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

by Sophie Ranald

  As I listened to Ann, I realised that although her story was so different from Martine’s, in many ways it was the same. The same as Hannah’s, too. And as Siobhan’s would be. Although the details were different and the pain unique, the fear, the gradual erosion of self-belief, the sense of helplessness, were identical. I thought of Hannah’s gourmet meals, her perfectly kept house, Richard’s swings between affection, sneering dismissal and anger, and I began to see how Hannah’s trap had closed around her, and I felt almost sick with relief that I’d been part of her release from it – even though it had so nearly been too late.

  “I tried to leave,” Siobhan was saying. “I went to Mum’s, and he came and found me there. He cried and begged for me to come home, and Mum said marriage is for better for worse, and he was a good man really, he just had a temper and I should try not to provoke him. So I went back. Everything was fine for a while after that, even good – like when we first got together. Like a second honeymoon. Then I fell pregnant with my first, and it started again. Except now leaving was even harder, because I didn’t want to break up the family. He was a great dad to her. Everyone said so.”

  I looked at Siobhan’s face, her freckles and her poor broken cheekbone. Then I looked back down at my notebook and carried on writing the notes I’d use when I wrote the series of stories that would accompany the videos. My note-taking felt superfluous – I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever forget anything I’d seen and heard that morning, in that warm and welcoming room.

  “How old is your daughter now, Siobhan?” Hermione asked.

  “She’s four, and my little boy’s two. There was another baby, but I lost it, after he...” Siobhan paused, and I heard her take a deep, trembly breath. I knew what she was going to say; I could hardly bear to hear it but I knew I had to listen.

  “Summer found me,” Siobhan said. “He’d gone out and left me. I was bleeding really badly. I couldn’t ring for help because he’d smashed up my phone. When I didn’t turn up to pick Summer up from nursery one of the staff brought her home, and it was her that called the ambulance. I’ll never forget her face when she saw me. My little princess, finding her mummy like that.”

  “And was that when you decided...?” Hermione said.

  “That was when,” Siobhan said. “They told me, in hospital, how much danger I was in. I never thought that he might... that my kids would end up without a mother. Or taken into care, even, if I stayed with him. And that was too much. I didn’t care what he did to me but I couldn’t have him do that to them.”

  She paused again. I could hear my pen scratching over the page; I could hear Hermione breathing. Somewhere else in the house, I heard a child laugh. I had a sense of relief – of entering the home straight.

  The end of Siobhan’s story was the same as Martine’s and Ann’s. The help, the escape, the leaving behind of so many important things but the salvaging of the most important of all. The realisation that, for the first time in years, she was safe. The slackening of tension; the fading of fear. The hope that now, perhaps, life could move on.

  “Thank you, Siobhan,” Hermione said at last. “You’ve been so brave and so helpful talking to us. We really appreciate it. And of course, you’ll have the chance to see the video and make sure you’re happy with it before anything goes live.”

  We packed up our things and said our goodbyes. There was a smell of soup and toast drifting through the air and I could hear children laughing again as we stepped out into the freezing afternoon. Once the door closed behind us, it became just another door in a quiet suburban street – there was no sign at all that this was a place where lives were transformed.

  “You can see why it’s called a refuge,” Hermione said.

  I nodded. We didn’t say anything more, but I wondered whether she was thinking the same as I was – that, for all the peace, the warmth, the laughter and the food, this was a sanctuary no one would ever want to seek. No one would ever imagine that their life might take such turns that they needed to seek help from strangers because the person closest to them put them in mortal danger.

  A taxi came and the camerawoman and the sound engineer loaded their bags into the boot and left. Hermione and I walked to the Tube station in silence.

  “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m famished,” she said as we stepped on to the escalator. “Want to grab a sandwich before we go back to the office?”

  “I’m starving, too,” I admitted. “I guess it’s not the done thing to scrounge food off a charity, but I was totally desperate to ask if we could share their lunch.”

  We met each other’s eyes and laughed. I felt some of the tension of the morning slip away.

  “We did well, I think,” Hermione said. “I’d forgotten how tough proper reporting is. Makes a change from cats anyway.”

  “God, I could do with writing a cat story after that,” I said. “But I’ve got to head back to Hackney – I’m doing that interview for Emily about the housing estate campaign.”

  “Busy day for you then,” Hermione said.

  I said, “You’re not wrong.” But I had no idea how right she was.

  For once in my life, I was early. Checking my watch as I stepped out of the station, I saw that I had almost an hour before I was due to meet Alethea Ayoola at her flat on the Garforth Estate. I was early, and I was hungry. I thought about popping in to Daily Grind for a salad, then I remembered the pizza Hannah and I had ordered for supper the previous night. It had a stuffed crust and loads of pepperoni and mushrooms on it, and it had been so filthy and so filling we’d only been able to eat about half of it. The rest was in the fridge at home, and it had my name on it. I quickened my pace and turned into Manwood Road. I’d grab some food, check the comments on my vlog, then it would be time to go and meet Alethea.

  I opened the door quietly and carefully, in case Amy was at home asleep, but her bag and coat weren’t on the stand in the hallway. She must be back on a day shift, I thought, or at the gym or at Kian’s. I took off my own coat and hung it up with my bag, slipping my phone into my pocket, and shivered. The house was chilly – almost as cold as outside, which was weird, because it had been perfectly warm that morning. The heating must have gone off – I’d check the boiler, then have my lunch. I tried to remember if there’d been any instructions in Hannah’s book of rules about how to reset the pilot light – there probably were, but I had no idea where my copy of that sacred document was now. I hadn’t looked at in months. I stared at the control panel, perplexed. It seemed to be working – the green light was on, and that must be a good thing.

  But something was wrong – something was different. I looked around the kitchen. Hannah’s laptop was open on the table, its screen lit up. The curtains over the glass door to the garden were closed; usually Hannah opened them as soon as she came downstairs in the morning. I’d left before her that day – perhaps she’d forgotten. Perhaps she was ill and had stayed home. I pulled the curtain back and froze. The door was wide open, one of the panes smashed. There were shards of glass on the floor, and, dropped on top of them, a hammer.

  We’d been burgled. It was a high crime area, I knew: Amy was always reminding us to lock up, to hang our keys on the hooks in the living room rather than leaving them on the dish in the hall, where a patient and enterprising thief could hook them out through the letterbox. But surely no intruder would have left Hannah’s Macbook Air behind? He must still be in the house – upstairs, maybe, rifling through our bedrooms in search of jewellery or cash.

  I stood perfectly still and listened. I couldn’t hear anything. Not footsteps on the wooden floor, not the rattle of a wardrobe door opening or the thud of a drawer closing. I was sure I could hear my heart beating though – I could certainly feel it banging in my chest.

  You know when you’re watching a horror movie and someone – usually a woman – hears a noise and says she’s going to investigate, and you’re like, “Nooo! Don’t do it!” and you cover your eyes with your hands because you know that in about
five seconds she’s going to get chopped up with an axe by a serial killer or have her heart ripped out by zombies or whatever, and you know that you’d never, ever be that dumb? Well, that day, I was that girl.

  I don’t know what made me do it. I know – I knew at the time – that the sensible thing would be to walk right back out of the front door and phone the police. But I didn’t. My fear was suddenly overtaken by anger – that some thieving toe-rag had invaded our house, where Hannah had only recently started to feel safe again, and might still be there, going through our stuff. I’m not a brave person, but a surge of courage – or just plain stupidity – made me walk up the stairs instead of out into the street.

  Amy’s bedroom door was open. I could see her neatly made bed, her work boots on the floor and her uniform jacket on the chair. A burglar would have seen it too, and maybe had second thoughts about ransacking a house where the peelers could turn up unannounced any second. The idea reassured me – that was almost certainly what had happened, I thought, imagining the intruder muttering, “Fuck this noise,” and turning round and legging it back out into the garden, over the fence and off to the pub as quickly as he could to tell his burglar mates about the almighty own goal he’d almost scored.

  I opened my own door and looked inside. My room was just as I’d left it that morning: the wardrobe door open with a tangle of clothes spilling out on to the floor where I’d dropped them in my indecision about what to wear to interview victims of domestic violence. The jumble of make-up on my dressing table was undisturbed. My camera was still there on its tripod. I felt my thumping heart slow down, and realised I’d been holding my breath.

  Then I heard the thump of footsteps coming down the stairs from the loft, and a voice said, “Where is she?”

  I screamed. I couldn’t help it. Not a proper scream, like the girls in horror movies do, but a sort of half-gasp, half-shout, and my hands involuntarily flew up to protect my face as I spun around.

  “Oh my God. Richard.”

  “I came to find her,” he said. “I need to see her. I love her.”

  It was the strangest thing: all at once, I stopped panicking and started thinking. I knew Richard was violent – I’d seen it, after all – but I also knew his violence wasn’t, and probably wouldn’t be, directed at me. I was an irrelevance to him. It was Hannah he wanted, and Hannah he wanted to hurt. I remembered reading, at some point in the hours I’d spent online researching domestic violence for the Clickfrenzy campaign, how common it was for men to stalk their victims after the end of a relationship, and how dangerous that period was for survivors. I remembered reading about women who’d turned their lives around, who thought that they were safe, only to be hunted down and savagely injured, or worse.

  When I was reading about it, I’d wondered what went through those men’s minds. How love turned to control, and when control was taken away, it turned to rage. I remembered one woman’s story, how her attacker had said, “If I can’t have you, I’ll make sure no one else wants you,” before he threw acid in her face.

  Richard had brought a hammer to break into the house – I wondered what else he’d brought. He had a bag with him, the leather messenger bag he used for work. He was wearing his work clothes, too: the suit was much looser on him than it had been, and his face looked gaunt and shadowed. There was a plaster on his jaw where I guessed he’d cut himself shaving. I imagined him going about his life, going to work, going back to his brother’s house, waiting for Hannah to change her mind, waiting for the date when he’d appear in court on charges of assaulting her – waiting, and thinking, and raging, and eventually deciding what he was going to do, and leaving his office on some pretext, and coming here.

  I was scared of what he might do to me, but I was absolutely terrified for Hannah.

  “Richard,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Hannah’s not here. You know she isn’t. She’s at work.”

  And she would be for the next two or three hours, I calculated. Safe at school, surrounded by high fences and other people. She’d be safe until she came home – so I had to warn her.

  “I’ll wait here for her,” Richard said, as if he’d read my thoughts. “I know she wants to see me. That’s why she sent me a key. I’ll wait until she comes back.”

  He didn’t know that I’d seen the broken window, I realised. He must have thought I’d walked straight upstairs. I didn’t believe that he’d hurt me – I didn’t think I was in any danger, not as long as I didn’t try to thwart him, as long as I pretended I believed him. I forced myself to smile. “I’m sure Hannah will be really happy to see you. She misses you – she’s said so often,” I lied.

  “I know she does,” he said. “We’re the world to each other. Without each other, we’re nothing.”

  “I understand,” I said. Then I said, “Look, Richard, I’m not feeling great – that’s why I came home early. I think I’ve coming down with flu. I was just going to run a hot bath.”

  He and I stood there, on the landing, looking at each other. I knew, and he must have known too, that the only thing to do was to appear normal. He didn’t want me to know what he’d really come for; he didn’t want me to see the broken glass and the hammer, understand, panic and call 999. I didn’t want him to know that I’d already seen, and that I understood only too well.

  “I’ll wait downstairs for Hannah,” he said.

  “Cool,” I said, and I shot into the bathroom and locked the door.

  I listened for a moment, but I didn’t hear his footsteps going downstairs. I imagined him waiting outside the locked door, listening too, waiting to hear if I was going to make a phone call. And if I did – what would he do? I thought of the flimsy lock and the hammer, and I put the plug in the bathtub and turned both taps on full.

  As quickly and silently as I could, I took my phone out of my pocket, gripping it tightly in case I dropped it with a clatter on the tiled floor. It was five past two – five minutes ago, I should have been knocking on Alethea Ayoola’s door. I texted her apologising profusely, explaining that there’d been an emergency and I would be in touch to reschedule our appointment.

  Then I texted Hannah. Am at home. Richard turned up. PLEASE DON’T WORRY. I am fine but you need to let your lawyer and the police know, and stay safe until they’ve sorted it out. Don’t come back until you know he’s gone. And don’t call me, just in case he hears. Automatically, I clicked the emoji button and scrolled through looking for an appropriate one. A face blowing a kiss? No, of course that wouldn’t do. Nor would a thumbs-up, a sad face, or any of the many, many cat icons that were in my most frequently used. I settled for adding a few x’s, and pressed send.

  I waited until I was sure the text had been delivered, and then I scrolled through my contacts and found another number, one that I’d looked at every day for the past few weeks but never dialled. And I sent another text.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I sat in that bathroom for the longest time. I sat on the edge of the bath until my arse went numb, and then I moved and sat on the closed lid of the loo. I looked at the steaming water in the tub and considered getting in, and then I thought of Richard downstairs and myself, naked in the water, and thought better of it.

  Hannah texted me to let me know she’d spoken to her solicitor, and that as Richard had broken the occupation order the court had imposed, the police would be sending an officer round just as soon as someone was available, but as long as I wasn’t in any immediate danger it might take a little while. I texted her back and told her that was fine, I was safe, she mustn’t worry. Then I went and sat on the edge of the bath again for a bit.

  I texted Amy to tell her what was happening, and she eventually replied saying that she and Kian were at a parkour workshop in Milton Keynes, but she’d come straight back if I needed her, so of course I said there was no need at all, everything would be fine. Alethea Ayoola texted me back accepting my apology and saying she could meet up the following week. Sloane emailed me a draft schedule for my u
pcoming 25 Days of Vlogmas series of videos, and I told her I was a bit tied up but would look at it as soon as I could.

  Then I moved back to the loo. There was no reply to the other text I’d sent. I read it over and over again, wondering if I’d been too casual, too dramatic, too needy – too something. But there was no way of knowing. I tried to look out through the window to see if Richard was in the garden or if the neighbours were home and had noticed the broken door, but all I could see through the frosted glass was a grey and brown blur of sky, roofs and trees. I stood by the door, pressing my ear against the wood, but I couldn’t hear anything at all. I hadn’t heard the front door opening or closing, so I had to assume that Richard was still in the house, and for the moment I was trapped, albeit voluntarily.

  I wondered briefly how long I was likely to have to stay here for, and what I’d do. I’d stopped feeling hungry, at least, and of course I could drink water from the tap. But what if I got stuck here overnight? What if the police – overstretched as they were – only managed to send someone out tomorrow morning? Where would I sleep? How would I get ready for work in the morning and – more importantly – how would I get there? I imagined creeping downstairs and making a run for it, hoping that Richard was asleep or making tea or something. Don’t be ridiculous, Gemma, I told myself – of course they’ll come, or Richard will give up and leave – there’s no way you’ll still be stuck here tomorrow.

  Then I did hear something. The neighbour’s dog – Hannah had told me once that it was a cockadoodle and they’d paid a fortune for it from a breeder – broke into hysterical barking. I went to the window again, but I could see even less now, because it was getting dark. I undid the latch and pushed the window open, and peered cautiously out. A blast of cold air hit my face, and I realised it had started to rain. The dog was still barking – I could hear it quite clearly, but I couldn’t see it. The neighbour’s lights were off – they must still be at work and the dog shut inside. I knew how it felt: I was quite tempted to bark myself, or howl, or something.