Dexter Mayhew and Jasmine Mayhew

Dexter Mayhew and Jasmine Mayhew’s relationship turns on a painful reversal: Dexter once resented the responsibilities of fatherhood, but after losing daily contact with his daughter, he longs for the ordinary time and growing-up moments he used to wish away. Their bond is marked by his guilt and imperfect attempts to reconnect, yet also by growing tenderness and, in a later scene, an easy, affectionate closeness.

Separation and the Cost of Freedom

Dexter confesses to Emma Morley that he had not been a good father. During the period when they were pretending to be a perfect family, he resented being there and repeatedly wished for sleep, weekends away, nights out, and a life without responsibilities. Now that he has regained that freedom, he sits among possessions still packed in cardboard boxes and misses Jasmine. His account makes the separation feel less like a clean release than the consequence of a desire whose cost he could not anticipate: he wanted distance from the demands of parenthood, but not the absence of his daughter.

At this point Dexter sees Jasmine only once a fortnight, for one overnight stay. Emma suggests asking for more time, and he says he would. But he is also painfully aware of Jasmine’s distress when her mother drives away. He imagines how she sees him: as a strange, sad figure she does not want to be left with. The fear he perceives makes the prospect of asking for greater access emotionally complicated; wanting more time does not mean he feels confident that Jasmine will welcome it.

Guilt, Gifts, and Missed Milestones

Dexter tries to make their limited time together feel celebratory by buying Jasmine presents. A great pile awaits her whenever she arrives, turning each visit into something like Christmas morning. He recognizes the inadequacy of this strategy: when they are not opening presents, he does not know what to do with her, and she begins to cry and ask for her mother. The gifts are both an expression of his desire to please Jasmine and evidence of his uncertainty about how to build closeness through ordinary shared activity.

That uncertainty is sharpened by how quickly Jasmine changes between visits. Dexter feels that a week or ten days can leave him facing a different child, and he is devastated to realize that she has started walking without him seeing it happen. He regards witnessing such milestones as part of his job as her father; missing one makes his limited place in her life feel suddenly concrete. His grievance that he has done nothing wrong sits beside his admission that he had resented fatherhood, exposing the tension between feeling unfairly deprived and recognizing his own earlier reluctance.

When his anger rises, Dexter turns it toward Callum O'Neill, whom he resents as part of the household Jasmine returns to. He invokes Callum’s large house in Muswell Hill, then loses the force of his outburst: his voice cracks, and he presses his hands to either side of his nose as if trying to suppress a sneeze. The gesture interrupts the anger before it can conceal the grief beneath it. Dexter’s frustration is real, but so is his sorrow over being peripheral to his daughter’s daily life.

A More Assured Father

Later, Dexter’s circumstances offer a contrasting possibility. His café, which struggled for its first six weeks as customers came in only to look around and leave, has become fashionable and has regular customers and staff. On a warm morning he opens it with private pride. The work does not erase his difficult periods, when he wants to shut the café and drink, but it gives him a more settled life in which fatherhood has a visible place.

He is looking forward to seeing Jasmine that evening and spending much of the next eight days with her while Sylvie Mayhew and Callum go on holiday. Jasmine is now two and a half, self-possessed and beautiful like her mother. At the café she can play shops and be fussed over by the staff. The scene reverses the earlier image of Dexter unable to fill an overnight visit: here he anticipates a stretch of time together and imagines Jasmine at ease in his workplace. His pride in the café and his pleasure at having her with him belong to the same account of a life he feels, for the first time in years, is more or less where he wants it to be.

Memory, Affection, and Best Friendship

In a later conversation, Jasmine asks Dexter whether he misses Emma, whom she remembers only faintly. He answers that he misses her every day and calls her his best friend. Jasmine recalls being four and says that photographs are what help her remember Emma; she also remembers the wedding and thinks Emma was nice. Their exchange places the father-daughter relationship within a family history Jasmine knows only in fragments, while showing Dexter answering her questions directly rather than shielding her from the loss.

When Jasmine asks who his best friend is now, Dexter tells her that she is. He rests a hand on the back of her neck, fitting his thumb into the hollow there, and asks who her best friend is. She names Phoebe, and Dexter teases that people can fall out of favor. The teasing ends in familiar physical play: he pulls Jasmine back into the crook of his arm, where she settles with her head on his shoulder. The ease of that moment contrasts with his earlier fear that he does not know what to do with her. It does not undo the missed milestones or restore the time they lost, but it shows a relationship in which affection no longer has to be expressed through a pile of presents; father and daughter can simply lie together, joke, and be close.