But really,
could this man sink any lower in our esteem? At the end of last night’s
episodes, we see Geoff sitting opposite an attractive and much younger woman,
apparently from an escort service. He mentioned money, so she is clearly not
someone he is meeting innocently. Might it be the case that the money he is
stealing from the restaurant is funding this meeting?
Geoff’s
latest plan to remove Yasmeen totally from her support network is to tell how
much better their lives will be in Cyprus. There may well be sun, cheap houses,
oranges in an orangery, but Yasmeen would be at Geoff’s mercy for the whole
time.
One of his
tricks in persuading Yasmeen to fall totally into his grasp and submit her will
to his, is to praise her, to tell her how gorgeous she looks, that she deserves
a ‘better’ life and of course, that he loves her. He whirls her round the
living room, singing The Last Waltz. And Yasmeen seems grateful!
Occasionally,
just occasionally, Geoff shows remorse, which seems genuine and so his horrific
behaviour, as contrasted with the remorse, becomes all the more convincing. The
script writers have got this absolutely right.
He has
succeeded so well in his manipulation of her that he has brought Yasmeen to the
sorry pass, where she agrees to disown her own granddaughter, Alya, who sees
with great clarity exactly what Geoff is doing. ‘I have to let her go,’ says
Yasmeen. Unbelievable! Later, even
though Geoff isn’t in, it takes Alya a good while to get Yasmeen to agree to
let her in. Once inside, Alya shows her grandmother the article of the affray
in which Geoff was involved, with a woman called Jocelyn. Geoff returns and
says that Jocelyn attacked him, even though he was the one arrested. Make what
you will of that!
Geoff
brings home a lovely meal and says, ‘Tonight is all about you!’ Managing
somehow to gather up the courage, Yasmeen asks Geoff about the affray. After a
while, defending himself, he looks murderous and throws Yasmeen’s food onto the
floor, breaking the plate, food all over the carpet, the carpet that Yasmeen
has probably cleaned a 100 times since Geoff’s reign. We then witness the heart-breaking
sight of Yasmeen trying to rescue the food and eating some off the carpet. He
denounces her for this and Yasmeen says that she knows she’s hard to live with.
‘Hard?’ exclaims Geoff. ‘Impossible!’ he concludes. ‘You make me sick,’ he adds
for good measure, as Yasmeen sobs into the carpet. He puts his coat on and
heads towards the door. Yasmeen begs him not to go. She asks him to tell her
more about Cyprus. ‘You’ll be lucky if I went to Stockport with you, never mind
Cyprus.’
Hard though
this storyline is to watch, really hard, nevertheless it has brought about some
terrific acting from the two main players. So utterly convincing.
By Ruth Owen
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