Page 44 of The Perfect Blend
“It's the craziest thing,” I said. “From the back I could swear it was him.” His tall form was so familiar to me by now. It even looked like his coat. The man turned his face to the side and I was shocked.
“Oh! It is him! I wonder what he’s doing here. I’ll call him, he’ll be so surprised - I didn’t tell him I was coming with you tonight, he thinks I’m present wrapping.” I reached into my bag to fish out my phone to ring him.
Suddenly, Sharon's hand was gripping my arm, knuckles white.
“Robin, look.”
I glanced up, a smile still on my face, only for it to fall off as ice sluiced through me.
The crowds between us had thinned and parted, revealing that Zach was not alone. He was with a woman. He had his arm slung around her shoulders, holding her tight as he laughed at something she said. Just like he had been laughing with me last night. She had beautiful auburn hair falling in silken sheets, and was wearing an outfit that looked like it had walked straight out of Vogue.
“Could she be his sister?” hissed Sharon.
“No way. She’s an absolute tom-boy and her and Zach were the spitting image of each other, especially their hair. She also lives like 200 miles away,” I said through frozen lips. I’d met his sister Selene many times over the years when she’d come up for the Christmas holidays with her family, and then I had run into her again a few years later when she had spent a couple of summers with her aunt and uncle. I’d always wanted to ask her why Zach never came up but she was older and kind of intimidating, plus I was always too scared of looking pathetic and clingy. I still remembered though that she always had the same beautiful curly brown hair as Zach.This woman looked nothing like her. Who could it be? There had to be another explanation, it couldn’t be what it looked like?
The crowds shifted again, revealing a little girl clinging to the woman's hand. She had riotous curls like Zachs, in the same colour as her mother’s hair. As we watched on like a pair of stalkers, Zach let go of the woman only to swing the little girl up onto his shoulders.
“Maybe it’s just a friend?” I said tremulously.
Sharon looked at me pityingly, like I was a naive idiot. Maybe I was. Last night had been everything I could have possibly hoped for, a perfect culmination of the extended flirting of the past few weeks. It had been sincere, a true connection.
“No, no, I’m being ridiculous. He’s an open book! A really nice guy! There’s no way he could hide something this monumental from me!”
“You’re sure? He’s not hidden anything from you before?”
I thought back to the night when a visitor had come to see Zach at the farm and wouldn’t tell me who it was or what they wanted. At the market I thought I had understood his reasoning for not telling me, he thought he was protecting me, but what if that had been a lie, what if the truth was that it hadn’t been John visiting that night, but this woman. I suddenly remembered Sophia’s name flashing up on his phone and how happy he had sounded when he had answered it. My mind spun to the selection of wines he had kept on hand and brown sauce he owned despite him not liking it.
“I see it on your face, Robin. He’s not as open as you’d like him to be. And didn’t you say you thought it was odd he was such good friends with Issac Moore when he was such an unpleasant man? Things just aren’t adding up with this Zach guy. Hold this. I’m going to find out.”
I stood frozen, stomach a pit of misery. She shoved her Mum’s present into my arms as she dug around in her big handbag. She pulled out her lanyard with the name of the PR company she worked for on it, and slung it round her neck. Next she pulled out the kids tablet, complete with brightly coloured rabbit cover. She pried off the cover and shoved it back in the bag.
“Why did you bring that?” I asked, mind focusing on the stupidest details.
“Forgot I’d confiscated it, three kids will do that to you,” Sharon said. “Be quiet, stay still and just stand there.” She shoved me into a quiet corner between stalls and put her bags in my hands before she turned around and melted into the crowd after Zach. Which left me trying to not have a breakdown.
My thoughts swirled, one moment I was convinced of the worst case scenario, the next I was absolutely certain that this was all one big misunderstanding.
For several tortuous minutes I stayed like that, frozen and still clutching at the bags like they were a lifeline. When Sharon came back, her face was drawn and sympathetic, and my stomach dropped to the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Robin.”
I felt sick. I pushed her shopping bag back at her, my hands were shaking so badly I could have dropped it any second.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I went over there and said I was doing some ground PR work on the market. Showed them my badge, pretended to take down their responses on the tablet. I asked them if they were a family. She said yes, and told me to put down the Spencer Family. I told him, Robin this is important, pay attention, I told him that he had a very beautiful family. They both just smiled and said thank you. I'm so sorry, darling.”
And just like that, my fragile hopes for a future with Zach, with the perfect gentleman that I had thought Zach up to be, that had been building bit by bit over the past couple of weeks, fell completely apart. I’d gone and done it again, I’d fallen for a liar and a cheat.
Chapter Seventeen
Sharon got me home that night. She paused at the door and gave me a bone crushing hug, for once, thankfully, she knew to keep her mouth shut. I couldn’t face it if she said ‘I told you so’. She went back home to her family and I shut the door on the chilly night air. I felt numb, like a zombie. Perhaps I was in shock. I trudged upstairs and flopped onto the sofa, looking at my phone like it was a venomous snake. I clicked it on, and looked at the text messages waiting for me on screen. Before going to the market I’d texted Zach asking how his journey was going. At some point while he was out with his family he’d had the audacity to reply to me saying that he’d just arrived back down South. It must be easy for him to lie, for him to have kept up this whole charade. I blocked his number. I didn’t want to have to deal with him contacting me. I didn’t want to hear any more lies, I felt sick to my stomach as it was. I trudged into my bedroom, shot off a voice message to Zoe with the short version, and told her I was going to sleep. I climbed into bed, and finally let the tears run.
At some point while I was crying, Beanie nosed her way into the room and lay next to me in bed, nuzzling my neck, and I stroked her soft fur to console myself. Generally I thought dogs allowed on beds was a step too far because of the whole hair shedding situation, but in dire times like this it was necessary. Dogs wouldn’t let you down. She snuggled with me until my pitiful sobs had faded into silent tears and I finally fell into a deep, dark sleep, the kind that only happens when you have emotionally wrung yourself raw.
I woke the next morning both furious and devastated. I wanted to ring Zach up and shout and scream. I wanted to curl in on myself and cry out all my shame. What a fool! Hadn’t I been told? Who was I to get ahead of myself, to think that this time I have found something good? Didn’t I know better by now? Of course I had to go and choose not just a liar, but a bloody cheater, cheating on his wife no less! I cried because of Zach and I cried because of me. I cried because for a second, I had dreamt of a happy future where a healthy relationship was possible, and all the while I was kidding myself, yet again. I cried because I wondered if I would ever find it, or if I was doomed to repeat my mistakes, hoping and failing each and every time.
On top of that, my mind spiralled. Had any of it been real? I cast my mind back, thinking of the flirting, the sly glances, how well we had worked with each other. The decision to wait to be together until after the market. Waiting until I had pulled strings, and used my local contacts to make a success of the market. After I had done a tonne of work setting it all up and endorsing it all. I’d introduced him to countless local businesses and suppliers that he had required to make the project a success, I had vouched for him to all of them. Now, I supposed, he could just cut me loose. Had he just been using me to make his life easier? My stomach roiled. Had he even liked me at all, or had he just felt sorry for me and strung me along to make the most of my resources before a quick pity shag at the end? The night of our second first kiss he said had to dash off to see a friend - or was he returning to his wife after putting in the work making sure I was still strung along?
