George Beckman picked up the mail that was lying on his doormat. There was the usual assortment of letters, statements, bills and ‘To the Occupier’ envelopes.

“If you don’t even know who I am, Pal, you can go straight in the bin!” he said to himself after viewing the small pile comprising this last category.

His attention was drawn to a hand-written envelope with no postage and no address; he had a few of these occasionally, from people who had somehow found out his address and posted things through his door. His curiosity always got the better of him, however, so he read them before usually filing them in the shredder. Why the shredder and not the trash: because it wasn’t unknown for certain types of individual to search through the dustbins of others, looking for something salacious to sell to the gutter press.

George sat down at his kitchen table with his tea and toast and proceeded to open that one letter:

George sat staring at the two photos: that was definitely Angie and the young girl bore a definite resemblance to his sister’s two daughters.

“Bloody Hell!” he exclaimed, “I’m a father!”

George Alan Beckman was born in Dagenham, London, in 1977. Like many of the people who lived in the area at that time, several members of his family worked for the Ford Motor Company. He was a normal working class kid, who from an early age had a very cheeky personality which enabled him to get away with borderline bad behaviour. He was not so much bad though, as naughty, disrespectful and anti-authoritarian: he pushed the rules to the limit, just to see how far they would bend.

Although he was bright at school and could have done well academically, he never really tried hard enough; believing, as did most of his family, that he was destined to follow in the footsteps of his father, uncles, cousins and several female members of the Beckman clan. And as the saying goes: There’s nothing wrong with nepotism as long as it pays the rent! In fact, he’d had his interview at Ford and was due to start shortly after leaving school at sixteen.

Angela Pritchard was George’s first, proper girlfriend. They’d known each other practically all their lives, going to the same schools and living only half a dozen streets away from one another. The two families obviously knew each other from the Ford connection and Kenny Pritchard was George’s best mate. Angie was a year or so younger than George and her brother and as little kids she would often walk between the boys, holding on to their hand. It was therefore no great surprise to anyone when Angie and George started dating when she was fifteen.

The first year that they were together Angie was still at school, but George was earning so they had a rare old time socially, going out almost every night. Like George, Angie wasn’t expected to aim high in her choice of work, so her parents never said that she couldn’t go out with George on school nights—in fact, he was seen as being a good future husband for her.

But despite the odds against it happening, Angie got six good GCSE passes and decided to become a hairdresser; whereupon she travelled by public transport into nearby Ilford every day. George still saw her in the evenings, but she was often tired after working and her commute, so they didn’t go out as much as before.

Then, in 1994, George, who had a good singing voice and had always been a bit of an entertainer, on a whim, attended an open audition in London for a new stage musical that was being cast. He got called back for a second and then a third audition, before finally being offered the part. Both he and Angie were obviously overjoyed and after one celebratory drink too many, they slept together; an act that would ultimately lead to the birth of their daughter.

Because of the show’s rehearsal schedule, George quit his job at Ford and moved into lodgings near the theatre; and of course he saw very little of Angie after that. When she found out that she was pregnant, she had to make a decision; and the decision that she made was to break up with the father of her child and the one and only boy apart from her brother that she had ever loved.

She tried to let him down easy, telling him that if he was going to have a future on the stage then he needed the freedom to do whatever was necessary to advance his career, but that if it didn’t work out she would still be there in Dagenham waiting for him.

But it did work out: the show was a big hit that played in London for several years, after which he was offered yet more work. For a few years they exchanged Christmas and birthday cards, but for many reasons he never made it back to Dagenham and Angie made his family swear never to tell him about the baby, for everybody’s sake.

She worked for as long as she could and then when Samantha was born Angie’s mother looked after her during the day from the time that she was three months old. Angie had proved to be a talented hairdresser and became a popular stylist, and then when Sam was three years old she met and married Robbie O’Toole. They moved first to Ilford and then to Chigwell, where Angie opened her own salon in 2006. Angie and Robbie had had nearly nine, happy years of marriage before Robbie died of pancreatic cancer in 2009.

There was an address on Sam’s letter—Chigwell—that wasn’t so far from where he lived in Barnsbury and he had a few days off. What he had to decide, however, was whether he should ring first or just turn up unannounced. There was the third option, of course: should he go at all?

He had loved Angie, probably still did, but it had been a long time. She’d been married, happily, he assumed, and he’d neglected to stay in contact with her, even though he’d intended to. It was one thing to travel to Essex to look up an old friend but it’s quite another to turn up after all those years and say: “Hey—Daddy’s home!” and then expect to be welcomed with open arms. He needed to sleep on it.

George’s car approached Chigwell on the A113. He was already on the road he wanted, so now he just had find the shop. There it was: Styles By Angie O’Toole. He was dressed quite casually and as it was a sunny day he kept his sunglasses on. The car was parked twenty or so yards away and he walked back to the salon.

He stood outside looking at a few notices in the window and checking out the interior. He didn’t recognize her straight away and he didn’t want to leave a message, in case she wasn’t there.

“Hello! I didn’t expect you to come,” the young girl’s surprised voice exclaimed. George saw her reflection in the plate glass window first.

“So you’re Samantha, or is it Sam?”

“Samantha Amber O’Toole; a bit of a mouthful, but you can call me Sam, Mr Beckman. Are you coming in?”

“Only if you call me ‘George’, anything else might seem a little bit strange and we don’t know how your mum will want to handle this,” he said, smiling.

“No—good idea!” Sam pushed the shop door open. “Hi, Danni! This is George, an old friend of Mum’s.”

The girl behind the little reception desk may or may not have known who George Beckman was, but she definitely didn’t recognise him wearing sunglasses. Sam had spent a lot of time in the salon so she was friendly with all the stylists and juniors, and she used to earn her pocket money by washing customers’ hair and sitting and chatting with the older women who came in.

Her mother’s hair was cut differently from the last time that George had seen her, of course, and her face now had care lines—not really surprising, he thought—but she was still the Angie Pritchard that he’d known since she was only a few feet tall. She was cutting hair, looking in the mirror and chatting as she did so, but she somehow sensed her daughter’s presence and then saw her in her peripheral vision. She turned her head, briefly.

“Hello, Love! How was school?” And then she saw him.

“Hello, Ange! You’re looking well!”

“—Er—hello, George! I see you’ve met my darling daughter!” She looked at Sam and raised her eyebrows. Sam just smiled.

“Can I get you a tea or coffee, George, while we’re waiting for Mum to finish up here?” his daughter asked him. He smiled and nodded.

“White coffee with sugar, please, Sam.” He’d only been a dad for a little while, but he thought he understood what the expression ‘proud parent’ meant now; she was a lovely girl and a credit to the people who raised her—it was just a pity that he wasn’t one of them!

During his career George Beckman had sat in so many make-up chairs by then that the salon’s environment just seemed very natural to him. Hairdressers or make-up artists, they generally share that same cheerful, chatty, friendly disposition. They both work on the principle that it’s easier to do your job if you put your clients at ease, and after knowing her for only a few minutes he could see that Sam had it too.

“So how is school, Sam? What do you like and dislike? I’m afraid I didn’t take it very seriously and if it hadn’t have been for a bit of good luck I’d probably still be living in Dagenham and working shifts at the engine plant!”

“—And married to Mum.”

“—Mmm—maybe, it was looking that way. But then she would never have met your dad, would she? But back to my question—school—”

“Oh, not bad—quite good, actually! Well, apart from those silly, immature boys who insist on calling me ‘Samber’!” George smiled.

“And is there one of those silly, immature boys who you maybe like more than the others?” Sam looked at him and returned the smile.

“—Might be!” she said, slightly coyly. He recognised that same look, from now nearly half a lifetime ago.

“But I really like English and Drama. Maths and sciences I get by on, but I’m quite good at French and German: the teacher’s say that I’ve got a good ear.”

“And music?”

“Well, it’s only compulsory at our school in years seven to nine, but I play guitar and sing a bit, and Mum pays for me to learn the piano, but it’s a bit harder than guitar.”

“You said in your letter that you were a fan, Sam; I wouldn’t have thought that it’s the sort of music that someone your age likes.”

“Oh, yes, I like all sorts, not just chart stuff! If you like music, you shouldn’t be snobbish: good music is good music, Mum says. Even before she told me about you, when dad was still alive, the three of us went to see your shows. I don’t know if mum ever told him, but he liked you, too. We’ve also been to big rock gigs in stadiums and seen Jazz in Ronnie Scott’s and classical concerts at the Royal Albert and Festival Halls; but of course I like some types better than others.”