Dexter Mayhew and Suki Meadows’s Disappointing Romance

Dexter Mayhew and Suki Meadows’s romance survives in the novel chiefly through its aftermath: Dexter remembers its glamour, while Suki recalls being neglected and betrayed. Their brief relationship, described by Suki as six unhappy months, becomes a measure of the distance between Dexter’s sentimental account of his past and the damage he left behind. When he tries to revive their connection years later, Suki refuses, and the call ends with his daughter—not nostalgia—at the center of his attention.

The relationship in retrospect

The romance belongs to Dexter’s earlier, more conspicuously hedonistic life, but the evidence of what it meant to each of them is sharply unequal. Dexter later remembers nights in black cabs, cocktail lounges, hotel bars, and railway arches, and misses the period when his photograph appeared in newspapers. He calls to Suki with the lightness of someone proposing a friendly drink and invokes their “old times.” In his recollection, the past offers an escape into a more glamorous version of himself.

Suki’s account strips that glamour away. She tells him that he was often intoxicated, insufficiently interested in her, and unfaithful with women such as runners or waitresses. When Dexter objects to her description of his being off his face, she does not soften the charge of infidelity. She calls their supposedly golden six months “pretty shitty” for her. The contrast is not simply between two memories of a romance; it is between Dexter’s nostalgia for a period of his own life and Suki’s account of what being his girlfriend was like.

A past that follows him

The story places this relationship within a wider pattern in Dexter’s romantic history rather than presenting it as an isolated grievance. At a wedding, Sylvie Mayhew complains that they seem to attend events crowded with people Dexter has slept with. The remark does not identify Suki as one of those former partners, but it gives the romance a revealing context: Dexter’s past sexual conduct is an ongoing source of strain in his present relationship, not merely an anecdote he can revisit at will.

The old romance also returns through television. While alone with seven-month-old Jasmine Mayhew, Dexter feeds her in the kitchen and turns on a small portable television, hoping to quiet her. Suki appears live from TV Centre, loudly presenting the lottery results. Jasmine becomes absorbed in the broadcast; Dexter feels a spasm of envy and then nostalgia. Suki is now wealthy, famous, and loved by the public, while Dexter’s Saturdays involve filling Mediterranean wraps. The contrast helps explain the call’s mixture of longing and self-regard: he sees a former girlfriend who has flourished, and also remembers the version of himself who belonged to a more glamorous world.

The call and refusal

After trying to leave a message for Emma Morley, Dexter pours more wine and scrolls to Suki’s number. He is initially relieved when she does not answer, recognizing that little good may come from calling an old girlfriend. Then he hears her distinctive bellow and puts on his presenter’s smile. The shift from hesitation to performance is brief but telling: even in private, he reaches for the polished persona associated with his public life.

Dexter proposes meeting for lunch or a drink, presenting the invitation as friendly and invoking the past. Suki answers from a dinner with other people; when the background music fades, her tone hardens. She points out that they have not seen one another for five years and treats that absence as meaningful. Her refusal is grounded in the relationship as she experienced it: she says he was rarely interested in her and was unfaithful, and rejects his attempt to turn their history into a mutually cherished set of “old times.” She also makes clear that she is with a kind man, is happy, and has him waiting for her. Her present life is not an opening for Dexter to resume the old intimacy.

Fatherhood against nostalgia

Only after Suki’s refusal has made the invitation untenable does Dexter mention that he has a daughter, seven months old. The pause that follows leaves him visibly diminished. Suki asks why, then, he is asking her out; his answer—that he means a friendly drink—does not persuade her. She says she has friends and tells him he should see to his daughter before hanging up.

The ending makes the call more than an unsuccessful attempt at reunion. Dexter has reached toward an old relationship while caring for Jasmine, and Suki’s final response returns him to that immediate responsibility. Earlier in the evening, the sight of Suki on television had held Jasmine silent; now, the actual Suki refuses to become part of Dexter’s nostalgic escape. Their romance is therefore defined not by a renewed bond but by the gap between what Dexter wants the past to mean and what Suki remembers it cost her.