Dexter's night alone caring for Jasmine

Dexter Mayhew’s night alone caring for Jasmine tests his new identity as a father against the ordinary demands of feeding, soothing and staying sober. Left in charge while Sylvie Mayhew attends a friend’s hen night, he reaches for cigarettes and wine, loses his temper, and makes mistakes that intensify his fear of being inadequate. Yet the night does not resolve into simple failure: when Jasmine finally laughs as he dances with her, his performance gives way to a real moment of connection.

The Assignment and Its Conditions

Sylvie’s absence is carefully scheduled. Rachel’s hen night involves a hotel suite, a cocktail waiter, a limousine, a restaurant, a nightclub and brunch the next day; the arrangements have been settled through emails that leave little room for spontaneity. For Dexter, the important consequence is less the itinerary than the unfamiliar responsibility: he will be alone with Jasmine overnight for the first time. Sylvie watches him bathe their daughter and gives precise instructions about when to put her down. At the door, she tells him to call her mobile if there is an emergency, kisses him, and leaves Jasmine to look after her father. Dexter laughs at the child’s worried expression, but once the front door closes he is alone with the care she requires.

The scene makes that responsibility tangible from the outset. Jasmine screams as Dexter struggles to secure her in the highchair, and he imagines that speech would solve the problem if only she could tell him what is wrong. He feeds her puree while trying to manage the mess, then turns on a small kitchen television. Suki Meadows appears on a live lottery broadcast. Dexter feels a brief pang of envy at the sight of his former girlfriend on television, but the screen unexpectedly settles Jasmine, who watches in silence. The distraction works, though it also brings his old life into the kitchen with them.

Relapse and the Work of Care

When Jasmine gets sweet potato in her eye, Dexter wipes it away and wants a cigarette. He puts her in a baby harness and walks to an off-licence, where the display of alcohol makes buying it feel like an opportunity. Since Sylvie’s pregnancy, they have avoided keeping alcohol at home to discourage casual drinking; now Dexter buys two bottles of Bordeaux and twenty cigarettes, then gets Thai takeaway. He carries the sleeping baby home against his chest, opens a bottle without taking her out of the harness, and drinks. The wine relaxes him, but the scene also shows how readily the evening’s fatigue becomes permission to return to habits he has been trying to restrain.

Putting Jasmine down proves harder than getting her home. She cries whenever Dexter lays her in the cot and quiets when he picks her up. With his takeaway cooling and the open wine waiting, he resents how much she needs from him. He tries controlled crying, turns up the television and goes downstairs, where he finds the first bottle empty. Then he makes formula, but forgets to screw the lid onto the bottle. Warm milk spills across Jasmine’s bedclothes and into her eyes and nose. Dexter cleans her, changes her clothes and bedding, and feeds her in the dark until she settles against his shoulder. The mistake is practical and immediate; his response is equally physical, an improvised sequence of cleaning, changing and comforting.

Frustration, Shame and Repair

The second bottle of wine is open when Dexter’s frustration rises again. After an unsuccessful phone call to Suki Meadows, he deletes her number and throws his phone against the wall, leaving two black marks. Jasmine’s crying is reaching another peak, and he rushes upstairs with milk and wine. He shouts at her to stop, then immediately feels ashamed when he sees her distressed face. Holding her, he strokes her forehead and the back of her head, searching for some pressure point that might calm her. Instead of understanding the crying, he turns it into a verdict on himself, imagining himself useless as a father, husband, boyfriend and son. He wonders whether Jasmine is ill, and recognises that he is too drunk to drive her to hospital if she needs it.

His response becomes a prolonged, comic display of effort. He gives her medicine, then tries funny voices, picture books, toys, songs and a talking clock. A Fisher Price player shaped like a steam train offers another possibility: he turns on classical music and dances woozily around the room with Jasmine close to his chest. When she looks at him without scowling and begins to laugh, the change is small but decisive. He has not mastered the problem by applying a technique; for a moment, play and shared attention reach her where his anxious attempts to control the crying have not.

Music, Memory and a Moment of Connection

Dexter’s solution is to keep Jasmine awake for a party of their own. He searches through boxes of CDs, and the old collection takes him back to his years as a DJ, when he wore headphones around Soho. The music also carries less welcome associations: sleepless, paranoid nights and friends he no longer knows. His former nightlife has become a source of anxiety rather than uncomplicated pleasure. In Jasmine’s bedroom, he finds a homemade compilation and a postcard from Emma Morley, sent the previous year for his birthday. Emma’s note congratulates him on becoming a husband and father, tells him he will be good at both, and says it is good to have him back. The message lends the evening a quiet counterpoint to his self-doubt.

He plays the compilation through Jasmine’s toy train. As The Smiths’ There Is a Light That Never Goes Out plays, Dexter dances with his daughter and feels elation in the small bedroom. He stumbles over a wooden pull-along dog, checks that Jasmine is all right, and finds her laughing. The moment is neither a cure for his drinking nor proof that he has become a confident parent. It is, instead, a genuine pleasure that emerges from the exhausting work of staying with her. When Walk On By plays, he remembers his mother, Alison Mayhew, dancing to it at home with a cigarette and a drink. That memory connects the present father holding his daughter to the family life he remembers, without making the night’s strain disappear.

Fatherhood Beyond the Night

The episode’s instability recalls an earlier scene in which Dexter had to help his ill mother indoors and carry her up the stairs. He had looked around for his sister or father as if they might possess a qualification he lacked, but no one else was there; he had to lift Alison himself. After apologising to her, he promised to stay that night. In both scenes, care begins with uncertainty and bodily effort rather than mastery. With his mother he manages the stairs; with Jasmine he must endure crying, clean up spilled formula and keep trying after anger and shame. The responsibilities differ, but each makes him confront the distance between wanting to care and knowing how.

A later exchange also places Dexter’s care within a wider family arrangement. Emma Morley stands with Jasmine after Sylvie has left and tells the child that her father will not be back until six, then suggests going to the zoo. The episode of Dexter’s night alone therefore belongs to a continuing negotiation of who attends to Jasmine and when. Its central contrast remains with Dexter himself: the wine, the broken phone and the shouted rebuke register his failure to meet the ideal he imagines, while the improvised music and Jasmine’s laughter disclose a more tentative capacity for closeness. By morning, the evidence is not effortless competence, but a father who has struggled, caused distress, tried again and found one moment in which his daughter responds to him with joy.