“Good.” Charlie kissed me again, stood up and padded over to the fridge for another bottle of champagne. “I’m bloody ravenous now, aren’t you?”
“Seriously, legit starving,” I said. “I’m even willing to risk a fish-finger sandwich.”
“No way,” he said, splashing wine into our glasses so the bubbles almost fizzed over the edge. I knew I should tell him to stop, I’d had enough, but I didn’t. “I’m trying to impress you, remember? We’ll order in.”
“Won’t everywhere be closed?”
“Nope,” he said, reaching for his phone. “Well, most places will. But I have a late-night delivery app. What do you fancy? We can have pizza, curry, noodles, hot dogs or all the above brought to our door in half an hour.”
“What a time to be alive,” I said.
CHAPTER TEN
I woke up in my own bed, alone. For a second everything felt normal – just like it had the previous day. Then, just like it had the previous day, the full weight of my hangover descended. But there was one important difference: yesterday, I’d felt rubbish – not just physically, but sick with remorse and shame. Today, I didn’t. I sat up in bed and saw, next to my handbag, the goody bag from Charlie and Gus’s launch, a jaunty yellow reminder of the night before.
I tipped its contents out on to my duvet. There was a copy of Two, signed in a black Sharpie scrawl with Gus and Charlie’s names. There was a sparkly cherry-flavoured lip gloss. There was a yellow T-shirt just like the one I’d worn in the hot tub the night before. There were a few make-up samples from a brand I’d never heard of – presumably some vlogger who’d just launched her own product range and was hoping to piggyback on the Berry Boys’ success. There was a colouring-in book and a pack of crayons.
I looked at Charlie’s face on the book cover. “Well, that was fun,” I said aloud. “I guess I won’t be seeing you again.”
And the weird thing was, I didn’t really care. As I showered and got ready for work, snatches of the night before kept resurfacing in my mind: eating hot salt beef sandwiches in Charlie’s bed with him (expect they weren’t hot by the time we ate them, because we had sex again first), drinking more champagne, kissing and giggling and eventually falling asleep, tangled together under his dark blue sheets. Pinging awake at five in the morning, woken by the crash of the door as Gus came home from wherever he’d been, still a bit drunk and knowing I needed to get home to my own bed. And Charlie, half asleep, summoning an Uber to take me away. The Uber of shame, I thought. But I didn’t feel ashamed at all – each piece that came together to make the puzzle of the memory just made me smile.
I’d pack up the goody bag again and take it to Raffy at the coffee shop to give to his niece, I decided – I couldn’t carry on avoiding him forever, after all.
But when I got to Daily Grind, Raffy wasn’t there. Luke was alone behind the counter, and when he saw me he said, “Cappuccino and an almond croissant, is that right?”
The thought of hot milk and marzipan made me feel a bit sick. I shook my head, pressing my lips together.
“Could I just have a Diet Coke, please? And… I brought this for Raffy. For his niece, at least – for Zara.” I handed over the yellow bag.
Luke said, “Cheers. I’ll pass it on when I see him.”
The queue was building up behind me, and I wasn’t sure how to ask when that would be, or where Raffy was. So I just said thanks and paid for my drink, and went to work. I drank my Diet Coke at my desk, washing down two paracetamol I found in my drawer, and immediately felt a bit less queasy. But now my hangover had abated, I remembered the advice I’d read online, about how the best way to get over a man was to get under another one. I remembered Charlie asking me how my heart was, and realising that it didn’t appear to be broken any more. So that had worked, at any rate. But what about my feelings for Charlie?
As I searched the Twitter and Instagram for images to use in my article (‘30 Facts Every Single Cat Owner Knows Are True’), I tried to work out my feelings. Charlie was cute – seriously cute. Even with my limited experience (limited enough, in the interests of full disclosure, to be counted on the fingers of one hand. And I wouldn’t even need to use my thumb) I could tell that he was seriously good in bed, too.
Well, that’s just tough, Gemma, I told myself firmly. You’re never going to see him again. You’ve got to pull up your big girl pants (the fugly ones you were wearing last night, the ones you dropped so happily on the floor) and face up to it. You were just the latest in a long, long line of girls who fell for the disingenuous Netflix and chill line and ended up sharing Charlie Berry’s hot tub, his bed and his late-night takeaway. No wonder he was so relaxed about replacing the sofa – he’s probably caused irreparable water damage to enough of them to keep the local British Heart Foundation shop stocked for years.
But my silent telling-off did nothing to take the shine off my memory of the evening. It had been fun – the most fun I’d had for ages. I remembered Charlie’s smile and it made me smile too. At lunchtime, I went and sat in Soho Square and watched as many Berry Boys vlogs as I could fit into an hour. At the end of each one, I told myself I must stop, but then found myself pressing play again.
I watched Charlie riding a skateboard around the apartment, just like he’d said he did. I watched him and Gus tasting a load of random sweets they’d brought back from a trip to Seoul, grimacing and laughing and marking them out of ten. I watched them trying to follow yoga videos on their balcony, groaning and laughing and falling over. I watched Gus go out and get Charlie a latte and put salt in it instead of sugar, and Charlie wincing and laughing and spitting it out.
I went back several years, right to the first videos they’d posted on their channel, and saw a much younger Charlie and Gus singing along to One Direction videos and playing computer games together. Their hair was different then; Charlie didn’t have a tattoo; they filmed in their bedroom in what I presumed was their parents’ house instead of in the palatial flat.
I was astonished at the sheer volume of material they’d created over the past five years. There was hours and hours of it – and I now knew all too well that even more hours would have been spent editing and uploading it all. It made me realise for sure what I’d begun to suspect: I was too late to the party. People who had really successful vlogs, massive ones, like Charlie and Gus, had been doing it for ages.
It was time to face facts: I might get a few freebies delivered to the office, a few hundred people might give my videos a thumbs-up, but unless I was willing to work at it for hours and hours, for years and years, I’d be the YouTube equivalent of that not-very-talented hopeful who gets booed off the stage in the first round of The X-Factor.
So I returned to my desk and my cats, and when Sloane tried to call me later in the afternoon, I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer her next call either, and I deleted her voicemail without listening to it.
When I got home that evening, Amy was in the kitchen eating beans on toast and drinking tea.
“Guess what?” she said.
“What?”
“I passed my course! Top of the class. I’m an actual police officer.”
“Amazing! Clever you. We should go for a drink to celebrate.”
“Even better,” she said. “Richard and Hannah are going away for the weekend, so I’m planning a party. I’ve sent out invites on Facebook – I’ll add you to the group, too, if you’re free this weekend?”
Was that really such a good idea, I wondered, imagining hordes of people turning up and spilling red wine on the cream sofa, smashing glasses, painting graffiti on the walls… but then I remembered that we were responsible grown-ups, and anyway Amy would never commit such a rookie error as to make her event public on social media.
“I’m writing a note to drop round to the neighbours,” she said. “How does this sound? ‘To celebrate completing my police training course, I’m inviting a few people over for drinks this Saturday. Please bear with us if there’s some loud music – we
won’t carry on too late. And feel free to drop round and say hi.’”
“It sounds like, ‘Don’t call the police – I am the police,’” I said.
“Exactly!” Amy laughed. “So you must invite some mates, too.”
I thought of Olivia, and all the times we’d organised Halloween parties, movie nights and barbecues together. I remembered planning a fancy-dress party for Jack’s twenty-first. He’d gone as Simon Cowell, his hair all bouffy with mousse and his trousers pulled up too high, and I’d even persuaded him to let me give him a fake tan, which he’d scraped off over the next few days when he shaved, so the stubbly bits of his face were paler instead of darker than the rest. It looked ridiculous and we laughed about it for ages. I’d persuaded Mum to dye my hair blonde for the first and only time in my life, and scoured the local charity shops until I found a floor-length sequinned dress that Amanda Holden would have been proud of.
Well, neither Jack nor Olivia would be invited to Amy’s party, that was for sure.
I thought of Emily at work, who was maybe, potentially, a friend. But she wasn’t really one yet, and asking her round on a Saturday night, at short notice, when she’d almost certainly have plans, would be running a serious risk of looking weird.
I thought of Charlie, then pushed the thought firmly aside.
“Maybe,” I said.
Then I helped Amy deliver a few copies of her carefully worded note through the neighbours’ letterboxes, and we watched The Great British Bake Off together and painted our nails, and it was all really companionable, until Hannah and Richard came home and we both drifted up to bed even though they hadn’t finished the technical challenge yet.
“I’ll just show you where the stopcock is,” Richard said.
“And the folder with the operating instructions for all the appliances is in the drawer under the microwave,” said Hannah. “I cleared the filter on the tumble dryer yesterday, so it should be okay, but if it starts to smell at all hot… Did you check the smoke alarm battery, Rich?”
“Just last week,” Richard said.
“I’ll check it again,” Hannah said. “And here’s a list of emergency numbers.” She placed a laminated A4 page on the table. “My mum and dad are in Basingstoke so they’re closer to hand than Rich’s, but they play golf on Saturdays so if they aren’t available you can ring Rich’s brother. And I’ve put the numbers for the fire service and the emergency plumber and the police…”
“Hannah,” Amy said, “I am the police.”
She caught my eye and we both looked away again quickly, stifling giggles.
“Oh.” Hannah coloured slightly. “Yes. I suppose you are. I’m sorry, I know I’m stressing, it’s just that…”
“Don’t stress,” I said. “Honestly. We’ll look after everything, I promise. If there are any problems at all we’ll let you know. Don’t worry about anything, and have a great time in…”
“Lesbos,” Richard said.
“Fab,” said Amy. “I’ve never been there but I’ve heard it’s gorgeous.”
“Amazing beaches,” Hannah said. “And olive oil and ouzo.”
“And ancient monuments,” Richard said. “It’s fascinating from a historical and archaeological point of view. And geological, too – it has one of the world’s most perfect examples of a petrified forest.”
“I hope you’re not going to want to spend the entire five days looking at churches and fossils, Rich,” Hannah said. “Remember, when we went to Tunisia, you promised…”
“We spent two days looking at Roman mosaics,” Richard said. “Two days! It wasn’t nearly enough.”
“It was two days too many for me,” Hannah said. “This time I want to actually relax, not spend hours wandering around ruins when I could be lying in the sun. Please, Rich.”
There was a pause. The atmosphere had suddenly, subtly changed. Amy and I looked at each other again, but this time we didn’t feel like laughing.
Richard reached out and patted Hannah’s bottom, then the pat turned into an affectionate pinch – at least, it looked affectionate, and Richard was smiling. But, for a second, Hannah looked as if she was about to cry.
“Don’t be silly, Hannah-banana,” he said. “If you want to waste your time lying on the beach, I won’t stop you. I hope you’ve packed your sunblock.”
“I’m sure I have,” Hannah said. “But I’ll just check in my bag…”
“There’s no time.” Richard glanced at his phone. “Our cab will be here in two minutes and if you start unpacking you’ll never get your case to close again. Typical woman – we’re going away for a long weekend and you’ve packed six bloody bikinis.”
“They hardly take up any room,” Hannah objected, and I could see her point – her little wheelie suitcase looked a perfectly normal size to me.
“Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful time,” I said. “We’ll text you tomorrow if you like, just to let you know everything’s all right.”
Richard’s phone buzzed and they got their stuff together in a final flurry of key-gathering and boarding-pass-checking.
“Right,” Hannah said. “We’re off. See you girls on Tuesday.”
Amy and I waited in silence for a few seconds after the front door closed.
“Those two,” she said. “Fricking weird, right?”
“Fricking weird,” I said. “Listen, this party – are you sure it’s all going to be okay? Because if anything went wrong…”
“It’s all going to be fine,” Amy said. “Come on, let’s go down to the off-licence.”
By early afternoon, we’d stocked the fridge with cans of beer, bottles of cheap wine, tubs of dip and enough sausages and burgers to feed an army (or, I supposed, a police force). The kitchen table was laden with packets of buns and crisps, paper plates and the huge pack of napkins I’d insisted on buying in case of red wine spillage. Amy had made a massive bowl of coleslaw and I’d baked some rather wonky cupcakes. The barbecue was ready to be lit and Taylor Swift was playing on the stereo.
“I think we’re good to go,” Amy said. “I’m off to shower and change.”
I surveyed the room. Even with all our party supplies, it was immaculate. I felt a horrible pang of guilt.
“We’re going to have to smuggle all the empties into the neighbour’s recycling,” I said. “If they find out…”
“They won’t find out,” Amy said. “Honestly, we’re doing nothing wrong. They didn’t even say we couldn’t have a party.”
“No,” I said. “But that’s just because they didn’t know we were going to. If we’d asked…”
But then I heard the bathroom door close and the shower start to run.
I went upstairs and sat on my bed. I was sure Amy’s friends were all just as sensible and responsible as she was – or at least, as I’d thought she was until this madness had overtaken her. I didn’t want to be a party pooper. And I didn’t want to spoil the new friendship that seemed to be growing between Amy and me. I’d stay sober, I decided, and try to make sure the mess didn’t get too out of hand. After all, it was just a little barbecue for a few of my housemate’s friends.
I reached for my make-up bag and spilled palettes and brushes out on to my dressing table, then found my eye drawn irresistibly towards my camera. I hadn’t posted a vlog for ages – at least, that was how it felt. It had only been a few days, really. But in the meantime, I’d had my meeting with Sloane. I’d spent the night with Charlie. I knew how silly I’d been to dream of being a YouTube star one day, and how remote my chances were of ever achieving anything in that strange, glamorous and exclusive world.
But still, I realised, I missed it. I’d started to enjoy my little chats to my camera and to the people who’d eventually watch the videos when I posted them. And they were missing me – I’d seen loads of comments on Twitter asking where I was and when I would post again, and replied vaguely to a few of them saying I was very busy at work and would be back soon. I knew that if I never posted again, they’d unsubscr
ibe, unfollow and forget me – but I didn’t really want that to happen.
I switched on my camera.
Hi everyone.
It’s been a while, I know, and I’m sorry. So much has been happening, and maybe I’ll tell you all about it another time. But for now, I’m getting ready for a little party my housemate is having. It’s such a gorgeous day, so we’re going to have a barbecue in the garden. My legs are, like, really white, otherwise I’d have worn shorts. (To be perfectly honest, they’re a bit hairy as well as being white.) So I’m going to wear the trusty maxi dress I got from Primark a couple of years ago. Is it just me, or do you also have this thing with maxi dresses where you buy one every summer (or two, or even three) and then there’s only about one day a year when you can actually wear it? So you end up with a wardrobe full of the things and then when it’s sunny like today, or you’re going on holiday or whatever, you look at them all and you’re like, eeny meeny miny mo…? Just me then. Anyway, I totes heart this dress – it’s white and floaty with a bit of broderie trim, and hopefully I won’t spill ketchup all over it. I’ll put my hair up – this is just a sort of messy bun, with a bit of sea salt spray in it to help it hold – and I’m just going to put on a bit of BB cream, bronzer…
The act of getting ready, of talking about getting ready, was oddly soothing. By the time I’d finished, edited the video (which, as always, took way longer than I expected) and posted it (after two false starts because, as always when I was in a hurry, the broadband connection dropped and I had to do the whole thing over again) my worries about Hannah and Richard, and what horrors would ensue if they found out what we had done, had melted away.
I went downstairs, poured myself a glass of wine (I wasn’t going to get pissed, I told myself, but not drinking at all, all night, was too big an ask) and found Amy and Kian in the garden.
The Truth About Gemma Grey: A feel-good, romantic comedy you won't be able to put down Page 13