The Last Bad Girlfriend by Becky Cawley Hassall
The Last Bad Girlfriend
That one summer we spent together, we ate a lot of tomato salads. Simple ones, the cherry tomatoes halved, dredged in salt and swimming in balsamic vinegar. Fancy ones - where we bought heirlooms at the farmers market and paired them with decadent, creamy burrata and basil from her window box. Cracked black pepper. The olive oil is extra virgin and in a glass bottle. So yellow it was green. It tasted like grass.
Most of my relationships have started as long distance. Ours was no different. When we met I was:
➔ 28, with a killer wardrobe, a cat and a mound of credit card debt;
➔ living with my parents for the first time in twelve years;
➔ weaning myself off prescription painkillers;
➔ and the toxic ex-girlfriend who had fed them to me;
➔ jaded #tiredofLondontiredoflife;
➔ a proud workaholic;
➔ living under a cloud of paternal disappointment; and
➔ sleeping in a single bed.
The 90-minute train journey to her house was just long enough to be on the wrong side of convenience. Mid-week meetups out of the question meant we were living for the weekend, or at least, I was. I was the one with something to escape.
By July, I’d moved into my own place: a furnished, two-bedroomed railway cottage and we alternated weekends. We listened to the National and got stoned. We took a lot of baths, squeezed into my corner tub, bath bombs fizzing between our thighs. We lit her fire pit and drank red wine out of mugs. She met my parents and flirted with my dad. I took her to a Halloween party at work where the theme was Victorian Circus. I dressed up as a bearded lady, she was a sexy Ringmaster. She told my workmates I was the “man” in our relationship. I was never introduced to her family, friends or colleagues, but then I never asked to be.
Her favourite possession was a copy of Little Women. It sat enticingly on the crowded bookshelf with the cover facing out, but she was always cagey about me looking at it. So, why flaunt it? One day when she was out I opened it and read the handwritten inscription.
For My Little Woman All my love, Jason.
I never asked who he was. But I gave her a new nickname. My Little Woman. She hated it, which gave it even more appeal. Still, it was better than her pet name for me: Sausage Hunter.
I’d not slept with a man for almost a decade when we met. And yet, that I’d slept with any man — however distant in my past — was a red flag. Sausage Hunter was her way of making it known. We spoke every night on the phone. I’d spend most of the time talking about work because it (and her) were the only things I had in my life. When she’d had enough, the silliness started.
‘Why do you like sausages so much? Why are you such a Sausage Hunter?’
I’d usually get irritated, annoyed that she’d interrupted my flow and was unwilling to tolerate my ranting.
But who was Jason? I had my theories but he was one of her no-go areas. The warning signs posted to steer me clear of the treacherously thin ice. Her belief that I wouldn’t accept her past, even if her truth differed from the canon she’d already fed me. I like to think he was a true love for her, that for one person she could have been open, vulnerable, herself. Even though she told me she’d never been with a man.
She liked salmon. I preferred mackerel. We never ate the same fish. Maybe that was a red flag.
She kept her profile active on the dating website we met on for far longer than I did. I’m not sure she ever deleted it. Dating makes me anxious. I’m happier in monogamy. Or alone. As soon as we were “official” – a declaration I pushed her into making – I deleted mine.
When her newest match would ping a message she’d take her phone to the bathroom to read and vet. If she considered the match beneath her or less than me, she’d share the contents of their eager outreach. Her girlish laugh breathy and light. She came alive with the promise of attention.
When the women who messaged were thinner or prettier than me, she didn’t share their profiles. Instead, she’d have a bath, solo. Or go on a walk: investigate their potential in private. Given a moment alone with her phone, I’d seize the opportunity to check out my competition, making sure to throw their names into conversation later on, so she’d know that I knew. Probably a bigger red flag than being unable to agree on one type of protein for dinner.
But I compartmentalise.
I was bigger than her. Half a foot taller despite only being 5 ft 5. My shoulders were broader, my thighs thicker – my tits: massive compared to her mosquito bites.
I’d always been chubby. I found more comfort in food than in fitting into smaller sizes and spaces. I’d say it was a struggle but apart from a few hurtful comments from family and the odd man in my early twenties, I’ve not suffered from ongoing poor body image.
“Surprising,” she said.
My 29th birthday present from her was my first weight complex and a subscription to a diet company that wanted me to exist on 800 calories a day.
By this point, she’s just an asshole and I’m immune to the mountain of red flags she’s waved in my face. Her conventional prettiness and glossy brown hair heightened my tolerance for bullshit. And she knew it, because, of course, she did. So, I reignited a dialogue and brief physical relationship with my painkiller ex-girlfriend. I’d never been too fat for her.
The woman with glossy brown hair was my last girlfriend before I met my wife. The last woman who’d know me as not a mother. But she had an opinion about that too.
‘You’d be a terrible mother.’ As we sat at my kitchen table on New Year’s Eve, the remnants of the tapas dishes I’d prepared surrounded us. Spicy, rich Patatas Bravas. Salty, griddled Padron Peppers. Fried baby squid with a sunshine yellow aioli. And the ubiquitous tomato salad - this one, a Pipirrana, its garlicky juices dripping through toasted sourdough, creating messy hands.
‘You’re too selfish.’ As I made us smoky Old Fashioneds with orange rind curls resting on the rims.
‘I don’t think I could have children with someone like you.’ As the countdown began and the scales fell from my eyes.
We went to bed just after midnight.
We will have fucked, even if I couldn’t stop crying, and she found my body repugnant. We will have listened to two songs on repeat as we did it. Both songs have girls’ names in the title - only one of them was hers and neither was mine. She will have orgasmed because she always did, and my fatness wasn’t a barrier to her pleasure, only mine.
I woke up to sour breath and an empty bed.
She was asleep on my sofa, which was leather and uncomfortable.
‘Are you ok?’ I asked.
‘No. You were snoring all night. And I think I’m coming down with something. I’m going home.’
So she went. And that’s the last conversation we had in person.
A few days later she texted me. ‘I’m in the hospital with pneumonia. Not that you care,’ she added.
I phone.
‘I’ll come. Where are you?’
She hung up. So I phoned all the hospitals in a 50-mile radius of her house. The big ones. The small, cottage ones. She’s not a patient at any of them, and part of me relishes catching her in the lie.
I call again. She answers coughing—a dry cough.
‘Where are you? I’ve called all the hospitals. You’re not at any of them.’
She hangs up again. Within minutes she’s blocked me on every messaging app and social media site. Her friends – who I’ve never met in person – do the same by the end of the day.
I kept an eye out for her on the usual dating sites and sure enough, there she appeared with a shiny new profile and a captivating photo. Her profile listed all the things she hoped to avoid with a new partner. Every quirk, good or bad - was mine.
Seven years later she accidentally follows me on an Instagram account I set up in 2018 to chronicle my curly hair journey. I posted one selfie and then decided I probably wouldn’t make it as a curly hair influencer. The solitary selfie sits there, almost accusatory. When I go to check the notification she’s unfollowed me.
I send a message.
‘Stalker.’
Bizarrely, she replies.
‘Haha yes. You weren’t meant to know.’
We send a few messages back and forth. I wish her a happy belated 40th. I’ve made no special effort to remember her birthday but she’s my third ex-girlfriend with that same birth date.
Fucking Aries.
I think of her infrequently. The way our relationship ended pissed me off initially, but then it just made for a really good crazy lesbian anecdote as I got back, grudgingly, on the dating circuit. She’s memorable for this story and because of her positioning in my romantic history. She’s the sandwich filling between the girl who fed me drugs and had a predilection for bloodletting and the one I married. But it's the dull kind of sandwich filling, maybe butter (unsalted) and the last scrapings of (smooth) peanut butter from the jar. Even so, I'll likely end up biting into my own cheek as I take a bite.
Two years on and I’m leaving a Sunday night hot yoga session. A nurturing flow. Slow, measured movements but 40-degree heat. I spend a lot of time on my back.
That notification is there again. Instagram has changed the privacy settings so the “Stalker” message I send sits there unseen and unread.
Who’s the weirdo now? It’s me. I’m the weirdo.
I reflect on the tiny circle profile picture – because of course, her account is set to private – a selfie taken with another woman, heads close and smiles wide. She seems happy. But then she always did put a great face on.
I get home and put my son to bed. I tell my wife the story as I cook, making more mess than is strictly necessary We laugh as we share the grilled halloumi and roasted chickpea salad, vegetarian even though only one of us is (and it isn’t me). The chickpeas are Spanish and from a glass jar, plump and gelatinous. I’m proud of the perfect char marks on the salty white halloumi. The lemon-spiked spinach I pile onto our plates is verdant and surprising. My wife sighs with pleasure as she eats, the skin of blackened Sardinian winter tomatoes pops against her small, square teeth.
I like to think I’m her last bad girlfriend, too.
