Confessions of a Serial Dater by Michelle Cunnah

I’m so sorry, Rosie,” he tells me sympathetically. “I thought he was rather a nice chap.”
    “Nice chaps don’t dump their girlfriends a week before Christmas. What a complete fucking bastard.” Carmen bangs her empty pint glass down on the table.
    “I thought you rather liked him,” Flora, sister of Philip,says to her. “Poor darling,” she adds to me. “I know the future seems bleak and empty, but you will get over—”
    “He could at least have had the decency to wait until the New Year, like any normal person,” Carmen jumps back in before Flora can finish. And then, “Sorry for the ‘fucking bastard’ part, Phil,” she tells Philip, who, when not inhabiting pubs dressed in jeans and a sweater, inhabits a Church of England church, dressed in a robe and a dog collar, because he’s a vicar.
    “No worries,” he smiles good-naturedly. Philip is always good-natured and tries to see the best in people, but I expect that’s part of his job description. “I don’t suppose it would be of any help to say that it’s the will of God, and that He works in mysterious ways?” he asks me. Then, when I shake my head, “Thought so. Bad luck, though, dear girl.”
    “Do you want me to hunt him down and break his legs for you?” Carmen jumps in again, her eyes narrowing to slits as she picks up her next pint and takes a swig. “Sorry, Phil—just pretend you didn’t hear that.”
    “But only yesterday you were telling me to dump him, ” I say. She’s already downed two pints of Theakston’s Old Peculier ale since I arrived, and I suspect that her vehemence is directed at her boyfriend, Paul, rather than at Jonathan, since Paul is mysteriously absent.
    “That’s not the point,” she says, and I’m thoroughly confused. “You were convenient for the sex, of course. And handy to take along to his Christmas bash. But once you served your usefulness, he dumped you. Therefore he doesn’t have to buy you a Christmas gift.”
    “Well, thanks,” I tell her, even more miserable now. “That really makes me feel better about the whole situation. Dumped because he’s trying to save cash.”
    “He’s not the only one. Honestly, since Paul turned thirty,he’s become a real old man about some things. I’ve come to the conclusion that all men are selfish, egotistical bastards who don’t deserve the time of day. Present company excepted,” she adds rather tipsily, looking around at Philip and Charlie. “And, of course, it’s always better to be the dumper than the dumpee.”
    “But I thought you were so happy together.” Flora always says this when one of us breaks up with someone. “You seemed so well suited,” she sighs. Flora always says this, too.
    Flora, at five feet ten inches, and one hundred and eighty pounds, is very blond and attractive in a Valkyrie-esque, Wagnerian kind of way. She is exuberant and interesting and one of the nicest people ever, but men tend to see her as sister or nanny material rather than wifely material.
    “You’ve just got to push out that stiff upper lip, darling,” she advises me. “You’ve got to just climb back in the saddle—jump back into the dating pond as quick as poss.”
    Or they are put off by her plummy, modulated, well-meaning bossiness. Her last boyfriends, both of whom were recently separated at the time they met Flora, dumped her and went back to their wives. Apparently, all those long chats and reasoning it through with Flora really helped them sort out their feelings and stiffen their backbones.
    Poor Flora. All she really wants is to find someone nice and friendly with whom she gets along.
    “Right before Christmas. That’s so—” Charlie, who hasn’t said a word until now, shakes his head and pulls a tissue out of his leather jacket. And dabs at his eyes. “I know what you’re going through, darling—” He breaks off. Charlie got dumped by his One True Love just before Christmas last year.
    “I didn’t mean to bring back sad