Is Patrick Melrose a good father?

As I figured it might, the second section of Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk shifts the focus or POV away from Patrick Melrose's 5-year-old son, Robert, and now, a year later (2001) Patrick is the central figure - and we see that his maturation into a good husband and dad is built on a foundation of sand: he's a successful lawyer (and Oxford grad), and a father of 2 boys, but he's a wreck - up most of the night and hooked on a # of prescription drugs to help him sleep, relax, and then be alert - a very bad omen considering his history of serious drug abuse. Perhaps worse, he's thinking about his "mid-life crisis" and is on the verge of trying to start an affair with a beautiful young woman and ex-girlfriend apparently, Julia, who seems to be staying w/ him and his almost unknown (to us) wife. In fact, the section ends with his standing outside her doorway thinking about going into her bedroom in the early-morning hours until caught in the near-act by son Robert, the highly precocious and perceptive young child. There's still so much in this volume that's murky, unclear, for example who exactly is Patrick's wife, how did they meet, how did his somehow enter in a short span into matrimony and parenthood? And who is this Julia, where did she come from, and why on earth is she living w/ them? The crisis or conflict of the novel is Patrick's mother's senility and her decision to turn over her fairly large estate to the shyster fake who's running her so-called charity organization; Patrick is of course furious about this decision, but finds it very difficult to articulate his anger toward his mother, for fear of seeming mercenary. She was a terrible and non-protective mother to him and he owes her nothing, really, except his life and his gene pool. Despite his anti-social behavior in some ways he's still a conventional, uptight Brit - how did he ever manage to get into Oxford and into the legal profession, given his long profligacy and self-abuse? Is it another British, class thing? - people of his birth and stature get a free pass right into adulthood? We have to suspect that he's not a very good lawyer - and despite his ability to seem so, that he's not a very good husband or father, either.