. We’ll be finding glitter everywhere for weeks – in our clothes, in our hair, in the cornflakes… I need to get out of my work clobber and then I’ll stick the kettle on. Want a tea?”

  She followed me upstairs and went into her bedroom, and I went into the bathroom and surveyed the task that lay ahead. But as I was half-heartedly squirting cleaning fluid on to the side of the bath, I heard the familiar sound of a key in the lock downstairs, and Richard’s voice.

  “Give me your phone, Hannah. Right now.”

  I don’t know what made me do it, but I turned the bathroom light off again and hurried to Amy’s room. She was sitting on her bed in the dark, her boots half-unlaced.

  I sat next to her and whispered, “Listen. They’re having a row. I’ve heard them before. It’s weird. Scary.”

  Hannah’s voice came up the stairs, quite clearly, as it had before. “No, Rich, I’m not giving you my phone. We’ve had this conversation before. You checking up on me all the time – it’s ridiculous. You know I’m not… doing whatever you think I’m doing. We’re together literally all the time.”

  “Not when you’re at work,” Richard said.

  “But you drop me there in the mornings and pick me up in the evenings, for God’s sake. What do you think’s going to happen, when I’m surrounded by a bunch of eight-year-olds all the time?”