Page 48 of The Perfect Blend
He shook his head as he picked up his dog to untangle it and finally managed to step away from me. “She’s not down south right now, she’s at the farm. I know,” he said, shooting me a look, “I lied. We had Christmas up here. Look, let's just go and sort this all out together.” His expression was raw and pleading. “I’m not letting you be hurt by me again. I’m not letting this go to shit. You and me, Robin, we have something special. Just come back to the farm and if you want nothing to do with me by the end of it all, I’ll respect that.”
My world felt like it was turning upside down, again, and I hated the way my heart leapt when he said we had something special. I needed to get to the bottom of this. I had one small paranoid worry though.
“Can you ring your sister first? So I know you’re telling the truth and she is really at the farm?”
“God, that’s dark, is that how much trust has been lost?” He looked so sad, but I held his gaze uncompromisingly. “No, right, fine.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out his phone. “No signal. We walked here, did you drive?”
I nodded. “Right,” he said, “can we go in your car? I’ll keep checking for signal as we walk.”
And so off we went, an odd sort of truce between us, a strange sort of vacuum between the rage I’d built up and the confusing truth I was trying to unravel. Zach finally got a signal just as we reached my car and he put the phone on speakerphone as he rang Selene, his sister.
“Hey Zach. Aw-ful sign- what- do - want?”
“Are you at the farm?” He cut straight to the chase.
“I’ve not gone on- a- hi-ke if tha- what you me-an!” I made a gesture to indicate I understood she was at the farm before we had to have a painful conversation with a terrible signal.
“Right, thanks Sel.” He hung up and looked at me. I nodded.
“Get in then. I’ll drive. Let’s pray the dogs don’t ruin the back.”
I pulled out of the parking space and headed towards the farm. In the confined space of the car, the air between us was charged with everything still unsaid.
Zach finally broke the silence. “I took your advice and bought myself a dog for Christmas.”
That was not what I expected him to talk about. I kept my lips pressed shut and my eyes on the road.
“Well, not just for Christmas, forever, to live at the farm with me,” Zach continued, almost like he couldn’t help but fill the quiet. He was rambling. I’d never heard him ramble before.
“I knew the moment I saw her, all brown fur and chocolate eyes, what I would call her. Mocha, after my one and only favourite coffee. You did match me with my perfect blend after all,” I felt his eyes on me and resolutely refused to meet his gaze, “and I thought Beanie might be lonely being the only coffee themed dog in town.”
I bit my lip trying not to smile at that, while tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. He’d actually gone and got a dog, and named her Mocha because of me. My brain was scrambled as it tried to reconcile all the facts and failed.
“She’s very beautiful,” I said, my voice hitching only slightly in the middle.
“But very poorly behaved. Maybe once we settle all this we can organise those training sessions you were talking about.”
The turning onto Bluebell Ridge Farm’s long private track saved me from having to answer - what could I say, when nothing was making sense? The silence held until a few minutes later as we were rolling into the courtyard at the farm.
As I pulled the handbrake, the front door opened, and the auburn woman from the other night stepped out, little girl on her heels. I felt sick, she was ridiculously pretty, and kind of familiar now that I could see her face properly in the sunlight…
“Sel!” Zach called out as soon as he stepped out of the car. The name he called out failed to gel with the woman standing in front of us, and I felt a zing of shock -thiswas Selene? “We need to talk. Sophia, honey, would you mind playing fetch with Mocha and Beanie here while Robin and I speak with Mummy?”
The little girl nodded and I got out of the car, letting the dogs out too. Zach pulled a tennis ball out of his coat pocket and threw it to the girl, who caught it before calling the dogs.
“Mocha! Beanie!” The dogs ran over and she laughed as she started playing with them.
We three adults headed inside the house to sit round the kitchen table.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Zach, and set about doing just that.
I took the chance to study Selene and she took stock of me. I started piecing together what I might have seen. Back when we were kids, Selene had been a female version of Zach, skinny with dark unruly hair and sharp features. She’d dressed like an emo tomboy the few Christmases I’d seen her, a stark contrast to her image now. Time had filled out her features and her figure, and with a very skillful dye job, she looked like a model. Her clothes were understated and elegant, and from the quality of the fabric obviously expensive.
“Selene, I wouldn’t have recognised you if Zach hadn’t called you by name.”
Selene smiled. “You too! You look great,” she said before turning to narrow her eyes at her brother's back, “though you’re not meant to know I’m here. If you could keep me and Sophia’s presence to yourself I’d be really grateful.”
Apparently it wasn’t just me that had no idea she was here, or that she had a daughter, in fact. Not one whisper of this had ever been heard around the village, and after the antics of Selene’s mother, it definitely would have been a hot topic had anyone known or even suspected.
