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

by Sophie Ranald

  I thought of Amy, and how she coped with the stress of her job by going to the gym. And how that was where she’d met Kian, who was certainly a potential boyfriend even if he wasn’t an actual one yet. Exercise – a good idea, certainly. But I wasn’t sure I was ready for the internet to see me scarlet-faced and sweaty, barely able to breathe after jogging round the block. If I was going to embark on a fitness programme, it would need to be kept private for the time being.

  Have an evening in with your besties, curled up on the sofa watching cheesy movies and eating popcorn, another site counselled. Yeah, right, I thought. Until recently, my best friends had been Jack and Olivia, which kind of ruled that one out right away, even if it weren’t for the fact that Hannah would freak out if I dropped popcorn behind the sofa cushions.

  Then I remembered what Mum used to say back in the day, a long time ago, when Dad was still living with us and they’d had one of their epic and horrible rows. She’d emerge from her bedroom, her face perfectly made up to conceal any trace of tears, dressed like she was going to a party. She’d pick up her car keys and toss them from hand to hand, and say, “I’m off out, Gemma. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

  So, that evening after work, I went to Oxford Street. Later, when I set my phone up on the tripod to record my video, I was surrounded by bags and boxes. I hadn’t shopped randomly; I’d planned my haul carefully to include everything the heart-broken dumpee could possibly need to make herself feel better. And as I removed each item carefully from its packaging and held it up so the camera could focus on it, I remembered Mum teaching me how retail therapy worked.

  “So when you’re getting over the end of a relationship,” I said, “one of the hardest things is being able to have a good night’s sleep. I’ve found that, anyway. I’ve been having the most vivid dreams – I think the worst are the ones where Jack and I are still together, because then I wake up and we’re not, if you know what I mean. Scented candles are great for helping you to relax and unwind before bed – I just love this one, it smells like… I don’t know, a bit like walking through a pine forest, only with a bit of wild flowers in it, maybe. But you can’t burn candles while you’re asleep. No. Fire risk! So I also bought this gorgeous pillow spray. It’s lavender, but not, like, nana-lavender. And tonight, I’m going to spritz some of that around my room and hopefully I’ll sleep beautifully.

  “And speaking of beauty. Some of you have asked about my skincare and make-up routine, and while I really appreciate all the lovely, lovely things you’ve said, I can promise you that I give myself a lot of help with that, because tears and sleepless nights do not make anyone look good. So here are a few of the magic potions I’ve discovered…”

  I presented item after item to the camera, starting with the eye-depuffing serum. There was a pair of high-heeled over-the-knee boots that I’d bought, I said, because they’d make any woman feel like a goddess. There was gorgeous silk lingerie that the broken-hearted should buy and wear (although, I hastened to add, it didn’t have to be expensive), because even if no one else would ever see it, you would, and you’d know you were wearing it and feel amazing. There were snuggly pyjamas for those nights when all you want to do is feel comfy and cosy. There were herbal teas to make you sleep and other herbal teas to uplift you. There was even a handbag that cost more than my monthly rent, because, I said, “If there’s one thing that will get you taken seriously, it’s a serious bag. Know this!” And I winked at the camera.

  Finally, I said, “All this stuff is great. Every single thing I’ve shown you guys tonight, I love. But the best things don’t have to cost anything – like my gorgeous nails that my good friend Amy did for me thing morning. Look.” I held my hands up to the lens and waited for them to come into focus. Amy wouldn’t mind me referring to her as a friend, I hoped, even though we hardly knew each other. I needed people to see – to believe – that I wasn’t friendless as well as boyfriendless – and anyway, the chances of Amy ever seeing the video were, like, microscopic. “They’re so pretty, and every time I type or use my phone or wash my hands, I think of Amy and remember that she cares about me. So thanks, Amy, and thanks all of you for watching. I’m going to make a cup of sleepy tea, drink it in a bath with my lovely soothing bubbles and maybe a face mask, and then go to bed, and hopefully I’ll have the best sleep ever. And I hope you do, too. Night-night.”

  I switched off my camera. Then I carefully packed all my purchases back into their bags, making sure the receipts were there too. If I hurried, I’d be able to return every item to the shop where I’d bought them in my lunch break tomorrow and still have time for a sandwich. And if I was lucky, my credit card company wouldn’t know I’d bought a thing.

  Over the next week, things at Clickfrenzy returned to normal. People stopped following me with their eyes as I walked to the kitchen or the loo. Emily stopped asking me how I was in a concerned way in the mornings, and reverted to just asking how my evening had been. When I got into the lift at the same time as Sarah, she commented on how many hits my latest cat post had got, not how many my ‘So my boyfriend dumped me’ vlog had. I began to realise that in a world where people obsessively followed the new, the trending, there was no headspace for thinking about last week’s viral post.

  But I didn’t stop vlogging. I posted three more videos. I’d spent ages analysing other people’s channels, looking for tips and ideas, and discovered that ‘What’s in my handbag?’ posts were a thing. I couldn’t imagine why – the idea seemed as dull as it was bizarre. But then I watched a few and realised how strangely addictive it was to see a stranger sorting through a jumble of Oyster cards, lipsticks, packs of stale chewing gum and spare knickers. So I upended my bag on to my bed and sorted through all the junk that was in there and talked about it. The photo of Jack, which I’d carried everywhere with me for years, I buried at the bottom of the pile and didn’t show.

  The next evening, I made another. I called it, ‘A letter to my teenage self’. In it, I talked about how I’d always hated my height and my sticky-out ears and my knock-knees, and how jealous I’d been of the popular girls who were permanently surrounded by laughing, gossiping friends. I said I wished I’d known then that their confidence was only a veneer – that underneath, they were just as wracked with self-consciousness and doubt as I was. I said that your teenage years are the time when you find out who you are, but it’s sometimes hard to actually know, because who teenagers are changes all the time. I told my viewers to surround themselves with friends who were kind and true and made them laugh. I reminded them that it’s not what you look like that counts, but who you are inside. (When I was a teenager, I knew as surely as I knew the earth wasn’t flat that that wasn’t true, but maybe if I’d believed it I’d have minded less about my ears and my knees.) I finished by talking a bit about how I wished I’d known not to be pressured into things like smoking and drinking at parties, and how if you’re worried about peer pressure you should talk to an adult you trust. But when I played it back, that bit seemed embarrassingly prissy and worthy, so I edited it out.

  The third one was about nourishing yourself in body and spirit, and it took some serious research. I downloaded a book about mindfulness and read it on the Tube on my way to work. To be honest, I’ve never been the most spiritual person and a lot of it didn’t really make sense to me, but I could kind of see the point of living in the moment, especially when you’re going through a tough time emotionally. So I talked about that, and about the little daily blessings that are bestowed on us all every day, like being smiled at by a stranger, or seeing a rainbow, or the guy in the coffee shop forgetting to charge me for my paleo carrot and cashew muffin and then giving it to me for free when I pointed out his mistake (I wasn’t entirely honest about that. It was actually an almond croissant that Raffy had forgotten to charge me for). I bought a pretty little notebook, which I showed the camera while I explained that I used it to write down five blessings every day. This wasn’t strictly true either
, but it seemed like such a lovely idea that I resolved to start doing it, which made it almost true. If I remembered, of course.

  I also talked a bit about healthy eating, and how when you take care of your body, your immune system is so much better at coping with stress and your mood is lifted. I waited until Hannah and Richard had gone to work and took my phone downstairs into the kitchen, and bunged a load of kale, apple and avocado into the blender with some ice cubes and coconut water. Then, after I’d removed the Post-it note that said, Please don’t put hot liquid in this machine, I filmed it all going round and round. I filmed myself pouring it into a glass and taking a sip, but then I had to stop recording while I spat it out. It was so disgusting I could still taste it even after my coffee and almond croissant.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Over the next few weeks, I became more and more confident that things at Clickfrenzy had returned to normal. If any of my colleagues watched my vlog, they said nothing about it. I friended some of them on Facebook and followed them on Twitter and Instagram, but apart from occasionally sharing one another’s posts, especially the work-related ones, we pretty much ignored one another on social media. There seemed to be a kind of unwritten rule about it. If I knew, thanks to ill-judged ranty tweets, that Emily had had a row with her mum or that Ruby had complained to her beauty salon about an inept Hollywood wax (“Third-degree fanny burns! WTAF?” There was no accompanying picture, thankfully. There’s too much information, and then there’s much, much too much information), I knew better than to say anything about it in the office.

  At home, it was different, but also the same. Hannah had set up a Facebook group that we used for things like Amy keeping us up to date on her shift patterns and Hannah letting us know when British Gas were coming to read the meter but, by common and unspoken consent, we all had each other on limited profiles. I still didn’t know whether my housemates even knew I had a vlog. Given Hannah’s obsession with Radio 4 and the fact that Amy was almost always at work, at the gym, asleep or, more recently, out with Kian, I thought it was likely that they didn’t have a clue and wouldn’t have cared anyway.

  That was fine with me. But my vlog was taking up more and more of my own time. Responding to comments, sharing other people’s posts, editing videos – it was all beginning to feel a bit like a second job. And more than that – a second life. I began to feel like I knew the people whose comments I replied to, whose own videos I shared – they were part of a world, a community, that I was just starting to understand and feel a part of. And that worked for me, in a way, because my first life wasn’t exactly thrilling. Without Jack, and with my friends in Norwich a short enough, but still inconvenient and expensive, train journey away, keeping in touch in real life was getting harder.

  I didn’t go to Nancy’s birthday drinks, because they were on a Thursday night and I knew I’d miss the last train back to London and even though I could have stayed over at Mum’s, packing an overnight bag and being hungover and knackered at work the next day seemed like too much hassle. I replied to Katie’s texts, but with so many other messages to answer, my replies were cursory, and I sensed an increasing narkiness in hers. When Shivvy said she was coming to London for a weekend and asked if she could crash at mine, I said no, partly because I didn’t want to ask Hannah if it would be okay and see her thinking it wasn’t but saying it was, but also because I knew from my second, stealth Instagram account that Shivvy had been posting endless likes and comments on Olivia’s posts saying how made up she was that Olivia and Jack were so happy together and having such an amazing time.

  Not that I was bitter or anything but… well, I was. Go on, admit it, you’d be bitter too if you were me.

  But anyway, then, two things happened that I hadn’t expected.

  The first thing happened when I was at work.

  It was my turn to do a coffee run for the content team, so, as was customary, I took everyone’s orders and headed for the kitchen, repeating over and over in my head, Latte for Jim, peppermint tea for Hermione, builders’ tea for Tom… knowing that by the time I got to the kitchen I would almost certainly have forgotten and would have to go back and repeat the process.

  As it happened, though, I didn’t even make it as far as the kitchen, because when I passed the reception desk Daisy said, “Gemma! God, I’m glad to see you.”

  “I never knew you felt that way,” I said.

  “Don’t be daft! Look, this arrived for you, and now you can take it yourself instead of me having to cart it all the way to your desk.”

  She gestured to a large cardboard carton next to her chair, all wrapped up with red and white ‘fragile’ tape and with my name printed on the label.

  “Been shopping?” Daisy asked. “Is it anything exciting?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” I said. “I can’t shop – it’s a week until payday and I’m skint. I wasn’t expecting any deliveries. God, that’s heavy!”

  I carried the box back to my desk and carefully slit the tape. A mass of packaging came billowing out – foam worms that reminded me of the puffed corn crisps Jack loved, even though they made his fingers smell of synthetic cheese for ages. I scooped some of them out and found an envelope with my name on it. There was a card inside.

  Dear Gemma, I hope you don’t mind us contacting you at work – we didn’t have an address for you but managed to find you on LinkedIn with a bit of detective work! We are Original Organics, a new company specialising in all-natural pampering products for people who love giving themselves bit of TLC. We really hope you enjoy trying these few samples – please do get in touch and tell us what you think.

  I pushed more of the foam worms aside and reached into the box. It was full of stuff. Scented candles, soaps, body lotion, three different reed diffusers… I couldn’t get through all this if I spent the rest of the year in the bath, I thought. The smell was lovely – a mixture of floral freshness and a deeper, muskier scent that reminded me of how Mum used to smell when she came back from one of her spa days. It was also filling the office – I could see people turning around and hear them muttering, “What’s that? Can you smell that?”

  Hastily, I closed the box and resealed it with random strips of Sellotape.

  Tom said, “When you’re finished stinking the place out with your shopping, Gemma, any chance you could make our tea?”

  The parcel from Original Organics might have been the heaviest delivery I received that month, but it was by no means the only one. A couple of days later, a hamper of herbal tea arrived at the office. I took a few teabags home to try and left the rest in the kitchen. Then a PR company sent me a load of make-up and nail polishes. Then a salon contacted me on Twitter offering to do my nails for free (I politely declined, because Amy had done them over the weekend, a French manicure with glittery tips and little diamanté embellishments, and I couldn’t imagine any professional making them look more fabulous).

  I didn’t know what to do about it. At first, I was giddy with excitement at the flood of lovely, free stuff arriving for me. But soon it began to be a running joke. “Here’s another haul for you, Gemma,” Daisy would say. I muttered that it was samples for my vlog, and gave things to my colleagues, which felt weirdly like paying them for their silence about it. I gave the nicest of the nail varnishes to Amy; I took a few candles to the charity shop after I’d filmed myself smelling them and saying how fab they were, and asked Hannah casually whether she’d like the others, pretending that they were samples from work – which in a way they were. I even took a bunch of the pinker, sparklier, more age-appropriate stuff to Raffy at Daily Grind to pass on to his niece, and received an adorable hand-drawn thank-you card in return (from Zara, not from Raffy. That would just have been weird).

  But it all didn’t feel right, somehow. I felt obscurely guilty every time another package turned up, as if I was getting freebies under false pretences, or getting them with an expectation I wasn’t able to meet. I was new to this vlogging malarkey, but I was learning fast – I’d
seen how quick viewers were to accuse someone whose biggest fan they’d been the day before of selling out if they dared to appear even slightly commercial.

  I didn’t want to sell out – I wasn’t vlogging to make money. I wasn’t even sure why I was doing it, but I knew that I wasn’t quite ready to stop. Now that I was gaining new subscribers every day, I wanted to see what would happen if I carried on – how far it could take me, how big it could get. I felt like I was achieving something for myself. In spite of how public it was, I felt like I had a secret.

  Then the next week, I checked my bank statement. I know, I know – as a responsible adult I should have been doing so on a regular basis. But I’d been avoiding looking, because I knew exactly what was there to see – a whole lot of nothing, since I’d withdrawn my last fifty pounds, which was going to have to last me until payday. But I had a sudden attack of the Fear – what if some direct debit that I’d forgotten about had gone through and I was overdrawn? And what about the council tax bill, which had arrived the previous day? I was avoiding Hannah and Richard even more than usual, in case they wanted me to pay my share early for some reason.

  So, feeling slightly sick, I logged into my online banking and went through its elaborate security checks. And then suddenly I didn’t feel sick any more – I felt elated. YouTube had paid me forty-five pounds. Forty-five! It was hardly anything, really, I knew that. It was nothing compared to the riches I’d dreamed of accumulating when I set up the channel to enable monetisation, all those months ago when I’d had visions of becoming an online superstar. But it was actual, real money I’d earned from people watching me – or rather, from watching the ads they had to sit through before my videos.

  I celebrated by going out in my lunch break and buying a Krispy Kreme chocolate truffle parcel, sugar-laden snacks being sadly under-represented in my deliveries of free stuff.