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

by Danny Wallace

  What if, though, that was stopping him? What if he thought I was… after him?

  I fired off an email, and tried to sound as casual as I could.

  Hi again. Just to let you know, I’m not a gay man who’s trying to come on to you. Not that that would be a bad thing if one did. You might be gay too. Anyway, I understand if you don’t want to meet. Nice to hear from you.

  I pressed Send.

  I was disappointed at the brutally short email I’d had back from him. But annoyingly, most of me did understand why Tom didn’t want to meet up. Maybe this was a bit weird for some people. Maybe I couldn’t expect everyone to react in the same way. But part of me couldn’t understand. The part of me that had so enjoyed meeting up again with rappers, and chiefs, and witches. I wanted to know what Tom was up to. I wanted to hang out, and remember times gone by. I wanted to be his friend again.

  But Tom hadn’t been on the same journey as me. He was probably very happy as he was. He probably had too many friends, and a hugely fulfilling job, and an ever-growing family. The last thing he needed was another drain on his time. Some bloke he used to know turning up and wasting his day.

  But oh well. Maybe he’d write back, and say, “Oh dear, I do apologize, I just thought it might get awkward if indeed you did have a crush on me, let’s meet up!”

  I’d just have to wait and see. I reread the email I’d just sent to make sure it was all as calm and understanding as I was beginning to feel again, and it certainly seemed to be… until my eyes stopped on a certain word.

  Too.

  Too?

  I’d written “you might be gay too.”

  What I’d been trying to do was imply my indifference to sexuality—the fact that he might very well be gay, and that this would be as normal as the world can be… but somehow I’d managed to suggest that while I would initially deny my gayness, I would suddenly imply quite forcefully that I was…

  I wanted to write to him again. I wanted to write, “When I said you might be gay too, I meant as well as the fictional gay man coming on to you in the scenario which I outlined in my email, not as well as me—not that there would be anything wrong with that—but I am not and probably neither are you—but if you are then well done, that’s great!”

  And then I realized that might well make things worse.

  How confused would Tom think I was? And what could I do now?

  I decided the best thing I could do was wait.

  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 dif
ferent 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 pen pal?”

  “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 Clementses came up, most of them students in America. But only a handful of Brits, all of them either too young, a different color 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 Black-pool 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’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, 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 dialed the number and looked at my watch. It was 3 p.m. 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 favor,” I said, picking up my treasured McDonald’s T-shirt and stretching it out in front of me. “Now I realize 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 neighbor…”

  “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, and I sat on the couch.

  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 moldings 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 color. 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 matte 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 eigh teen years old. And I really didn’t know how to take it.

  Eighteen.

  Every single second that I’d been alive since I was eigh teen 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. Traveling 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. My “mortality” issues may have been trivial and childish. I was turning thirty. So what? So bloody what? But 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.