CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time I drive up and park outside The Little Duck Pond Café the following night, the snow that started to fall in dribs and drabs this morning is now coming down steadily, and the butterflies in my stomach have multiplied to epic proportions.
I ring the bell to the flat, thrusting my hands deeper into my coat pockets, wondering which is making me shiver more: the icy blasts of wind and snow tugging at my hair or my gut-churning apprehension over the competition tomorrow.
A cosy evening of kicking back with my best friends is just what the doctor ordered.
Far too often over the past week, I’ve found my mind returning to that scene in the Ladies at The Swan Hotel when Alicia unwittingly revealed Rob’s deceit; the shock I felt when my lovely romantic dreams of a happy-ever-after were crushed beneath Alicia’s jewel-encrusted sling-back.
I truly hate Rob for not telling me the truth and destroying what we had together. He knew how gutted I was when I found out about Ethan’s treachery. And yet he still assumed he could casually pull the wool over my eyes and I’d be too besotted to notice!
Well, more fool him.
My days of trusting men are over.
Zak is out for the evening so we’ll have the place to ourselves – and we’ll hopefully do nothing more stressful than lolling around eating gorgeous food and having a good old catch-up.
To that end, I’m wearing my baggiest sweatpants and top (to allow for the inevitable ‘food baby’) and I’ve even brought my fleecy slippers for the ultimate relaxation. Bliss!
‘Hey, celebrity baker,’ says Ellie when she answers the door. ‘Nigella, eat your heart out!’ There’s a big smile on her face but the dark shadows beneath her eyes tell of her sleepless nights. It’s typical of Ellie that she’s putting aside her own worries tonight in order to make me feel better.
I hand her the wellies I borrowed on New Year’s Eve and she ushers me in. ‘Come on, it’s freezing out there. We’ve – um - got a surprise for you.’
‘Ooh, nice.’ What could it be? A gorgeous apron, perhaps, for tomorrow? Or some new baking tins?
‘Sorry I look such a state.’ I take off my coat and pull at my baggy old top with a frown. ‘But I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s just us tonight, after all.’
She gives me an odd little smile. ‘You look very . . . er . . . comfortable.’
‘It’s worse underneath, believe me. My legs have grown a forest in the past week but I’ve been far too busy baking to wield the razor.’ Plus I’ve totally stopped caring what I look like.
She laughs. ‘I’m sure they’re not that bad.’
‘Oh, they are, believe me,’ I reply earnestly, as she pushes open the living room door. ‘I’m so hairy I’d give King Kong a run for his money.’
My unsavoury confession still reverberating in the air, I suddenly clap eyes on the person sitting on the sofa.
Rob?
My stomach hurtles down a mineshaft.
Oh my God, what’s he doing here? I can’t believe Ellie would –
I swing round to look at her but she just shrugs and swivels her eyes in Jaz’s direction. My heart starts beating uncomfortably fast.
Rob is sitting back in the seat, one arm casually thrown along the back of the sofa, but there’s tension in the set of his jaw and the slight stiffness of his smile as he looks at me.
‘Hi, Fen,’ he says softly, as I blush to the roots of my hair and stare back at him wordlessly.
A great pang of longing hits me with the force of a double-decker bus. Seeing him here makes me realise just how much I’ve missed him over the past lonely week.
But then the horrible feeling of betrayal starts to rise up again, quickly overpowering all other feelings.
Time freezes as we stare at each other and I struggle to hold back tears of resentment and sadness.
Then Ellie breaks the silence with a hasty, ‘Drink, Fen?’
‘I’ll get it,’ says Jaz quickly. ‘Coming, Fen?’ Her face is wreathed in awkwardness and she can barely look at me.
Grateful for the excuse to leave, if nothing else, I follow Jaz out, holding my head high until I’m actually in the kitchen, at which point I sag back against the worktop, my legs feeling as weak as water.
‘Well, thanks, Jaz. I take it that was your idea!’ I whisper with a fierce nod in the direction of Rob.
She sighs, looking genuinely anguished. ‘Fen, I’m really sorry if I misjudged the situation. I thought Ellie was just being over-protective saying she wasn’t sure you’d appreciate Rob being invited.’
My stare is as icy as the Arctic blast that has the whole country in its grip tonight.
She shrugs helplessly. ‘I just think you two are so good together.’
‘Were good together. But that was before I realised I was fooling myself, thinking he was the very opposite of that lying waste of space, Ethan Fox.’
Jaz’s eyes open wide. ‘Fen, Rob’s nothing like Ethan. He’s solid and trustworthy – and he genuinely thinks the world of you. Not like Ethan, who’s so slippery he probably never uttered an entirely truthful sentence in his life.’
A painful lump rises in my throat. ‘Yes, but how can I trust him when he lied to me about something so important?’ I beseech her, my voice cracking with emotion. ‘He knew I was desperate to know who told Alicia that Ethan was at the Snow Ball that night. But he just played the innocent, hoping, I suppose, that it would all just blow over and I’d forget about it.’
‘He was probably desperately afraid of losing your friendship,’ she says softly.
‘Well, he made the wrong call. Because as it turns out, he has lost my friendship. He lied by omission, Jaz. He should have told me. But he didn’t.’
Jaz still looks unconvinced.
Tears of frustration prick my eyes and I dash them away angrily. ‘I’ve been down that road before, Jaz, giving a man the benefit of the doubt when he doesn’t deserve it, and I’m not about to make the same mistake again.’
I stalk over to the counter and pour a triple measure of lemon drizzle gin into a glass with a shaking hand, then top it up with a trickle of tonic water. I glug down a large mouthful, gasping as the alcohol burns its way down my throat.
I turn, my eyes watering with a deadly mix of alcohol and emotional overload. ‘Right, let’s go and get this over with.’
With the fiery gin bolstering my confidence, I stride towards the living room, determined to show Rob I’m completely un-phased by his shock appearance. I’ll be civil, of course, but very cool and collected, and –
‘Oof!’ We collide in the doorway, quite forcefully, as Rob is coming out, and I’m knocked dangerously off balance (in more ways that one). Somehow Rob manages to simultaneously grab my waist to steady me and snatch the glass from my other hand before it spills all over Ellie’s beige carpet.
‘Fen, I’m sorry. About everything,’ he murmurs, still holding my waist, his green eyes burning into mine. ‘About not being honest with you about Alicia.’ His mouth twists ruefully. ‘And about colluding with Jaz to get to see you here tonight.’
‘You spoke to Jaz?’ My shackles rise at their complicity.
‘You wouldn’t talk to me. I had to do something.’
The feel of his warm hand on my waist messes with my resolve, and in spite of my anger, my stupid heart lurches at his nearness. I’m vaguely aware of Jaz squeezing diplomatically past us in the doorway.
I can tell from the tension in Rob’s jaw that his desperation is real, and part of me longs to just put the past week behind me, pretend it never happened, and throw myself into his arms.
But something inside is stopping me.
Maybe it’s an intuition that I’d be a fool to trust what Rob’s telling me. I trusted Ethan and that ended in disaster. Everyone else probably knew I was making a fool of myself, but because I fancied myself in love, I was completely blind to his true nature.
Well, I’m not going to be so blinkered this time!
The sad fact is that however much I might want to believe Rob, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust him again, the way I once did.
Knowing this makes me feel so flat and dead inside, I just want to walk out of here right now, away from Rob and the memories. But I can’t because Ellie’s organised this night specially for me.
We all sit down to her beef casserole and mashed potatoes at the kitchen table and she tries to keep up a bright flow of conversation as the perfect host. The talk naturally turns to the fate of the café, and Jaz and Rob have a discussion about the cafe being the heart and soul of the village and as such, a project well worth investing in. Rob even suggests she think about putting together a plan to get investors on board, saying he’ll help in any way he can. My feelings soften towards him as I watch him talking so earnestly. It’s obvious he really cares about Ellie and her problems. No matter how he’s behaved towards me, Rob is basically one of the good guys.
But I’m nowhere near ready to forgive him . . .
Ellie listens to what Rob is saying about investors, but in the end, she shakes her head sadly. ‘Maybe it’s illogical, but I honestly don’t think I’d want other people having a financial stake in it. It wouldn’t feel like my café any more.’ She shrugs uselessly. ‘It just wouldn’t be the same.’
She gets up to fetch dessert. The fridge door still open, she glances out of the window and gasps. ‘Oh my God, look outside! It must have been snowing heavily non-stop since you arrived, Fen. It already looks a foot deep on the village green.’
Jaz laughs. ‘How deep?’ She scrapes back her chair and bends awkwardly over the sink to peer out. ‘Bloody hell, you’re right. It’s a regular winter wonderland out there.’
We all dive into the living room to get a better look.
As we stare out at the thick blanket of white covering everything, a loud grating sound splits the silence. A huge truck, almost the width of the road, is lumbering slowly along the lane down below. It draws level with the café and stops with an ear-splitting screech of brakes.
‘What the hell is a lorry that size doing on a narrow track like that?’ demands Ellie. ‘It better not block the way for my customers.’
A second later, a look of heart-breaking dismay registers on her face. A clear right-of-way hardly matters now, with the café closed for business. I squeeze her shoulder and she turns to me with a sad little smile.
‘Surely he’ll move it. He can’t be stopping there,’ says Jaz.
‘He’d better not – otherwise you won’t be able to get your car out tomorrow, Fen,’ says Rob. ‘Hang on, I’ll just go and have a word with the driver.’
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll go,’ I say, quick as a flash. My heart is sinking at the prospect of getting stuck behind this monster of a vehicle – but I do not need Rob’s help sorting it out.
But Rob is already out of the door and running down the stairs. We watch from the window as he nips round the driver’s side. But a second later, he reappears, looking back along the road.
‘The driver’s not there.’ he says, coming back in. He looks at me with a reassuring glance. ‘But I’m sure he’ll be back later.’
‘And in the meantime, the snow’s still falling,’ I murmur anxiously, staring out at the thick white flakes tumbling relentlessly out of the night sky. It’s bad enough that I’ll have to drive in the snow tomorrow if I want to compete in the bake-off heat. What if I’m stymied altogether because I can’t get my car out?