‘Alright, Suki, you’ve made your point.’

‘And anyway I’m with another guy, a really, really niceguy, and I’m very happy. In fact he’s waiting for me right now.’

‘Fine! So go! GO!’ Upstairs, Jasmine starts to cry, with embarrassment perhaps.

‘You can’t just get pissed-up and phone out of the blue and expect me—’

‘I’m not, I only, Jesus, okay, fine, forget it!’ Jasmine’s howl is echoing down the bare wooden stairs.

‘What’s that noise?’

‘It’s a baby.’

‘Whose baby?’

‘My baby. I have a daughter. A baby daughter. Seven months old.’

There’s a silence, just long enough for Dexter to visibly wither, then Suki says:

‘Then why the hell are you asking me out?’

‘Just. You know. A friendly drink.’

‘I havefriends,’ says Suki, very quietly. ‘I think you’d better go and see to your daughter, don’t you Dex?’ and she hangs up.

For a while he just sits and listens to the dead line. Eventually he lowers the phone, stares at it, then shakes his head vigorously as if he has just been slapped. He hasbeen slapped.

‘Well, that went well,’ he murmurs.

Address Book, Edit Contact, Delete Contact. ‘Are you sure you want to delete Suki Mobile?’ asks the phone. Fuck me, yes, yes, delete her, yes! He jabs at the buttons. Contact Deleted says the phone, but it’s not enough; Contact Eradicated, Contact Vaporised, that’s what he needs. Jasmine’s crying is reaching the peak of its first cycle, so he stands suddenly and hurls the phone against the wall where it leaves a black scratch mark on the Farrow and Ball. He throws it again to leave a second.

Cursing Suki, cursing himself for being so stupid, he makes up a small bottle of milk, screws the lid on tight, puts it in his pocket, grabs the wine then runs up the stairs towards Jasmine’s cry, an awful hoarse rasping sound now that seems to tear at the back of her throat. He bursts into the room.

‘For fuck’s sake, Jasmine, just shut up, will you?!’ he shouts, instantly clapping his hand to his mouth with shame as he sees her sitting up in the cot, eyes wide in distress. Scooping her up, he sits with his back against the wall, absorbing her cries into his chest, then lays her in his lap, strokes her forehead with great tenderness, and when this doesn’t work he starts to gently stroke the back of her head. Isn’t there meant to be some secret pressure spot that you rub with your thumb? He circles the palm of her hand as it clenches and unclenches angrily. Nothing helps, his big fat fingers trying this, fumbling with that, nothing working. Perhaps she’s not well, he thinks, or perhaps he is just not her mother. Useless father, useless husband, useless boyfriend, useless son.

But what if she is unwell? Could be colic, he thinks. Or teething, is she teething? Anxiety is starting to grip. Should she go to hospital? Perhaps, except of course he’s too drunk to drive now. Useless, useless, useless man. ‘Come on, concentrate,’ he says aloud. There’s some medicine on the shelf, on it the words ‘may cause drowsiness’ — the most beautiful words in the English language. Once it was ‘do you have a t-shirt I can borrow?’ Now it’s ‘may cause drowsiness’.

He bounces Jasmine on his knee until she’s a little quieter, then puts the loaded spoon to her lips until he judges that 5ml has been swallowed. The next twenty minutes are spent putting on a demented cabaret, manically waggling talking animals at her. He runs through his limited repertoire of funny voices, pleading in high and low pitches and various regional accents for her to shush now, there there, go to sleep. He holds picture books in front of her face, lifting flaps, pulling tabs, jabbing at pages saying ‘Duck! Cow! Choo-choo train! See the funny tiger, see it!’ He puts on deranged puppet shows. A plastic chimpanzee sings the first verse of ‘Wheels on the Bus’ over and over again, Tinky Winky performs ‘Old MacDonald’, a stuffed pig gives her ‘Into the Groove’ for no reason. Together they squeeze beneath the arches of the baby gym and work out together. He stuffs his mobile phone into her little hands, lets her press the buttons, dribble into the keypad, listen to the speaking clock until finally, mercifully, she’s quieter, just whimpering now, still wide awake but content.

There’s a CD player in the room, a chunky Fisher Price in the shape of a steam train, and he kicks through discarded books and toys and presses play. Relaxing Classics for Tots, part of Sylvie’s total baby-mind-control project. The ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ sounds from tinny speakers. ‘Tuuuuuune!’ he shouts, turns up the volume by way of the steam train’s funnel and starts to waltz woozily around the room, Jasmine close to his chest. She stretches now, her tapered fingers balling into fists then flexing, and for the first time looks at her father with something other than a scowl. He catches a momentary glimpse of his own face smiling back up at him. She smacks her lips, eyes wide. She is laughing. ‘That’s my girl!’ he says, ‘that’s my beauty.’ His spirits lift and he has an idea.

Draping Jasmine over his shoulder, banging against door jambs on the way, he runs down to the kitchen where three large cardboard boxes temporarily hold all his CDs until the shelves are up. There are thousands of them, freebies mainly, the legacy of when he was held to be influential and the sight of them sends him back in time to his DJ days when he used to wander round Soho wearing those ridiculous headphones. He kneels and fishes through the box with one hand. The trick is not to make Jasmine sleep,the trick is to try and keep her awake, and to this end they’re going to have a party, just the two of them, better by far than any night-club Hoxton can offer. Screw Suki Meadows, he’s going to DJ for his daughter.