Friends Like These

by Danny Wallace

  He probably didn’t think I was gay, anyway.

  ‘Of course he thought you were gay!’ said Hanne, with her latte in her hand. We were in the café near the radio station she works at. ‘You said you wanted to finally get together with him! You asked if you were coming on too strong! I’m surprised more people haven’t said they can’t meet up with you.’

  I thought about Akira. What had I written to him? Had I come on too strong there, too? Why hadn’t he replied?

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Hanne, ‘why do you have to meet them? If you’d just gone on Facebook, you could have done things more slowly, built something up first…’

  ‘Why do you suddenly love Facebook so much? You’re obsessed!’

  ‘I have told you, it is a handy business tool!’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, right, you Facebook… face.’

  As insults go, it wasn’t brilliant.

  ‘And anyway, that takes all the effort out.’

  ‘And why is that a bad thing?’ said Hanne, and I had to admit, she had a point. ‘You wouldn’t have had to go all the way to LA just to dress as a badger if you’d done things on Facebook.’

  ‘A rabbit. And I’m just saying, there’s something really special about rekindling the old flame of friendship. About looking into the eyes of an old friend. About…’

  ‘You see?’ she said, pointing her finger in the air. ‘This is why Tom thought you were gay!’

  ‘But what I’m doing is so much better than Facebook! I’m meeting face to face! I’ve invented Face-to-Facebook! And anyway, these are real friends! How many Facebook friends do you have?’

  ‘About 142.’

  ‘142? I bet you don’t even know their names!’

  ‘They are mainly business associates. Everyone in radio is on Facebook. And I’m not meeting these people. I’m… networking. You’re meeting them!’

  ‘I’m only after twelve! Plus, you told me you didn’t understand this whole thing about the past – you said life was about moving forward, not looking back! Anyway, what do you mean, “mainly” business associates?’

  ‘Well… I found someone on Facebook who was friends with someone I hadn’t seen in years.’

  ‘Aha! I knew it!’

  ‘And we kind of got back in touch. And it was cool.’

  ‘You’re doing it too!’

  ‘But I didn’t set out to do it. It was just tapping into a network. Friends of friends. It seemed silly not to say hi.’

  ‘You see? It seems silly not to!’

  ‘But I’m not going to travel back to Norway just to see them! And then dress up as a…’

  ‘As a rabbit.’

  ‘As a rabbit, yes.’

  ‘Well, maybe you should!’ I said, although, on reflection, I am not entirely sure why.

  On the way home, my BlackBerry went off. I had an email.

  To: Danny Wallace

  From: Ben Ives

  Subject: GIT!!!!!!

  Okay, so you got me and we’re even. What annoys me most is I go back and look through my emails and I notice that one of the other recipients seemed to be called ‘Fishbod’ at Casey.com… right near someone whose address was Jennyt@lexfoliation.com…

  You GIT! I’ll be in the UK by Christmas, so how about we meet up again? And if we do, leave the bloody rabbit head at home.

  Ben

  X

  P.S. Forgot to ask: who the hell was the bear?

  Ha! Here it was! The written confirmation of my revenge! And all taken in such good spirit! That was friendship. You see, Hanne? With just a few lines of friendly text, Ben had let me know that ours was a friendship which had been rightly reinvigorated. And all thanks to a bit of effort – a friend being worth a flight. Would that have happened on Facebook? No. I felt my actions were rejustified.

  Although I did nevertheless make a mental note to keep my eyes peeled for any revenge revenge attacks in 2022.

  But immediately I knew – I would meet up with Ben at Christmas. I’d travel to Bath, maybe on Boxing Day, or the day after. Because somehow, lately, this had become something more to me. I looked over at the sofa, and at the McDonald’s Loughborough T-shirt that lay across it. I smiled. This wasn’t just ticking names off a list. It wasn’t just updating my address book. This was… important, somehow. I cared about this. These were my friends. This was my history.

  My phone went off. It was Paul the builder.

  ‘Hello, mate, just to say, I’m not going to be able to make it round today.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘My van’s broken down, see.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch about another date.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, and I hung up. I didn’t care. I didn’t care a jot.

  There was still so much more to do.

  I quickened my pace.

  If Tom wouldn’t meet with me, I had to make sure that the others did…

  *

  What was it Hanne had said about networking? It had given me an idea.

  I only had three people left to actually locate. Chris. Lauren. And Andy. Maybe if I couldn’t find these people individually, I could find them through people they knew. I could follow the human footprints until they led me to the foot I needed. And once I’d found the foot, I could look a bit higher up, and say hello to the face.

  I got home and typed a name into Facebook.

  Lauren Medcalfe.

  Two people came up. Neither of them her.

  Who did she know? She’d been a pen pal of mine. We moved in different circles. Knew different people. Who did she know?

  We all have our own networks of friends. Each one of them is entirely unique to us. But there are crossovers – there must be crossovers.

  I thought back. Who did Lauren used to talk about in her letters? Was there anyone we both knew?

  I picked up my phone.

  ‘Mum! It’s me!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Let’s not go through all that again – listen, do you remember when I was a kid, I had a penpal?’

  ‘Yes! Natalia! The French girl! She liked pop music.’

  ‘No! Not her – another one. Lauren?’

  ‘Yes, of course. She was the daughter of a friend of Lorraine’s.’

  ‘Who was Lorraine?’

  ‘A friend of Martha.’

  ‘Are you still in touch with Martha?’

  ‘Well, we send Christmas cards, and so on…’

  ‘Can you ask Martha to ask Lorraine to ask her friend to give her daughter my number? Or my email?’

  ‘Well… yes, of course… but why?’

  ‘I’m updating my address book. I want to send her a Christmas card.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely!’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Bye, picklebear.’

  Well, that was something. And I knew I could entrust this important mission to my mum. She throws nothing out. If she did, you wouldn’t be reading this book.

  Fired up, I thought about Andy.

  Where would he be? How could I get to him?

  I hit Facebook again.

  Plenty of Andy Clements came up, most of them students in America. But only a handful of Brits, all of them either too young, a different colour or the wrong sex. So who else was there? Who had he hung out with? We’d been at different schools, spent our days with different people, but there’d always been a crossover somewhere… the days we’d spent kicking a football around on the patch of grass outside A. MISTRY’s newsagents… the long afternoons at the park near the school, trying to catch sticklebacks but only ever coming home with tadpoles… the nights we’d spent at the annual fair, when for one week only the high street would be full of waltzers, and dodgems, and helterskelters and more… we’d buy toffee apples and candyfloss and throw inadequate balls at nailed-down coconuts…

  All those days, and afternoons, and nights – they had all involved other people.

  And then a name came to me.

  Louisa.
>
  Louisa had always been around. Andy had lived next door to her for a while, and their two families had spent a week in Blackpool together… Andy’s friend, whose name I couldn’t remember, had briefly gone out with Louisa’s sister, and I’d always assumed that maybe Andy and Louisa would end up together, too…

  Louisa was the key to finding Andy. Hey – maybe they’d be married!

  But how would I find her? Would she be on Facebook? And what the hell was her last name? Maybe it was now the same as Andy’s!

  I suddenly really wanted Andy to be the next friend I met. Peter Gibson would just have to wait. I already had him, in a sense. He was fine. He was there. He’d agreed to meet. But the gauntlet had been thrown down the very moment Andy’s letters had made their way back to my house…

  I typed ‘Louisa’ into Facebook. It was a long shot, to be honest. Too long. I tried putting in keywords, like Loughborough, and 1989, and anything else I could think of that could possibly, on the off-chance, have conceivably been mentioned.

  But wait – hadn’t Louisa’s dad run some kind of shop on the high street? A newsagent’s, maybe? And wasn’t it called something like… Robinsons? Wasn’t that what we’d called it? Robinsons?

  I scooted straight to Google and tapped it in… nothing. They must’ve shut up shop. Or perhaps local newsagents just don’t see the need to be found on the internet. But now I had her last name…

  Louisa Robinson.

  I went back to Facebook, and tried it…

  Fewer results this time… that was good…

  I waded in… one of them looked faintly familiar… it wouldn’t let me check her page unless we became friends, and I didn’t have time for that… but it did say she lived in Brighton…

  I typed Louisa AND Robinson AND Brighton into Google, and, in among the various names and places and people that came up… there was Louisa Robinson AND a job title AND a phone number…

  I high-fived myself. Which made me look a little odd.

  This could be it! Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

  I dialled the number and looked at my watch. It was 3pm. Louisa Robinson should really be at work now, and if she wasn’t, I’d ask to speak to her boss and have her reprimanded.

  It was ringing.

  I held my breath and told myself not to worry. I was just an old friend of a friend, phoning to see if she could tell me where Andy was. Andy, who’d written to me so faithfully when I’d moved away. Andy, who I’d had such fun with. Andy, who…

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh. Hi. Is that Louisa?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Louisa – listen, you probably won’t remember me. I’m a friend of Andy Clements. Or I used to be.’

  There was a silence on the other end, which I did my best to fill.

  ‘My name’s Danny Wallace. Well, Daniel Wallace. I used to live in Loughborough. Does the name ring any bells for you?’

  A pause. And then…

  ‘Daniel… yes… how are you?’

  She sounded a little shocked that I’d phoned. I figured that was more than okay – I was asking her to think back quite a few years.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine – and you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m okay. Thank you. So why have you…’

  ‘I’m basically ringing to ask a favour,’ I said, picking up my treasured McDonald’s T-shirt and stretching it out in front of me. ‘Now I realise that’s a bit of a big ask seeing as we haven’t seen each other in so long, but I’m just wondering… after I left Loughborough, did you keep in touch with Andy?’

  ‘Of course, yes,’ she said. ‘He was my neighbour…’

  ‘Yeah, fair enough, that was a stupid question. Well, thing is, I’m kind of updating my address book, and I was hoping you might be able to put me back in touch with Andy?’

  A silence.

  ‘I promise I’m not a stalker,’ I said. ‘It’s just I’ve been getting back in touch with people lately, and I’d really like to see how Andy’s doing.’

  Another silence, long enough for me to start to fold the T-shirt, but then broken by the words…

  ‘Daniel… I’m not sure how to tell you this… but Andy passed away.’

  And I sat down.

  And I nearly dropped my phone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In which we learn how to stop…

  AN UNKNOWN NUMBER of days had passed.

  I’d done nothing. Seen no one. Been nowhere.

  That’s not to say I hadn’t been busy. I’d kept myself very busy.

  Work-wise, it was time to get on with things. I phoned my agent and told her I was ready to do stuff; that my summer holiday was finally over. She arranged some meetings.

  At home, I’d painted three rooms, spending hours on my knees making sure the skirting boards were immaculate. I’d emptied the last of the boxes. Arranged all my books first in alphabetical order, then in order of theme, then back to alphabetical. I’d done the same with my DVDs, although not by theme, by sleeve colour. I’d sorted out the garden table at last, spending a long and arduous afternoon with some varnish remover and a scraper, and an early evening with a brush and a tin of matt black paint. I’d resecured the rickety canopy, wondering why on earth I’d ever deemed a canopy necessary, and I’d hung pictures, fixed blinds and taken down old and worn curtains. I’d done it all in near-silence.

  Paul the builder had been supposed to come round to fix the guttering. Again. But he’d phoned half an hour before he was due to say that his van had broken down. Again. I’d suggested a cab, or the bus, but he said he really had to stay with his van.

  ‘It’s got my equipment in, see…’

  ‘It’s not got your bloody ladder, though, has it?’ I said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ve got your ladder. It’s been here bloody months. But you haven’t.’

  ‘There have been complications, yes,’ he said. ‘But the screws have come in, now, and I can…’

  ‘You’re sacked, Paul. Come and get your bloody ladder.’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Come round and get your bloody ladder. The ladder is clearly in on this. It’s a conspiracy. It’s the only one that knows about our appointments. Appointments you can never make, because your van breaks down, or your daughter gets mugged, or you can’t find the “correct” screws even though you are a BUILDER and they are NORMAL SCREWS.’

  Paul laughed, uneasily.

  ‘Plus, I’ve done the canopy myself. And you know what? There was absolutely no reason to have a canopy. But I did it. Not you. Because I can.’

  ‘I could probably be there about five thirty…’ said Paul.

  ‘I can’t make that,’ I said. ‘My foot has fallen off and I’ve got all of Belgium coming round. I’ll leave the ladder out the front.’

  ‘Hang on…’ said Paul.

  ‘Nope. Sacked. Bye.’

  And for the first time, I truly felt like a grown-up.

  Lizzie’s time on the big reality show had come to an end, and we’d half-heartedly celebrated with a night in a restaurant, but I’d been distracted and distant. She started a new job two days later, one that meant she’d be getting home earlier from now on, but I hardly noticed, busy as I was making myself busy.

  Andrew James Clements had died in a car crash when he was just eighteen years old. And I really didn’t know how to take it.

  Eighteen.

  Every single second that I’d been alive since I was eighteen was a second that Andy never had. And the more I thought about this, the less I knew how to react. For the past few months I’d been naively undertaking this small and personal quest. Travelling about, and knocking on doors, and turning up out of the blue. It had been a simple and happy way to spend my days. But now, I understood, it had also been dangerous. Blindly walking into other people’s lives is a stupid thing to do. Because sooner or later, you’re going to find out something you didn’t want to know. That you should have known, but which you were better off not
knowing. That sounds selfish, and stupid. But maybe I was selfish and stupid. Maybe I deserved this. Maybe this had been about mortality all along. Knowing that I was closer to my threescore and ten than I ever had been before. Knowing that tomorrow I’d be even closer than I was today. But my ‘mortality’ issues had been trivial and childish. I was turning thirty. So what? So bloody what? Now, mortality had shown me just how serious it can be. The fact that in real life, bad things happen. The fact that you have to be prepared that sometimes life is unfair. Unjust. Horrible.

  Andy had been a good friend, and a good human being. Someone who was loyal, and upbeat, and funny. You think if you’re not in touch with someone, everything is probably okay with them. Life just ticks along. They do the same things as you. They grow up. They meet a girl. Maybe they get married. They progress in their work. Perhaps they get into IT, or move abroad, or have a kid. Maybe they get rich, maybe they stay poor. But you never, ever think, that maybe they’re dead. Because actually, the cold, hard truth is that you don’t know what can happen to them. To you. To anyone. And actually, the cold, hard truth is that bad things can happen to good people. And if you rush in, unprepared, this is a horrible truth that becomes all the more horrible when it’s so very unexpected.

  And so I’d stopped looking for old friends. I’d met Cameron, and Anil, and Mikey, and Simon, and Tarek, and Ben. I’d nearly met Peter. I hadn’t found Chris. I’d been rejected by Tom. And Akira had never found the time to write back. So what was the point in continuing? What had been the point all along? To make me feel better? To make me feel that everyone was going through the same things? To make me feel I was part of something – a random group of people about to start their thirties? Because Tom had made me realise that just because we went to school with people, ultimately, what does that mean? That means nothing. Yeah, we share a classroom. We learn about the water cycle and crop rotation and oxbow lakes and we learn about these things at about the same time. And?

  There was no mystical reason for this, no destiny guiding us together. We had nothing in common, apart from the fact that we just happened to live in the same school catchment area, as decided by some faceless bloke in a cheap two-piece suit on the town council dozens of years before. Apart from the fact our parents just happened to have conceived around the same time, happened to take us with them, happened to have had us at all. And that was it. These were the two facts. Two facts which mean absolutely nothing in the world. Why should we get on, stay in touch, be friends? If any of this actually meant even a scrap of a hint of anything, then surely Tom, for one, would have felt the same way?