Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (8 page)

Everyone there had seemed so relaxed about things. So happy to be leaving their twenties and entering their thirties. It had
seemed much more of an adventure to them than I’d thought it could be. Like they were all in it together. But it was easy
for Neil. He had those people around him all the time. People he’d grown up with. People who’d watched him stumble and trip
and fall through the earlier years. People who knew him not just for what he was, but for how he
became
what he was.

It was something I wasn’t sure I had.

The lights were out as I walked into the house. I needed food. Chips. Or pizza. Or a packet of Doritos.

On the stairs was a small message from Lizzie.

Hey baby

Got in late, but getting up early… gone to bed already.

Left you a plate in the kitchen.

Love,

Lx

Aw.

Some things about growing up are great. My tummy rumbled in appreciation. But there was something else I wanted to do first.
Something that Lizzie had joked about, but which now seemed almost… sensible. And strangely urgent.

I edged my way past the ladder in the hallway and sidled up to my computer. I turned it on and typed in a Web address.

Friends Reunited.

I’d last been on the site maybe four or five years earlier, when I’d left the following profile:

Hello. There is something you should know. At school I was obsessed with you. That obsession has only grown with time. Three
years ago I began to follow you around. I am actually standing behind you as you read this.

I hadn’t really known what else to write at the time. Finding old friends hadn’t really been a priority—it had been a laugh,
a fad—and I’d thought this would suffice for the time being. But as I tapped in my usual password and username, it seemed
Friends Reunited disagreed…

Your account has been removed because you have posted abusive or misleading information.

Eh? I couldn’t believe it. I had been
banned
from Friends Reunited! Who gets
banned
from Friends Reunited? Banned! For being “abusive”! Or “misleading”! And which one was it, anyway? What if it had been neither?
What if I really
had
been some kind of crazy-faced stalker, who’d engineered it so that the object of his affection would be reading that profile
just as he appeared from behind the curtains? Eh?
Then
they’d be sorry!

I grumpily created a new account and started to click my way around, feeling slightly dirty thanks to Friends Reunited’s unfounded
allegations of abuse and mistrust. I found my way to my first two schools…

Park Place Primary School, Dundee:
where I first vomited on Scott Butcher’s lap. I’m not sure why I wrote “first” there; it’s not like it happened more than
once. It would have been a pretty odd hobby.

Holywell Junior School, Loughborough:
where I was mistaken for P. WALLS and which later burned down. Two incidents which I must assure you are completely unconnected.

I was to be disappointed. I’d expected a trea sure trove of old names—names that would tug at the heartstrings and redden
the cheeks. But none of the big guns were on there. None of the major players. None of my
gang.

How had Neil done it? How had Neil managed to keep hold of everyone?

Sure, there was Lucy Redmond. But Lucy Redmond stank of chips and used to beat people up.

Mmm. Chips.

Just a few more minutes…

And anyway, who’d want to be reunited with old chippy-fists Redmond? Plus, her uncle once stabbed a man. (I may or may not
have changed her name.)

And so I moved on to Ralph Allen School, and then Garendon, but it was the same story. My gang seemed to be a gang that didn’t
want to be found. There were interesting diversions, of course. People I remembered, or half-remembered, or
thought
I remembered. People who were reaching out to their pasts, and saying hello, and filling you in on twenty years in just one
or two simple sentences. Whole lives summed up in twelve words or less…

… I’m now dad to Harvey and working in Web design…

… I got married in September to Jon, we are very happy…

But where there was celebration, there were also some that hinted at… something
else.
Dreams gone wrong. Or opportunities missed. Or regrets just realized. Or simply the fear of being forgotten…

… Bought a house. Too young. Had a kid. Too young. Get in touch and let’s remember better times…

… Hi. Does anyone remember me? Pleeeeeease email me if you do…

… Would love anyone who remembers me to get in touch… oh, and if anyone needs a wedding dress, I’ve got one for sale. Worn
once, never used…

Some were married. Some already divorced. Some had kids. Some talked only of work. And the first girl I ever kissed had just
come out as a lesbian. I was happy for her. Although I couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible.

But down through those long lists of names, on page after page, I saw no Cameron Dewa. No Akira Matsui. And no Christopher
Guirrean.

All I really wanted was to see whether these people were okay; whether they were still having fun; whether they were still
out there. Just knowing would’ve been enough.

I thought about what Neil’s friend Simon had said tonight, about growing up, about growing older.
“Makes it seem less worrying, doesn’t it, when you know
everyone’s
doing it…”

I thought back to Christopher Guirrean. To our first day at school. We had bonded instantly, best friends from the first moment
we laid eyes upon each other. For me, he summed up an entire part of my life. A part that had evaporated the minute we’d clambered
into our canary-yellow Morris Ital and driven out of Dundee. And as I searched the site, and searched it some more, I realized
Chris was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be
found.

Still. Maybe
he’d
find
me
one day.

Maybe
he
was going through the same thing
I
was.

It made sense. We were the same age. Always had been. From the same place. Always had been. Maybe right now, Christopher was
on a computer, somewhere, too…

Or maybe he was eating chips.

God, I was hungry.

Quickly, I entered a new profile onto Friends Reunited.

Hi. It’s Daniel here. Daniel Wallace. I’m just updating my address book. Get in touch!

I didn’t quite know what else to type. Just updating my address book seemed a good enough excuse. I logged out, and typed
a few names into Google. But nothing really startling came up. A Chris Guirrean who was about forty years too old to be mine.
An Akira Matsui who was about twenty years too young. I sighed. Ah well. It couldn’t have been
that
easy. But at least now I’d made an effort to be found. I’d put my fingerprint out there and invited people to get in touch.
I’d
done
something.

And anyway, I thought, what was I so worried about? I was just in a weird place, was all, during a time of change. I wandered
into the kitchen and noticed that Lizzie had indeed left me a plate. It was covered in tinfoil, and I filled a glass with
water, grabbed a knife and fork and took it all to the living room.

Thing is, I thought, I’d been right last time. I should just be more accepting of the way my life was going. Embrace the sockets
that needed mending. Buy
more
brushed aluminum frames, not less.
Display
my display cushions. Light a scented candle and put
extra
cumin and basil and coriander on my sun-dried tomato focaccia.

I sat down on the sofa, feeling marginally better about the whole experience, took a sip of my water and took the tinfoil
off my plate.

And then I just stared at it.

It was a lamb, mint and apricot sausage. A sausage of the week. I had been
bought
a
sausage of the week!
There was mash, too, though, and I suppose mash is a bit like chips, so maybe I could just pretend this was sausage and chips…
but the mash was a bed of
minted
mash with a
hint
of rosemary and port
jus
…

It was the most grown-up post-pub meal possible.

I looked at my tap water, half expecting it to be
sparkling.

What would
Ian
say?

And then I
remembered
what Ian had said…

“They have an Internet café in Chislehurst now.”

No, not that. The thing about being at peace…

“Sometimes, to be at peace with what’s coming up, you have to be in touch with what’s already happened.”

He was right!

He was
so
right!

Yeah, so he’d been talking about Chislehurst at the time, but the point remained. That was why Neil and his mates were so
laid-back. That was why turning thirty for him was a night of joy, and friendship, and memories. I suddenly thought about
my
thirtieth. What would
I
do? Where would
my
mates be? Wag would probably still be on tour. Ian would probably be in that Internet café. It’d just be me, with four display
cushions and a sausage of the week.

Maybe I needed to do what Ian had inadvertently suggested… maybe I needed to be in touch with what had already happened. Subconsciously,
I’d already started tonight… I thought back to what I’d written on the Web…

Hi. It’s Daniel here. Daniel Wallace. I’m just updating my address book. Get in touch!

I put the plate down and bounded to the corner of the room, where the contents of the box that Lizzie and I had been going
through still lay… and there, on the top of the pile…

… was my old address book.

Just updating my address book,
I thought.
That’s all. Just updating it.

I flicked it open to page one.

A.

Anil.

Wild West Day at school.

His mum’s curries.

That night in Yorkshire, which we’d always said we’d do again, but never ever did…

Friends Forever.

I picked up my phone. Did I still have his number? It’d been years. I’d changed phones at least twice since then.

I checked.

No luck.

But wait.

I ran downstairs, rifled through my desk, until I found it—an old SIM card from an old phone…

I unfastened the back of my BlackBerry, and jammed the SIM card in…

I turned it back on…

Waiting…

Waiting…

It
worked.

I hit Address Book.

I hit A.

And there it was… ANIL.

I paused for a second. I pressed Dial.

Minutes later, I sat down, and smiled. I had a
plan.
Something to do. With no idea of where it would lead, or what would happen, or how it had come to this. But this was fun,
I thought.
I’m just updating my address book.

I picked up my sausage with my fingers and chewed the end off. The way sausages are
supposed
to be eaten.

And then something else caught my eye.

I looked at the pile of pictures, and papers, and at the big bundle of letters, all tied together with a red elastic band.