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waist, is a little plumper then than now, gawky and awkward with a ragged fringe of hennaed hair shading her eyes. It’s the expression that she has used in photos ever since, smiling one-sidedly with her mouth closed. Dexter peers at her face and laughs. He shows it to Jasmine.

‘Look at that! It’s your godmother, Emma! Look how thin your dad was. Look – cheekbones. Daddy once had cheekbones.’ Jasmine laughs soundlessly.

Back in Jasmine’s bedroom he sets her in the corner and takes the CD out of the case. Tucked inside is a tightly written postcard, his birthday card from last year.

1st August 1999. Here it is – a homemade present. Keep telling yourself – it’s the thought that counts it’s the thought that counts. This is a loving CD reproduction of a cassette compilation I made for you ages ago. None of your chill-out rubbish; proper songs. Hope you enjoy this. Happy Birthday, Dexter, and congratulations on all your great news – A husband! A father! You will be great at both.

It’s good to have you back. Remember, I love you very much. Your old friend

Emma x

He smiles, and puts the disc in the player that is shaped like a steam train.

It starts with Massive Attack, ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ and he picks up Jasmine and bounces at the knees with his feet planted, mumbling the words into his daughter’s ear. Old pop music, two bottles of wine and no sleep are combining to make him feel light-headed and sentimental now. He cranks up the Fisher Price train as loud as it will

go.

And then it’s The Smiths, ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’, and though he never particularly cared for The Smiths he continues to bob around, head down, twenty again, drunk at a student disco. He is singing quite loudly, it’s embarrassing, but he doesn’t care. In the small bedroom of a terraced house, dancing with his daughter to music from a toy train, he suddenly has an intense feeling of contentment. More than contentment – elation. He spins, and steps on a pull-along wooden dog, and stumbles like a street drunk, steadying himself with one hand against the wall. Whoa there, steady boy, he says aloud, then looks down at Jasmine to see she’s okay and she’s fine, she’s laughing, his own beautiful, beautiful daughter. There is a light that never goes out.

And now it’s ‘Walk On By’, a song his mother used to play when he was a kid. He remembers Alison dancing to it in the living room, a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other. He settles Jasmine on his shoulder, feeling her breath on his neck, and takes her other hand in his, kicking through the debris in an old-fashioned slow-dance. Through the middle of exhaustion and red wine he has a sudden desire to talk to Emma, to tell her what he’s listening to, and as if on cue his phone rings just as the song fades. He forages amongst the discarded toys and books; perhaps it’s Emma, calling back. The display says ‘Sylvie’ and he swears; he must answer. Sober, sober, sober, he tells himself. He leans against the cot, settles Jasmine in his lap and takes the call.

‘Hello, Sylvie!’

At that moment Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’ suddenly kicks out from the Fisher Price, and he scrambles to jab at the stumpy buttons.

‘What was that?’

‘Just some music. Jasmine and I are having a little party, aren’t we, Jas? I mean Jasmine.’

‘She’s still awake?’ ‘’fraid so.’

Sylvie sighs. ‘What have you been up to?’

I have smoked cigarettes, got drunk, doped our baby, phoned old girlfriends, trashed the house, danced around mumbling to myself. I have fallen over like a drunk in the street.

‘Oh, just hanging out, watching telly. How about you? Having fun?’

‘It’s okay. Everyone’s off their face of course—’ ‘Except you.’

‘I’m too exhausted to get drunk.’ ‘It’s very quiet. Where are you?’

‘In my hotel room. I’m just going to have a lie-down, then go back for the next wave.’ As she speaks, Dexter takes in the wreck of Jasmine’s room – the milk-sodden sheets, the scattered toys and books, the empty wine bottle and greasy glass.

‘How’s Jasmine?’

‘She’s smiling, aren’t you, sweetheart? It’s Mummy on the phone.’ Dutifully he presses the phone to Jasmine’s ear, but she remains silent. It’s no fun for anyone, so he takes it away. ‘Me again.’

‘But you’ve managed.’

‘Of course. Did you ever doubt me?’ There was a moment’s pause. ‘You should get back to your party.’

‘Perhaps I should. I’ll see you tomorrow. About lunch time. I’ll be back at, I don’t know, eleven-ish.’

‘Fine. Goodnight then.’ ‘Goodnight, Dexter.’ ‘Love you,’ he says. ‘You too.’

She is about to hang up, but he feels compelled to say one more thing. ‘And Sylvie? Sylvie? Are you there?’

She brings the phone back to her ear. ‘Hm?’

He swallows, and licks his lips. ‘I just wanted to say . . .

I wanted to say I know I’m not very good at this at the moment, this whole father, husband thing. But I’m working on it, and I’m trying. I will get better, Sylv. I promise you.’

She seems to take this in because there’s a short silence before she speaks again, her voice a little tight. ‘Dex, you’re doing fine. We’re just . . . feeling our way, that’s all.’

He sighs. Somehow he had hoped for more. ‘You’d better get back to your party.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ ‘I love you.’

‘You too.’

And she is gone.

The house seems very quiet. He sits there for a full minute, his daughter sleeping now on his lap, and listens to the roar of blood and wine in his head. For a moment he feels a pulse of dread and loneliness, but he shakes this away, then stands and raises his sleeping daughter to

his face, loose-limbed now like a kitten. He inhales her scent: milky, almost sweet, his own flesh and blood. Flesh and blood. The phrase is a cliché but there are fleeting moments when he catches sight of himself in her face, becomes aware of the fact and can’t quite believe it. For better or for worse, she is a part of me. He lowers her gently into her cot.

He steps on a plastic pig, sharp as flint, which embeds itself painfully in his heel and, swearing to himself, he turns off the bedroom light.

In a hotel room in Westminster, ten miles further east along the Thames, his wife sits naked on the edge of a bed with the phone held loosely in her hand and quietly starts to cry. From the bathroom comes the sound of a shower running. Sylvie doesn’t like what crying does to her face, so when the sound stops she quickly wipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand and drops the phone onto the pile of discarded clothes on the floor.

‘Everything fine?’

‘Oh, you know. Not really. He sounded pretty drunk.’ ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

‘No, but really drunk. He sounded strange. Perhaps I should go home.’

Callum belts his dressing-gown, walks back into the bedroom and leans at the waist to kiss her bare shoulder.

‘Like I said, I’m sure he’s fine.’ She says nothing, so he sits and kisses her again. ‘Try and forget about it. Have some fun. Do you want another drink?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to lie down?’

‘No Callum!’ She shakes his arm off her. ‘For Christ’s sake!’

He resists the temptation to say something, turns and walks back to the bathroom to brush his teeth, his hopes for the night evaporating. He has a horrible feeling that she is going to want to talk about things – ‘this isn’t fair, we can’t go on, perhaps I should tell him,’ all that stuff. For crying out loud, he thinks indignantly, I’ve already given the guy a job. Isn’t that enough?

He spits and rinses, returns to the room and flops onto the bed. Reaching for the remote, he flicks angrily through the cable channels while Mrs Sylvie Mayhew sits and looks out the window at the lights along the Thames and wonders what to do about her husband.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jean Seberg

SUNDAY 15 JULY 2001

Belleville, Paris

He was due to arrive on 15th July on the 15.55 from Waterloo.

Emma Morley got to the arrival gate at the Gare du Nord in good time and joined the crowd, the anxious lovers clutching flowers, the bored chauffeurs, sweaty in suits with their handwritten signs. Might it be funny to hold up a sign with Dexter’s name on? she wondered. Perhaps with his name spelt incorrectly? It might make him laugh, she supposed, but was it worth the effort? Besides, the train was pulling in now, the waiting crowd edging towards the gate in anticipation. A long hiatus before the doors hissed open, then the passengers spilled out onto the platform and Emma pressed forward with the friends and families, lovers and chauffeurs, all craning to see the arriving faces.

She set her own face into the appropriate smile. The last time she saw him, things had been said. The last time she saw him, something had happened.

Dexter sat in his seat in the very last carriage of the stationary train and waited for the other passengers to

leave. He had no suitcase, just a small overnight bag on the seat next to him. On the table in front of him lay a brightly coloured paperback, on the cover a scratchy cartoon of a girl’s face beneath the title Big Julie Criscoll Versus the Whole Wide World.

He had finished the book just as the train entered the Paris suburbs. It was the first novel he had finished in some months, his sense of mental prowess mitigated by the fact that the book was aimed at elevento fourteen- year-olds and contained pictures. Waiting for the carriage to clear, he turned once more to the inside of the back cover and the black and white photograph of the author and looked at it intently, as if committing her face to memory. In an expensive-looking crisp white shirt she sat a little awkwardly on the edge of a bentwood chair, her hand covering her mouth at just the moment that she burst into laughter. He recognised the expression and the gesture too, smiled, and placed the book in his bag, picked it up and joined the last few passengers as they waited to step down onto the platform.

The last time he had seen her, things had been said. Something had happened. What would he tell her? What would she say? Yes or no?

While she waited she played with her hair, willing it to grow longer. Shortly after arriving in Paris, dictionary in hand, she had plucked up the courage to go to a hairdresser – un coiffeur – to have her hair cropped. Though embarrassed to say it out loud, she had wanted to look like Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle, because after all if

you’re going to be a novelist in Paris you might as well do it properly. Now three weeks later, she no longer wanted to cry when she saw her reflection, but even so her hands kept going to her head as if adjusting a wig. With a conscious effort she turned her attention to the buttons on her brand new dove grey shirt, bought that morning from a shop, no, a boutique, on Rue de Grenelle. Two buttons undone looked too prim, three undone showed cleavage. She unfastened the third button, clicked her tongue and turned her attention back to the passengers. The crowd was thinning out now and she was starting to wonder if he had missed the train when she finally saw him.

He looked broken. Gaunt and tired, his face was shaded with scrappy stubble that didn’t suit him, a prison beard, and she was reminded of the potential for disaster that this visit carried with it. But when he saw her he started to smile and quicken his pace, and she smiled too, then started to feel self-conscious as she waited at the gate wondering what to do with her hands, her eyes. The distance between them seemed immense; smile and stare, smile and stare for fifty metres? Forty-five metres. She looked at the floor, up into the rafters. Forty metres, she looked back at Dexter, back at the floor. Thirty-five metres . . .

While covering this vast distance, he was surprised to notice how much she had changed in the eight weeks since he had last seen her, the two months since everything had happened. Her hair had been cut very short, a fringe brushed across her forehead, and she had more colour in her face; the summer face that he

remembered. Better dressed too: high shoes, a smart dark skirt, a pale grey shirt unbuttoned a touch too far, showing brown skin and a triangle of dark freckles below her neck. She still didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands or where to look, and he was starting to feel selfconscious too. Ten metres. What would he say, and how would he say it? Was it a yes or no?

He quickened his pace towards her, and then finally they were embracing.

‘You didn’t have to meet me.’

‘Of course I had to meet you. Tourist.’

‘I like this.’ He brushed his thumb across her short fringe. ‘There’s a word for it, isn’t there?’

‘Butch?’

‘Gamine. You look gamine.’ ‘Not butch?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘You should have seen it two weeks ago. I looked like a collaborator!’ His face didn’t move. ‘I went to a Parisian hairdresser for the first time. Terrifying! I sat in the chair, thinking Arrêtez-vous, Arrêtez-vous! The funny thing is even in Paris they ask you about your holidays. You think they’re going to talk about contemporary dance or can- man-ever-truly-be-free? but it’s “Que faites-vous de beau pour les vacances? Vous sortez ce soir?”’ Still his face was fixed. She was talking too much, trying too hard. Calm down. Don’t riff. Arrêtez-vous.

His hand touched the short hair at the back of her neck. ‘Well I think it suits you.’

‘Not sure I’ve got the features for it.’