Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (40 page)

Lauren and I had become pen pals through a mutual family friend. There was no rhyme or reason to it. People just thought that
seeing as we were the same age, we’d probably have some of the same interests. We didn’t, really. Lauren liked Bananarama,
whereas I liked Huey Lewis and the News and Michael Jackson. Lauren liked
Pretty in Pink,
whereas you’d be hard pushed to make me admit that
anything
was better than
Ghostbusters.
I have often thought, in fact, that were I ever to be asked for my specialist chosen subject on
Mastermind,
I would go for
Ghost-busters.

Well, that or
Teen Wolf.

What made our friendship work was the distance. It meant that when we wrote to each other, it felt like we were sending our
thoughts thousands of miles away, even though it would’ve taken just forty minutes in a car.

After we’d talked on the phone, I’d looked in the Box. I knew there were still some of the old letters there. I’d read them.

There had only ever been one rival in life for my pen pal attentions. A French girl named Natalia. Here is a typical letter:

Hello Daniel!

How are you? Me, I’mm fine.

Now! I’m 14 years (fourteen)—3 april!

A cat

Do you like JIMMY SOMMERVILLE and ELTON JOHN?

Me, I like the pop singers. They’re marvellous.

I hope than you have good!

(J’espere que tu vas bien)

Love from Natalia

I never really knew what to write back to Natalia. I suppose I could simply have written:

Hello back

I am well

Me too

An ostrich

No

You too

Daniel

… but that would’ve looked like a haiku, and I must
never
be accused of trying to write a haiku.

With Lauren it had been different. Precisely because we knew different people meant we could be honest with each other. And
it helped that we had a language in common. We could be open, knowing that no one—not our friends, not our parents, not
anyone
—would ever read our letters. Mainly because 95 percent of them were about Bananarama or Michael Jackson, and that’s quite
a boring thing for parents to have to read. My secrets were safe with her, and hers with me. It was a mutually beneficial
arrangement, which these days, almost anyone can have, thanks to My-Space, and thanks to Facebook. But
we
had it on paper. And for some reason, that makes it more special.

I sat, in Bar Kick in Shoreditch, waiting for Lauren to arrive.

This had been my old stomping ground just a year before, and I looked around. Nothing had changed. There were still the same
European-style football tables, which, though fancy, will
never
be as good as the ones you find in the back of old men’s pubs. Still the same men with interesting haircuts behind the bar,
talking in Portuguese or Italian. Still the musty smell and the nostalgic pictures on the wall. I liked it here.

I ordered a Coke and sat near the back.

And maybe five minutes later, in she walked.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said, putting a small rucksack down on the floor. “You know what the tube’s like.”

I hadn’t known whether to shake her hand or hug her, so I did an awkward mix of the two. By which I don’t mean I hugged her
hand. I just kind of got a bit too close and
then
shook her hand. Was this because I wasn’t into this anymore, or because she was a girl? I couldn’t tell.

“It’s really great to see you!” she said, brightly. “So tell me
everything.
Are you married? What do you do? Do you live round here?”

She seemed genuinely excited. In precisely the same way
I’d
been when meeting Simon, or Tarek, or Cameron. Full of questions, full of energy.

“I’m married,” I said. “To an Australian girl. It’s great.”

“Amazing! God,
I
nearly got married! Haven’t yet, though, although I wouldn’t say no to half these barmen…”

“They
do
have interesting haircuts,” I said. “How about you? Married?”

She looked at me oddly.

“I just
said
I wasn’t!” she said.

“God, yes, sorry, I know. Sorry,” I said.

There was an awkward pause, and then she laughed.

“I guess this was always going to be a bit weird. I haven’t seen you in… how long?”

“Years,” I said, shaking my head. “It must be
years.
”

“Well, it’s not
months,
” she said, and laughed again.

I was really messing this up. I took a sip of my Coke, hoping the caffeine would make me feel myself again. At least until
this was over. I tried again.

“So what do you do?” I asked. “Nowadays, I mean?”

“Well, I’ve just come back from traveling the world. Or, at least, South-East Asia. I never traveled, really, apart from to
Spain and France, and that doesn’t really count, because that’s just an hour or two on the plane. So I decided to take some
time out and spend a year on the road. I did Thailand, Australia, a bit of India. I spent some time in Nepal, before heading
to…”

I’d started to zone out a little. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was being a twat. But for some reason, I was finding it hard
to take in all the facts of someone else’s life. I’d had a real hunger for these facts before. A real interest. But I was
tired, now, and finding out about Andy had knocked me for six. Maybe I just didn’t have room in my head for any more things
which…

“Daniel?”

Oops.

“Yeah!” I said.

“I was just asking if you’d been to Nepal?”

“No!” I said. “Sorry. No. I haven’t. But I’d like to. One day.”

“Are you okay?” she said, with a smile.

“I’m good.”

Her smile fell a little.

“Did you not want to meet with me?” she said.

And then I thought about it. And I realized that I
hadn’t
wanted to meet with her. And I realized what an
idiot
that made me. And how
different
I was acting. And how
excited
I should be. And so I said…

“I’m so sorry. I’ve just had a weird time lately. Start again. Start at Thailand. Tell me everything.”

And this time, I made sure I listened.

“So what else?” I said, on the second beer. “I mean I know you work in IT…”

“Only temporarily!” she said. “God, didn’t you think that
everyone
would work in IT?”

“I never doubted it,” I said. “And what else? You have a cat?”

“Peewee,” she said. “You?”

“No cats. Or Peewees. Although sometimes I steal next door’s for an evening.”

“Your next door neighbor has a Peewee?”

“I have no idea what that means.”

We’d started to laugh. And have fun. It had taken a little while to get to. It had taken most of
South-East Asia
to get to. But now it was here, it was welcome.

“Do you remember, you were always writing to me about different hobbies you were starting?”

“Karate. Yup. That was one. I made it to a white-belt-with-red-tips. My friend Anil told me that was very impressive. And
then there was autograph-hunting. I got
three.
There just weren’t very many celebrities wandering around Leicestershire at the time.”

“What else?”

“Stamp collecting. Postcards of old planes. World Cup stickers.”

“Ha. Like every other lad.”

“Yeah. But that one I nearly
did.
Just needed a Hungarian. Otherwise I’d have
done
it.”

“Well, you
nearly
did it. You
tried.
There’s always that.”

“Yeah. There’s always that.”

Lauren smiled again.

“Do you remember, you used to be so into Michael Jackson?” she said. “And you used to write me these letters detailing exactly
what you thought each lyric of each song meant?”

I blushed slightly.

“You even thought he was speaking directly to you on the ‘Black or White’ single.”

“It wasn’t necessarily about racism!” I said. “It could
just
have easily been about little boys in Loughborough!”

And then we’d both laughed, because, actually, it
could.

“Did I ever tell you about Cameron?” I asked. “In any of my letters?”

“Cameron?” she said, tapping her lip with her finger.

“Doesn’t matter. You probably didn’t memorize my letters. Well, he’s the guy who got me into Michael Jackson. A Fijian kid.
Turns out he’s a chief. He’s got his own village!”

“What?”

“Seriously. And my mate Simon’s solved time travel. A couple of them are architects, which is a great job, but given the choice
I’d rather be a time traveler.”

“That’s
incredible,
” she said. “And here’s me, working
temporarily
in IT for what seems like
five years
…”

“Well, Cameron works in IT, too… there’s nothing wrong with IT…”

“Yeah, but… it just makes me sound a bit
boring.
”

“It does not! You have a cat named Peewee!
That’s
not boring!”

“It’s no Fijian chief, though.”

“Well… very few cats
are,
” I said, and then I laughed, because I thought that was quite a good joke, but Lauren didn’t get it. It was embarrassing.
I’d been expecting her to laugh, so now I was just a man laughing at a Fijian cat. But it seemed like Lauren was thinking
of something else.

“Are you ever dissatisfied?” she said. “As you approach thirty, I mean?”

“I wouldn’t say dissatisfied. For me, it was more about turning into a man. Leaving my boyish ways behind.”

“It’s a benchmark, though, isn’t it?” she said.

“It
is
a benchmark,” I said, and for a moment, we just sat there, in silence.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked, and when she nodded, I told her
everything.

“I’d
wondered
why you seemed so incredibly keen to meet up,” said Lauren, after I’d told her about Anil, about Simon, about LA car chases,
giant rabbit heads, Berlin rappers… and Andy. “I mean, usually people just turn up on Facebook, force you to be their friend,
and you get one email from them saying they’ve got two kids and an interest in badminton.”

“This is face-to-Facebook,” I said, still quite proud of that.

“I guess it’s nice that you still have hobbies,” she said.

“Hanne used to call them stupid boy projects. Being a girl, you may agree.”

Lauren thought about it.

“No. No, I don’t. There’s nothing stupid about wanting to see old friends. There’s nothing stupid about
this,
is there? You and me sat here, catching up? So why did you stop?”

“Well, you know. After the whole Andy thing, I just kind of lost interest.”

“Out of respect for him?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. In some way. I felt like I was intruding on something. On something private. Like I’d just been
blundering about, thoughtlessly and selfishly, never considering for a moment that something like that could have happened
to
anyone.
I mean, what if I’d phoned his house? What if I’d said something stupid? It just felt right to back off and leave things
alone for a while.”

Lauren thought about it for a moment or two.

“You’re wrong,” she said.

“Eh?”

“You’re
wrong.
It’s only my opinion, but you’re wrong. If anything, this should have made you do it
more.
Because in some ways, it’s precisely what your whole… ‘adventure’… has been about.”

I was about to ask her to elaborate, but I didn’t need to…

“What I mean is, you’ve found out one of the great big secrets about life. That it can end. And instead of deciding to make
the most of it, and do the things you want while you can, you’ve decided to… well, what?”

“Do some DIY and stuff.”

“Exactly. But Daniel—
life is for living.
Listen, I’m not going to preach to you. I’ve only heard what you’ve just told me and I don’t know any of the details and,
to be fair, I haven’t seen you in years. But it seems like maybe you shouldn’t be
stopping
this because of Andy. But
starting
it.”

I looked at my bottle of Beck’s.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.

It was a few minutes later, and we’d moved on to more light-hearted conversation. What Lauren had said was still tingling
at the back of my mind, though. It had been classic Lauren. Yeah, so our problems when we were kids weren’t quite so dramatic.
But Lauren had always been the one with the level-headed advice. She’d always been level-headed. But
she
thought that meant she was boring.

“You can’t
really
think you’re boring,” I said. “There must be
something.
”

“I am! I’m boring! I’m the most boring person in this bar!”

“Something! A hobby! An interest! There is
no such thing
as a boring person…”

She thought about it.

“You’ll think I’m odd.”

“Odd or boring—which would you prefer?”

She glanced at her rucksack.

“There is
one
thing,” she said.

“Okay?”

“You’ll think I’m
odd!
” she said, again.

“I won’t! What is it?”

She took a deep breath.

“I analyze dreams.”

Christ. What an
oddball.

“That’s good!” I said. “That’s… good!”

“I’m no expert,” she said. “I picked up this book at a hostel. Someone had left it behind, and I got really into it. Want
to see?”

“Yes!” I said, and so she got it out.

I looked at it.
The Dictionary of Dreams
by Gustavus Hindman Miller.

“So when you say you analyze dreams, you mean you look them up in an old book?” I said.

“Kind of,” she said. “It’s a starting point.”

“But this was published a million years ago! What if someone dreamed of an iPod?”