Dexter's early fatherhood

Dexter's early fatherhood is shaped by the distance between an ideal of perfect responsibility and the faltering reality of his first months as a parent. On the night Jasmine Mayhew is born, he vows to make his words and actions fit for her scrutiny; within minutes, ordinary dependence, joblessness, marital friction, and his own drinking begin to expose how difficult that promise will be to keep. The state is neither an uncomplicated conversion to maturity nor a simple failure: it is a continuing effort to care for his daughter while confronting the habits and uncertainties that make care harder.

Birth and the Vow of Responsibility

Jasmine Alison Viola Mayhew is born late in the evening of the third day of the new millennium, weighing 6 pounds 6 ounces. Dexter sees her as inexpressibly beautiful and imagines that he would give his life for her, while recognizing that such a sacrifice is unlikely to be demanded. In the low-slung vinyl chair at the hospital, with the tiny, crimson-faced infant in his arms, he makes a solemn resolution: from then on, he will do the right thing. Apart from what he regards as unavoidable biological and sexual imperatives, his words and actions will be fit for his daughter's eyes and ears; he will live as if she is always watching, and leave nothing in his life for her to find shameful.

The vow lasts about ninety-five minutes. Dexter slips into a toilet cubicle to exhale cigarette smoke into an empty Evian bottle. Smoke escapes, the detector sounds, and he is escorted out still holding the bottle as the alarm wakes his exhausted wife and daughter. Sylvie Mayhew's narrowed, tired look registers the immediate consequence more plainly than any argument could: Dexter's intention to become an exemplary father has met, almost at once, a familiar weakness. The incident gives his promise a concrete measure. He means what he says, but wanting to be responsible does not instantly make him so.

Family Life Under Pressure

By the opening of the new century, Dexter is without work. Sport Xtreme has drifted into a pre-dawn broadcast slot and ended, leaving paternity leave to shade into unemployment. The loss of a career he had imagined might revive compounds the growing antagonism between him and Sylvie. Their move from Belsize Park to a terraced house in Richmond, Surrey, is presented as a family project and a practical choice: the house has potential, good schools and transport links, deer roam in the nearby park, and it is close to Sylvie's parents. The move also costs them Dexter's sports car, exchanged for a secondhand people carrier, and begins an expensive renovation of sanding and demolition.

Dexter discovers that domestic life bears little resemblance to the cheerful picture he had supplied himself. He had imagined a young couple in overalls, happy meals among half-unpacked crockery, dog walks, night feeds, beach fires, rock pools, and a future in which he made games, put up shelves, and provided for his dependants. Instead, renovation brings bickering, meanness, plaster dust, and sullen looks. Sylvie increasingly spends time at her parents' house, ostensibly to escape the builders and more often to avoid her listless husband. Dexter helps with the work, makes tea, fetches biscuits, picks up a little basic Polish, and plays PlayStation over the noise of the floor-sander, but these tasks do not give him a settled sense of purpose.

His professional prospects deepen that uncertainty. He considers returning to television as a presenter, producer, cameraman, or editor, but sees that younger trainees are in their mid-twenties and that he lacks experience as a producer. Mayhem TV plc, once his independent company, has become an alibi for inactivity; he winds it down to avoid accounting costs and sends its twenty reams of headed paper to the attic. He resists Sylvie's suggestion that he accept work from Callum O'Neill, hoping instead that his presenting career might recover or that another television role will emerge. Spending time with Emma Morley offers a brief escape, including cinema trips taken when he should be helping with the renovation, but the sadness of leaving the cinema in daylight becomes harder to bear. Fatherhood makes that evasion feel incompatible with the responsibilities he has promised to assume.

The Night Alone with Jasmine

When Sylvie leaves for a friend's hen night, Dexter is left in charge overnight for the first time. The arrangements are elaborate and scheduled: a hotel suite, a cocktail waiter, a limousine, a restaurant, a nightclub, and brunch the following day. Before leaving, Sylvie watches him bathe Jasmine and gives practical instructions about putting her down around eight. Her parting gestures are divided between Dexter and their daughter: she kisses the top of his head, then gives Jasmine a more persuasive kiss and asks her to look after her father. Jasmine's anxious expression makes Dexter laugh, but once the door closes he is alone with the responsibility.

The evening quickly turns difficult. Jasmine screams as he struggles to secure her in the highchair, and Dexter longs for her to be able to say what is wrong. Feeding her becomes a messy effort of spooning in puree and wiping it away. He turns on Sylvie's small portable television, which she disapproves of, and sees Suki Meadows presenting the lottery results. Envy tightens his stomach at the sight of his former girlfriend on television; he is about to change the channel when he notices that Jasmine has stopped crying and is watching, entranced. For a moment, the screen provides a way to settle his daughter, even as it reminds him of the public career he has lost.

Later, Dexter's control deteriorates further. While trying to delete Suki's number from his phone, he becomes frustrated that deleting the contact does not feel like enough and throws the phone against the wall, leaving two black marks on the paint. He takes wine upstairs with a bottle of milk and finds Jasmine crying hoarsely in her cot. He shouts at her to stop, then immediately covers his mouth in shame when he sees her wide, distressed eyes. His response changes: he lifts her, sits with his back against the wall and lets her cries press against his chest, then strokes her forehead and the back of her head. He wonders whether she is ill, whether she is teething, and whether he should take her to hospital; because he has been drinking, he knows he is too drunk to drive.

Dexter tries the medicine on the shelf, carefully judging that Jasmine has swallowed 5 millilitres, then spends the next twenty minutes improvising entertainment. He uses funny voices, picture books and lift-up flaps, a plastic chimpanzee singing the first verse of a nursery song, a toy performing another, and a stuffed pig unexpectedly singing a pop song. He and Jasmine squeeze beneath the baby gym. These eccentric attempts do not transform him into the effortless father he had imagined, but they show him continuing to attend to her after his anger and panic have made him fear that he is failing her.

Confession, Kinship, and Limits

When Dexter speaks to Sylvie by phone, he says he knows he is not very good at being a father or husband at present, but is working on it and will improve. Sylvie answers that he is doing fine and that they are finding their way. Her brief silence before replying and the tightness in her voice leave Dexter wishing for more reassurance; he tells her to return to the party. After the call, the house is quiet. With Jasmine asleep on his lap, he feels a pulse of dread and loneliness, then lifts her to his face and breathes in her milky, almost sweet scent. Seeing himself in her face makes their physical connection newly tangible to him: for better or worse, she is part of him.

He lowers Jasmine carefully into her cot. Then he steps on a plastic pig, which pierces his heel, swears under his breath, and turns off the bedroom light. The small, painful interruption keeps the ending grounded in the untidy material work of looking after an infant. In a hotel room ten miles east along the Thames, Sylvie quietly begins to cry after the call, wiping her eyes before the shower stops. Dexter's night has brought a moment of tenderness and a modest admission of effort, but it has not resolved the strain between the spouses. Early fatherhood remains a promise under pressure: his affection for Jasmine is unmistakable, while his capacity to live up to the father he wants to be is still uncertain.