Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (14 page)

“Like who?”

“I dunno. Peter Gibson.”

Peter Gibson. Another name from the Book. Another address in need of updating.

“Yeah, Peter…”

“He was always drawing, wasn’t he? And he had that massive train set, too…”

We both turned to see my train approaching.

Anil looked misty-eyed for a second.

“I wonder where everyone is,” he said. “You know. Not just Peter Gibson, or that albino kid. But the others. When you think
about it, they could be
anywhere.
”

We both turned and looked at the big map behind us. But then we turned back again, because it was a map of Leicestershire
and, as such, not particularly inspiring.

But I smiled.

Because I
had
thought about what Anil was saying.

And on the train home, I’d think about nothing else.

M
y letter to Andy Clements had been one of great hope and optimism. I didn’t know whether he still lived in the same place.
I didn’t know if he’d remember me, or ever thought about me, or even if he did and he had, he’d want to reply. Maybe he was
a doctor, or a lawyer, or a stuntman, or a thief. Maybe he was no longer Andy—maybe he was
Andrea.
I was entering a whole new world here—a world of other people’s futures—and it was exciting.

The first thing I’d done when I’d got home was open up my old address book and write in three new addresses. Anil’s. Mikey’s.
And Simon’s. It felt good, doing that. Putting a line through the old ones. Inking in the new ones. It didn’t feel like making
new friends. It felt like confirming old ones. As if I’d backed them up, somehow. Made them safe. Secured them for the future.

I thought about the boys. It was
great
that Simon was a kind and affable manager.
Brilliant
that Michael had waved the army goodbye and done something else instead.
Incredible
that Anil was designing buildings. And wonderful that, like me, they seemed not entirely at ease with the world of the thirtysomething.
I mean, Simon still had a
Back to the Future III
poster on his wall, for God’s sake. And Mikey? Mikey tries to cut his hair with an electric shaver.

But what about the others?

When I’d returned from Loughborough—after bringing a tired Lizzie a cup of hot chocolate and kissing her goodnight—I’d excitedly
gone back upstairs and reopened the Box, looking for evidence and clues. As far as Peter Gibson went, I found just one letter
of note, which I studied with all the tenacity of Columbo. Could this give me any indication about what he might be doing
nowadays?

COWABUNGA DUDE!

Yes, turtle mania has hit England and turtle power has been at number 1 for three weeks! Sorry it took me so long to reply
to your letter. Boy you live in an exciting area. No tramps on fire here!

“No tramps on fire”? Was this an expression of the time, like “magic,” “wicked,” or, indeed, “cowabunga”? Or
could
it be a reference to the fact that shortly after moving away from Loughborough I had seen a tramp on fire, and told Peter
about it in a letter?

It’s been very hot here lately and on Friday 4th the temperature reached 99 degree fahernheit!! “Cor what a scorcher!,” the
hottest in the midlands since 1911!

So. The weather interested him. He was a fan of tabloid-style headlines. And he was a history buff!

In the bank holiday we will be going away in our caravan to where they have tennis courts and a pool on site! Ha-hoo! Hoo-ray!

He enjoyed caravanning. And sports. So much so he would say “Ha-hoo!”

My paper round is going well, apart from the odd finger getting caught in letterbox’s! I have now had 8 pounds from the shop
and can’t wait for Christmas tips!

An interest in the media. Money-oriented. He had an odd finger.

I have decided one day I want to be an architect in London.

Bye

P. Gibson

Gah. And as quick as that, the trail ran cold.

But still. It raised an interesting question. What
would
everyone be up to nowadays?

When I was about fifteen, my form tutor announced with great excitement that we were all to report at once to the careers
adviser, Mr. Stott, who had something remarkable to share with us.

“We have a new piece of software in the department,” he announced. “It is able to accurately predict, based on your skills,
abilities, likes and dislikes, your ideal job.”

We all looked, as one, to the rather bruised and scratched beige computer which apparently now held all our futures within
its blinking green monitor.

“There is no need for guesswork anymore. By simply taking ten minutes to answer all the questions in front of you, the computer
will compute the way your life should go.”

I am not sure quite why we trusted Mr. Stott so much on this. Many of us had generally stopped taking him particularly seriously
as a careers adviser since the day he’d announced his imminent departure as he’d suddenly realized—eight years into the job—that
careers advice wasn’t the job for him.

But today was different—because today involved
technology.
These were the
nineties
—things were moving on! By the year 2000
all
jobs would be doled out by robots!

Excited, but nervous, we entered our answers as best we could, and a mere eighteen hours later, the supercomputer had worked
it all out.

Justin Betts, a boy who was virtually all muscle and who would later be dubbed a hero by the local paper after single-handedly
tackling a burly burglar, was told that his ideal career would be “midwife.” Chris Jones was told he should be a jewelry designer,
Alec Lester an insurance broker, and Daniel Vincent was instructed to pursue a life in medical photography—an odd choice for
a boy who once vomited after seeing a picture of a burned nipple.

And me? Well, with my willingness to work as part of a team or on my own, my ambitions to study German at A Level, and my
predicted grade D in maths GCSE, I was uniquely placed to excel as Britain’s newest “quarry manager.”

I am not sure what it is about me that the computer thought would be so useful to the quarry management industry. I had mentioned
neither an ambition to manage, nor a particular fondness for quarries. If I’m absolutely honest, I find quarries a little
dull. And I wasn’t alone in my doubts. No one at school seemed particularly convinced by the results. Chris Jones decided
he’d be rubbish at designing jewelry. To this day, I am told Justin Betts is yet to supervise a birth. And just two days later,
Daniel Vincent loudly declared that he had seen his last burned nipple. When we left school, none of us really knew
where
we were heading.

Which is what, I thought, while brushing my teeth and preparing for bed, would make finding out where everyone was so very
exciting.

If, that is, I would be allowed.

Don’t get me wrong—I was definitely with the right girl. But what’s acceptable when you’re courting and what’s acceptable
when you’re married are two separate things. Deep down, I knew Lizzie would be happy for me, reconnecting with my past, seeing
old names and faces. It might even help her know me even better. But I also knew that this might take time. And there were
window frames to paint.

I wondered what Wag and Ian were up to right now.

If only there was someone I could talk to.

“So…” said Hanne, tucking into her bagel. “What’s new?”

It was the next day and we were sitting on a bench in Holland Park. Hanne, my straight-talking Norwegian ex-girlfriend, worked
at a radio station not too far away from here. Sometimes we’d meet up for lunch, or a coffee, and talk about the world and
our places in it. But today she could only spare half an hour. She’d be meeting her new boyfriend in an hour just down the
road.

“Well,” I said. “Let’s see… Ian’s moved to Chislehurst, Wag’s gone on tour, Lizzie’s got a new job. That’s about it.”

“And you? How about you?”

“I’ve been to Loughborough, where I spent the weekend with chefs and architects and gypsy witches and time travelers.”

“Was it a nerds convention?”

Tsk.

“It was
not
a nerds convention, no,” I said. “They’re old friends.”

“You’re old friends with a gypsy witch from Loughborough?” she said. “How come you never mentioned a gypsy witch from Loughborough
when we were going out?”

“Well, the gypsy witch isn’t specifically my friend. It’s her granddaughter. And it’s more that she’s going out with a friend
of mine. Mikey.”

“Who’s Mikey?”

“I knew him when I was little.”

“Why were you hanging out with him?” she said, as if it was the oddest thing in the world. “Someone you knew when you were
little?”

“Well… because we were friends,” I said. “I thought it’d be nice to see him again. I mean, I wasn’t sure at first, because
it can be a bit weird…”

“It
sounds
weird.”

“It
wasn’t
weird. He’s just a guy I hadn’t seen in about twenty years, and…”

“I’ve never understood that. I’ve never understood this obsession with tracking down your past. Why go back? Life is about
moving on. That’s
why
it moves on. Look—watch!”

She held her finger up in the air and didn’t say a word.

“See? That was it moving on!”

“But sometimes you have to look back to look forward.”

Hanne thought about it.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But it sounds like something Oprah would say.”

Hanne ignored me.

“People should move on. You know my friend Guro? She still loves Take That. She still believes one day they will reform. It
has been ten years, and still on Guro’s computer is a Take That screen-saver. It’s like this Facebook thing. Facebook is ridiculous.
People tap-tap-tapping away and tracking people down just to swap trivia… getting little messages saying they’re feeling ill
or they’ve just eaten an egg. If I want to tell people I’ve just eaten an egg, I phone them and I say, ‘I’ve just eaten an
egg.’”

“Why on
earth
would you phone people to tell them you’ve just eaten an egg?”

“That’s beside the point. All I’m saying, Dan, is when you look back, all you ever discover is that most of your old friends
now work in IT. It’s boring.”

“You do
not
just find that out. I’ve just told you. One of them’s a time lord.”

“Is he really?” said Hanne, not sounding as convinced as I was. “And what does he do when he’s not time traveling?”

“He runs a carvery near a motorway.”

Hanne just nodded and took another bite of her bagel.

“But he’s not in IT!” I said, rather offended. “You said they’d all be in IT!”

“What about the others?”

“I haven’t started yet!”

“Ah, so you’re
going
to start, then. Because there
will
be others, won’t there?”

“I didn’t say that,” I said, a little too defensively, but we both knew that there would. That was, after all, why I’d phoned
her and asked to meet.

“Can I give you one piece of advice?” said Hanne, with great calm.

I nodded.

“Tell Lizzie. I know you and I know how you operate. Tell her now. Get it out of the way and if she says it’s okay, do whatever
it is you’re thinking about doing. You see, that was the thing about you and me. It wasn’t the things you did that bothered
me. It was the not
telling
me about the things you were
thinking
about doing…”

Hanne had a point. She’d dumped me when I’d started an international cult and not told her about it. Yeah, that’s right. That
old story.