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

by Sophie Ranald

  “Not all the time,” Richard said. “Not at lunchtimes, to take a random example.”

  The tone of Hannah’s voice changed. She didn’t sound defensive and challenging any more. “So at lunchtimes I sit in the staff room and eat a sandwich. Or sometimes I have lunch in the refectory with the kids. Just the same as I’ve done for four years.”

  “Of course you do,” Richard said. “And which did you do today?”

  “Staff room,” Hannah said. “No, I had lunch with the kids. I can’t remember! I can’t remember where I am every minute of every day!”

  Richard said, “Maybe you need to try and remember a bit harder. Lunchtime today. Where were you?”

  I could feel a knot of tension in my stomach, growing tighter and tighter. My mouth was really dry. I knew I should do something, but I didn’t know what, or how. I looked at Amy. Her face was completely calm and still in the faint light that came from downstairs, but I could see the furrow of a frown between the perfect arches of her eyebrows. She looked like she was thinking really hard about something – a sudoku puzzle, or something like that.

  “I… Okay, I remember now,” Hannah said. “I had to go to Boots. I was running low on Sertraline, so I rang the GP and they faxed through a prescription for me. There was a really long wait, actually, so I didn’t have time to eat lunch at all. I’m starving now, aren’t you? We could order a curry if you like.”

  Richard said, “Which Boots did you go to? Because when I went past the branch on Mare Street earlier it was closed for refurbishment.”

  Hannah said, “Yes, that’s right, so I had to go all the way to Homerton. It meant it took even longer, hence, you know, the no lunch thing.”

  “You went to Homerton? Are you sure you didn’t go somewhere else? Like, maybe Liverpool Street, to take a random example?”

  “Richard, what the fuck? Were you following me? That’s completely bang out of order and I’m not putting up with it.” Hannah’s voice was high and trembly – she sounded furious, but frightened, too.

  “I don’t have to follow you,” Richard said. I could hear that he was smiling, almost laughing. “Don’t you know, there’s an app for that? Now give me your phone. If you won’t tell me where you went, it will. And then you’re going to stop fucking lying to me.”

  His voice rose suddenly to a shout. I flinched. My nails were digging into my hands so hard it felt like I’d draw blood.

  “Rich, please, please will you stop this now,” Hannah said. “It’s awful. You’re frightening me. What if Gemma’s home? What’s she going to think?”

  “She’s going to think you’re a lying, cheating bitch,” Richard said. “Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? And anyway, if she’s home she’s shut up in her room with her headphones on and she won’t hear a thing. And Amy’s working, before you start about her too. Now. Give. Me. Your. Phone.”

  Hannah said, “No. I’m not giving you my phone. I’m not giving you anything. But I’ll tell you where I was today. I went to see a solicitor, to talk about us selling the house and how we can split things up. I’ve decided to leave, Richard. I can’t deal with this shit any more. It’s not right. You’re not right.”

  Richard said, “Say that again.”

  Hannah said, “I’m leaving. I’ve seen a solicitor. I’ll leave tonight. I’ll get a taxi and stay in a hotel.”

  “You won’t,” Richard said. “If you try and walk out of that door I’ll fucking kill you.”

  I half-stood up, but Amy pulled me back down again. She’d laced her boots up again, I saw. I remembered how we’d joked together when she was planning her party, writing her polite note to the neighbours – “Don’t call the police; I am the police.”

  Hannah said, “I’m going to leave now, Richard. Don’t do anything stupid, for God’s sake.”

  I heard the rattle of Hannah’s keys, then an almost wordless shout of rage from Richard. Then there was a crash – I could feel the floor under my feet reverberate with it – and Hannah screamed.

  Amy was on her feet so fast I barely saw her move – it was like one moment she was sitting next to me on the bed, and the next she was out of the door. I could hear her boots on the stairs as she sprinted down.

  My knees feeling weak with fright, I followed her.

  Hannah was lying on her back. When she’d fallen – or when Richard had pushed her – she’d knocked over a small glass table with a vase of lilies on it. The flowers were scattered over the floor, surrounded by splashes of water and bright shards of glass. There was blood on Hannah’s face – lots of blood. Amy had Richard’s arms pinned behind his back. He was struggling, but without success – Amy was small, but she was strong and she was trained.

  “You’re under arrest,” she said. She sounded quite calm, but I could her gasping for breath. “You do not have to say anything…”

  I barely heard the rest of what she said – I knew what it was, anyway, from watching crime dramas on telly. This was just like that, only it was real and it was happening to someone I knew.

  Carefully avoiding the wreckage of the flowers, I went over to Hannah and helped her up. I put my arm around her shoulders. She felt tiny and frail – her whole body was shaking and I could actually hear her teeth chattering.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s clean your face and make a cup of tea.”

  An hour later, colleagues of Amy’s who she’d called had come and taken Richard away to spend the night in a cell at the police station, and Amy had gone with them to make a formal statement about what had happened. I’d cleaned up the living room while Hannah sat on the sofa, her feet up and her arms wrapped around her knees, huddled under one of the tasteful cashmere throws even though it was a warm night. I’d ransacked the kitchen and found a bottle of brandy and given her a glass, even though I was pretty sure sweet tea would have been a more proper way of dealing with her shock. While I cleaned up, she talked and talked.

  “I swear to God, I never, ever thought he’d hit me,” she said. Her words came out all jerky and stammery, because she couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “I knew he was controlling, and I knew he was jealous, but I never thought he’d lay a finger on me. He scared me – I’ve been scared for ages – but in other ways, not physically.”

  I squeezed out the cloth I’d used to mop up the water into the sink and found the dustpan and brush.

  “Are you sure you don’t need a hand, Gemma?” Hannah said. “Why don’t I just…”

  “Don’t just anything,” I said. “You stay where you are. Keep talking, if you want.”

  “When we first met, I thought it was so romantic that he wanted to be together all the time,” she said. “And it was – it honestly was. He’d come and meet me at lunchtimes and bring me random little presents, or a picnic for us to have together in the park. And before we moved in, when we weren’t together because I was at work or whatever, he texted me all the time to say that he was thinking of me, and ask what I was doing – stuff like that. I thought it was lovely. I loved the attention.”

  I carefully carried the dustpan back to the kitchen and opened the lid of the bin.

  “I wonder if we should recycle that glass?” Hannah said. “Or wrap it in newspaper, or something. I don’t know what the best thing is to do.”

  So I found a copy of the Independent that Richard must have left in the kitchen that morning, tipped the glass into it, bundled it up and put it in the recycling.

  “There, belt and braces.” Then I went and sat next to Hannah and poured a bit of the brandy for myself, too. She sort of squished a bit closer to me on the sofa and I put my arm around her again. She’d stopped shaking so much, but when I touched her hand it still felt very cold.

  “I always said I wouldn’t put up with being treated badly in a relationship. My dad used to hit my mum – I spent my whole childhood being terrified of him. I always said I’d never, ever let that happen to me. That’s why I thought Rich was different. He was so loving, so gentle, so thoughtful with the
flowers and the gifts and telling me he loved me. It was such a relief – you know what I mean? Like, I’m not single any more, I won’t have to worry about being good enough for someone ever again. I’ll never be alone again.”

  I said, “Being alone isn’t that bad. Not compared to being with someone who’s horrible to you.”

  I thought, What the hell do you know about that anyway, Gemma? You went from being with Jack to being with Charlie in about five seconds flat. But I could tell that it didn’t matter what I said, not really. Hannah didn’t need advice – she just needed to talk. If I wasn’t there, she’d probably be saying all these things to herself, inside her head.

  “I can’t even remember when it started,” she went on. “It’s like that thing about putting a frog into boiling water and it jumps out, but if you put it into cold water it won’t notice the water getting hotter and hotter and will boil to death. I wonder if that’s true, and how they found out. I hope it isn’t. Poor frogs.”

  She shivered, and started to cry, and then cried harder and harder, occasionally sobbing something about cruelty to frogs. I ran upstairs to the bathroom and came down with a wodge of loo paper and handed it to her, then put my arms around her again.

  “Poor frogs,” I said. “It’s awful, but I bet it isn’t true. Who’d do something like that?”

  Privately, I thought that in a world where people could do what Richard had done to Hannah, anything was possible, but I didn’t say so. I just patted her back and waited for her to finish crying.

  “I thought it was my fault,” Hannah said, blowing her nose. “I thought if I could only be a better person, a better girlfriend, he’d trust me and it would all be okay. Because when he isn’t being weird, he’s lovely. He’s funny and gentle and just… you know.”

  I didn’t say that he’d always seemed a bit weird to me. I said, “I know.”

  Hannah said, “I thought when we bought this place he’d change. But then, it was so stressful having this massive mortgage and never enough money, and I was ending up in overdraft every month, and so he started asking to see my bank statements and making me tell him what I was spending money on – like, every single tiny thing, even a box of tampons. And I thought that was fair enough, because after all we’re a couple – we were a couple – we had joint finances and we were struggling to make ends meet, and it was partly my fault, because I’m crap with money.”

  The thought of my own scary credit card debt pushed its way into my mind, but I pushed it back out again.

  “So is that why you decided to rent out the spare rooms?” I said.

  “It was my idea,” Hannah said. “I thought it would mean that we could start saving up again, and that would kind of take the pressure off a bit, and also that having people other people around would mean that he wouldn’t be able to… you know.”

  Except that hadn’t happened, had it, I thought. I imagined Hannah carefully framing her argument for Amy and me as tenants, because Amy’s shift pattern would mean that at last one of us was likely to be home a lot of the time. And then I’d met Charlie, and got freaked out by Richard, and basically abandoned Hannah to her fate. I hadn’t known, it wasn’t my fault, I doubted I could have done anything to prevent it, but the knowledge made me feel horribly guilty all the same.

  I wanted to say sorry to Hannah, to tell her I hadn’t meant to let her down, but then Amy came back from the police station and told Hannah that Richard would be kept there overnight, and that she could apply for an injunction against him in the morning, to keep him away from the house and keep Hannah safe. She explained a load of stuff about police bail and formal charging procedures, which I’m sure Hannah wasn’t really able to take in – I know I wasn’t. Then she asked, very gently, if she could take some photos of the bruises on Hannah’s neck and the cut above her eye, and advised her to go to her GP to have them looked at, so there’d be medical records for when the case went to court – which it would do, she was confident, unless of course Hannah changed her mind and decided she didn’t feel able to be a witness.

  And then we all went to bed. Even though I was so tired, I didn’t sleep well – I kept having horrible dreams and imagining I could hear footsteps on the stairs or raised voices coming from Hannah’s room. At about five in the morning I pinged awake, suddenly certain that I needed to do something. I hadn’t been able to help Hannah – I hadn’t protected her from Richard – but maybe I could help other people like her, or at least tell them that there was help to be had. I googled and made some notes, and then, sitting on the edge of my bed in the morning half-light, without any make-up on and without even having brushed my hair, I switched my camera on and started to speak.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Cats that look like George Clooney. Cats that look like Amal Clooney. Cats that look like Kate Middleton. Cats that look like corgis. Cats with sideboob. Badass cats you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alleyway. Cats sleeping in awkward places. Cats sleeping anywhere…

  My head jerked up and I realised I’d been nodding off over my brainstorming list. I yawned hugely. This was no good. I was meant to be working and I was literally asleep on the job.

  Drink, anyone? I messaged to my podmates, and when the orders had come in I collected the empty mugs and went to the kitchen, taking my phone with me. I abandoned the tray and got the lift to the ground floor. I desperately needed some fresh air, as well as caffeine, if I was going to survive the rest of the day.

  I walked around the corner, so I’d be out of sight if anyone came out for a fag, swiped my phone to life and went on to YouTube. My new video already had more than five hundred comments, and it had only been up a few hours. I felt the familiar tingle of excitement as I started to read them.

  This is so brave, Gemma, thank you. Your friend is really lucky to have you. I hope she’s okay. Love and kisses.

  My sister is in an abusive relationship. I’m going to show her this vlog – we are all so worried about her but she keeps saying he’s going to change. I cry every night thinking about her.

  My boyfriend is really jealous too. I’m frightened of him but I’ve got nowhere to go. Maybe soon I’ll be brave enough to click on one of the links you posted. I hope so. I don’t want him to hurt me again.

  I swallowed hard and blinked back tears. These were real women – women like Hannah, going through what Hannah had gone through. If even one of them could leave, call the police or one of the charities I’d found and recommended, it would be worth all the hard work, all the tiredness, all the saying what I was told to say about products I was given to review.

  I scrolled down some more, reading more comments.

  God, don’t you just hate it when YouTubers sell out? Doing it for brands is bad enough, but shilling for a charity is just disgusting.

  My finger froze over my screen. What did that even mean? Surely no one would think that the video I’d filmed that morning, unplanned and unscripted, was anything other than real?

  They’ve got massive budgets, these not-for-profits. Loads of vloggers work for them. I think it’s unethical, personally, but what can you do? It’s her job, after all – she’s got to pay the rent somehow.

  Doesn’t Gemma have a day job as well? She’s always talking about going to work, and how knackered she is.

  Yeah, she says that. But you never see her there. You might want to have a look at this thread.

  And there was a link to a website I’d never heard of, called YouTruth.

  My hand was shaking so much it took me a few goes to tap the link on my screen. It took me to a forum, where there was a whole thread about me with hundreds and hundreds of posts. The title of the thread was ‘Gemma Grevytrain’, and it had been started two months before.

  So, who wants to talk about Gemma Grey? I know she’s only recently got big, and I think she’s been signed by Ripple Effect. I’m really interested to see what’s going to happen with her vlog, and whether she goes the same way as all the rest of them. Discuss.

&
nbsp; IKR? I’ve been following Gemma for, like, years – right since she started – I think I was one of her first subscribers. I used to really love her vlog – she was so fun and natural, and the way she talked to her teddy was so cute, and Jack was, like, hot! But since they split up her whole style has changed. Before, she was just like us – living with her mum, doing make-up looks with products she already had – I could really relate to her. But now she’s completely changed.

  She must be making loads of money now. All those new clothes and that house in Hackney – my brother lives near there and houses on his road cost like hundreds of thousands of pounds. And the way she does this whole, “Look how fabulous my life is,” thing – she’s become really annoying and fake.

  There were lots more comments saying similar things. I didn’t want to read them, but I couldn’t stop myself. Feeling sick, I scrolled and scrolled, and then I turned over to the next page.

  OMG OMG OMG! Have you seen the latest? Gemma and Charlie Berry are only an item!

  Allegedly. I’ve heard that that’s what Ripple do – when they’ve got a new client they really want to promote, they make sure they’re seen with one of their established stars to raise their profile and make more of a story about it. Remember, there was that thing a while back with Gus and Maddie? That only lasted about five minutes, but it made Maddie’s name for her. So I see this kind of news and I’m, like, hmmm.

  I don’t know, I almost want it to be true. I think they’d make quite a cute couple.

  Yeah, they might, if it was real. But it’s not. Seriously – look at that vlog they did together, with the picnic in the park and all that shit. You could just see how awkward they were together – they were like strangers. There’s no way it’s true.

  Charlie’s totally out of Gemma’s league anyway. I mean, she’s pretty and stuff, but have you seen her ears? Like, Dumbotastic. And her voice is really annoying.