AIDAN. Yes, that’s correct. You live off a jobseeker’s allowance and your daughter permanently resides with your ex-wife?

BRADSHAW sits.

BRADSHAW. How do you know this?

AIDAN. Oh, we’re very resourceful here. How many times do you see her in a month, your daughter, sorry, Carrie?

BRADSHAW. Depends, doesn’t it?

AIDAN. But not on a daily basis?

BRADSHAW. No, because –

AIDAN. So we can say, largely speaking, on a week-by-week basis, you are largely absent from Carrie’s life?

BRADSHAW. We speak, on the phone and we go to the cinema or for a walk.

AIDAN. Every week? Twice a month?

BRADSHAW. Yes. But we speak on the –

AIDAN. You see your daughter for a few hours, twice a month?

BRADSHAW. This is none of your business.

AIDAN. But it’s not surprising then, is it?

BRADSHAW. What isn’t?

,

AIDAN. Do you know what magazine I subscribe to? New Scientist. I love it! I am such a geek at heart, aren’t I, Charlotte?

CHARLOTTE. Yeah.

AIDAN. Charlotte will tell you. I’m a total nerd. My idea of fun is sitting on my roof terrace, with a beer, reading New Scientist magazine.

I like this magazine because I never fail to find something of interest in it. Every time I read an issue of New Scientist, I understand the world that I am living in a little better.

He gets up, looks for a particular copy of the magazine in a pile, flicks through it.

Blows your mind, some of this stuff. Completely blows your –

He finds the article he is looking for, shows it to MR BRADSHAW.

– for example, look at this.

He waits while MR BRADSHAW reads the article. After a moment, AIDAN turns to CHARLOTTE.

What this particular article says, Charlotte, is that girls who grow up with absent fathers begin menstruating years earlier than girls whose fathers are present, as primary-care givers. That’s just a scientific fact. Puberty starts at a young age when the father is not around.

I suppose this must be something very primal, very hard-wired, to do with abandoned young girls needing to be able to attract a mate at an earlier age, in order for that mate to provide the protection, the male influence that she should, by rights, be receiving from her father.

When the father is absent, she is endocrinally forced to become sexually available.

,

My Isobel’s flat as a board, thank God!

MR BRADSHAW offers the magazine back.

You can keep that if you like. I subscribe electronically now –

MR BRADSHAW drops the magazine on the floor.

BRADSHAW. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but what are you trying to –