Animal-lover Bel Clarke was sent home in the middle of a two-on-one date with Zac Franich and fellow Bachelorette Claudia Hoskins during last night’s episode of The Bachelor New Zealand, after host Dominic Bowden interrupted the trio to inform Zac he had to say goodbye to one of the two women immediately.
The shocking news caught everyone by surprise – including Zac, who asked for a few minutes alone to gather his thoughts. Ultimately, however, the surf life-saving coach chose to give Claudia the rose, leaving Bel to pack her bags and jet home from Thailand.
Looking back on that farewell today, the blonde beauty tells us she “didn’t leave with a broken heart”.
“I instantly knew it was me. I didn’t even second guess it,” she reveals. “I just knew that [Claudia and Zac] had had so much more time together and they had more of a connection.”
She did, however, acknowledge that the way she left was a little bit “cruel”.
“I would have hoped for him to be honest with me and maybe spent five minutes at a cocktail party and come up and wanted to talk to me,” she said, echoing the concerns she raised with Zac the night before she was eliminated, when she took him aside at the cocktail party to question whether he really wanted her to be there.
In the end, however, Bel says she knew that they had simply run out of time to explore the connection they had.
“We didn’t get that time. And I’m content with it, I think he made the right choice,” she says.
