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

  So they were the five I told myself to concentrate on. The last five of the Book.

  But something Rapping Papo had said had struck a chord with me, too. Yes, so these people had a special place in my life. The Book had, after all, come to symbolize the best of my childhood. But there were other people involved, too. Why limit myself to those twelve? There was a renewed sense of freedom opening up inside me. My time with Cameron, Tarek and the others had shown me that it was possible to not only revisit those old friendships… but to renew them. Reinvigorate them. So what would be the harm in saying hello to a few other people, too?

  I’d had a twinge of regret that Grisha, the Russian kid, wasn’t on my list. That neither were Brian, or Amy, or any of the other guys from Berlin. Phoning Josh had been a delight, after all… so where were they?

  I sat down at my computer and typed a name into Google.

  Grisha Kozlov.

  I pressed Search.

  Nothing useful.

  So I did what I’d tried with Cameron, and typed Grisha’s dad’s name in.

  I pressed Search.

  I found him. I fired off an email.

  And then I wondered whether that might help with the Final Five, as well… Akira Matsui had proved elusive. The only clues I had for him were an old address, and a postcard, in which he’d said his dream was to become a medical doctor. Searches on the Net for him proved fruitless… Akira Matsui seemed to be the Japanese equivalent of Brian Jones… rare enough that you’d probably only have one friend with that name… common enough that so would sixty million other people…

  So what was Akira’s dad’s name again?

  Isamu?

  I checked his postcard. It was.

  I tried it.

  Up came a page…

  An Investigation on the Influence of Vitreous Slag Powders on Rheological Properties of Fresh Concrete

  Isamu Matsui

  Table 1. X-ray diffraction (CuKa) shows that BFS and PS have similar XRD patterns, and…

  I gulped. Reading about vitreous slag powders and fresh concrete wasn’t really my forte. Another nail in the coffin of falling back on quarry manager as a trade. But I scanned through, right to the bottom, where I found a footnote, telling me that Mr. Matsui had, in 1995 at least, been teaching at the College of Industrial Technology at Nihon University… a quick hop to their website and moments later…

  I had his email…

  I pressed Send & Receive and heard my email whoosh away, on its way to Japan… but as it set off, another arrived…

  Hi Daniel,

  So nice to hear from you after so many years!

  I attach Grisha’s email address at the bottom of my mail! He now lives in Tel Aviv, learning Electrical Engineering. In addition, he is working at Intel.

  Bye!

  M

  P.S. You should know that he has recently changed his name to Ben Berlin.

  I laughed, as much out of delight at the speed of the reconnection as at the fact that Grisha had apparently and inexplicably changed his name to “Ben Berlin.” Oh, and I also liked the fact that he was now working in IT.

  But Tel Aviv! How cool was that? It was incredible to me how my friends had traveled, and once again I wished I could map out a route of their movements over the years… a vast map with lines darting across the globe, like a map of airline routes from the seventies to today…

  And so I typed in more names, almost at random… Many I could find nothing for, or just mere mentions that they’d been in a place or done a thing but after that the trail ran cold… but for others—so many others—I was tracking and tracing with great success. I was on fire. If I discovered a technique for finding one person, I’d try it with the others—and, crucially, for the Big Five.

  A page on MySpace for someone I only barely knew at school linked me immediately to the page of someone I’d known very well, but had never seen again. Quickly, I made my own MySpace page, for the sole purpose of saying hello. And so I typed another name into the site—someone else I hadn’t seen in around twenty-five years—Eilidh McLaughlin.

  Eilidh was a little girl I used to hang around with in Dundee when I was four… we did everything together. When a kid down my road broke my arm, Eilidh made sure to break her arm by falling off a swing just a week later. And within minutes, thanks to MySpace, I knew where she was (Glasgow), what she was doing (translating Gaelic programs for the BBC), and even what she looked like (the same, pretty much, and not much bigger). Underneath her photo was the word “Online!,” and I smiled in disbelief. Right now we were both online, both looking at a screen, both on the same website… literally connected to each other… I fired off a hello, and she wrote back, delighted…

  I found a number for Big Al through my friend Little Dan, and sent out a text… Al was now apparently a policeman in Liverpool, and was probably on duty, so I held out no great hopes—but moments later, I had my reply…

  Danny! Hey mate how are you? I saw you on some weird TV program recently—what’s all that about? What’s your address?

  I texted him back, and he said:

  I’m getting married! Hope you can come to the wedding!

  From never seeing the man to being invited to his wedding—reintroduced to the bosom of his friendship!—and with just the press of a few buttons in between. I swelled with pride, and texted back:

  Wow! Of course!

  This was what it was all about.

  I pressed on. I found out that my mate Bob from university was now teaching English in Osaka. That my friend Rob from Bath—who I’d met while doing work experience at school—was now editing a magazine in Sydney. Brian from Berlin was a dad and working in Aurora. And Amy was in Washington.

  I don’t really need to tell you what Amy was doing.

  Okay, then.

  She was working in IT.

  I fired off email after email, referring from time to time to the contents of the Box, finding clues, and tidbits, and things I might try… I found a small note from Leanne Davis, a girl I’d been “going out with” before moving to Berlin—when who you were going out with was decided by their friends and consisted of awkwardly drinking a milkshake at the Wimpy once a week. I looked at her name and realized that, technically, we’d never actually broken up. I’d just moved to Berlin and gradually the letters had stopped. I was horrified. We’d never ended it! For nearly two decades I’d been going out with a thirteen-year-old girl! Obviously, she may have grown up just as I had, but what if she hadn’t? The scandal! A quick look around revealed not just her picture and her location, but her company’s name and her position as head of corporate affairs!

  And then I found Alex Chinyemba… Alex was a kid from Zimbabwe I’d known when I was about ten… we’d spent a childhood holiday together in a disused water mill up in the highlands of Scotland, and gone climbing and horse-riding and eaten sweets and burned pizza. We’d also spent a day at a local water park, when we’d told girls he was an African prince and charged one of them 50p to touch his hair. He’d popped into my head, and within ten minutes I’d found a clue… one phone call to an East Midlands karate center later, and I’d found out that he was now an estate agent with four kids and taught karate on the side. We talked and laughed, and six minutes later he texted me a photograph of himself with a large mustache. Four kids and a mustache! Here was a man comfortable with turning thirty.

  Plus, he agreed to help me work on my block.

  And it didn’t stop there.

  An inspirational moment had reminded me of a way of finding Tom… his dad, the builder that Tom had insisted had invented the Sprite logo, had founded his own company… could they possibly have a…

  They did!

  The website proudly proclaimed they were part of the Federation of Master Builders, but, more worryingly, also provided a definition of what a builder is…

  Builder n. One who builds; one engaged in the trade of construction

  Just what kind of market was this website catering
to? If someone doesn’t know what a builder is, how did they even manage to turn the computer on? Actually, I thought, maybe I should show this to Paul.

  There was a Contact Us! button, and I rushed out an email to Tom. The day was just getting better and better. I asked whoever got these emails to forward mine to Tom, saying it would be great to see him! That I’d been revisiting my childhood! That I wanted to update my address book! That we should meet up, hang out, finally get together! That I’d love to see him! That I hoped I wasn’t coming on too strong! This could be another address updated!

  The success was making me giddy, and as the sky outside my windows darkened, I found the clipping from the Loughborough Echo which mistakenly reported that Tim Sismey and I had both won the conker championships of ’87… and then found Tim Sismey’s email address hidden away on a website about music… I wrote to him apologizing for such a devious media cover-up, and he replied, saying:

  Thank you so much for your concern about the Echo article. I feel it’s important that we, the people who make the news, do not let the people who report it use our lives to further their own causes and I applaud your honesty.

  And guess what? In clearing out a wardrobe in my mum’s house a year ago, I discovered a Harrogate Toffee tin, which actually contained the remains of the winning conker from that brutal battle. How weird! Take care, Tim.

  That was weird. A memory that I’d assumed was probably just mine had been remembered from a slightly different angle only a year before… how often do shared memories pop up around the world? What happens if two people have the same memory at the exact same moment? Are they connected for a split second? Does the memory get stronger, somehow?

  This was all a little too philosophical for me, and my head had started to hurt, so I made a cup of tea and had a sit-down.

  I ate a cookie and thought about the names that I’d tapped out on my keyboard today. I knew that—granted—it was fairly unlikely I’d ever get to re-create my conker battle with Tim Sismey again. Nor would I see Bob in Japan, or Grisha in Israel. But it suddenly hit me that with all the tools at my disposal—texts, MySpace, Face-book, Bebo, Google, email, iChat, Skype, everything—I had no excuse whatsoever for letting any of these friendships ever slide again.

  And then I sat back down at my desk, and looked at all I had achieved with my day. It had been nine hours since I’d started. I decided I should probably think about lunch, and then I’d earn myself a few MPs. But then I heard Lizzie’s key in the lock. It was evening.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, not entirely brightly.

  “But I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  We were eating our dinner in front of The National Lottery. Neither of us had bought a ticket but we’d both been pretending it was interesting all the same. Paul’s ladder was now in the corner of the room, mocking my lack of manliness.

  “It’s not fine, baby. You asked me to do one thing.”

  “Seriously, it’s cool.”

  “It’s not cool, either. You asked me to get you that form from that post office and I didn’t.”

  “Relax.”

  “But the Deal!”

  “You can get it tomorrow.”

  I looked at her.

  “You’re not making sticking to the Desperados Pact very easy. Perhaps if you were nastier I’d get more done. It’s making me feel very guilty.”

  “And that’s exactly what I’m relying on,” she said, putting her fork down. “So have you found Chris yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nope.”

  “But he’s the big prize, right?”

  “Kind of. I mean, I want to see all twelve, but Chris was first, y’know?”

  “You’ll find him. And as for the Deal, you’ll have all next weekend to work on that…”

  “Will I?”

  “Yup. Sarah’s thirtieth, remember?”

  Ah, yes. Sarah’s thirtieth. Another brave twentysomething warrior stepping into the unknown. Another birthday closer to it being mine.

  “She’s booked a hotel in Brighton for the girls… is that cool?”

  “Of course it’s cool,” I said, feeling somehow more guilty than ever. “And I’ll get to work, really I will. I’ll finish painting the shed. And also, Paul’s coming round to sort out that canopy.”

  Lizzie smiled. I made a mental note to ring Paul to get him round to sort out that canopy.

  “The reason I can’t sort out your canopy,” said Paul, very slowly, “is due to the nature of the corrugated plastic which we all agreed would be the best material for the job…”

  I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t seem to have much more to say. And then I realized that I’d never actually talked about corrugated plastic with him before. I’d never talked about it with anyone. If anything, I find corrugated plastic to be a boring topic of discussion, but I do realize that’s quite a controversial thing to say.

  “But Paul—I don’t even remember really wanting this canopy,” I said. “I just wanted my guttering sorted. She was the problem!”

  “Who was?”

  I pointed.

  “The guttering… lady!”

  “The guttering will be sorted, Danny,” he said, very calmly. “Leave it with me. But the canopy has to go up first, you see, and then I can begin work on the guttering.”

  It made no sense to me, this builder logic. As far as I could see, the two jobs were entirely unrelated. It was like saying, “I can’t punch a tiger because my aunt likes ceramics.”

  “Well… do you still need to leave your ladder here?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  And then he said he had to go because he said his daughter had been mugged.

  “She wasn’t mugged,” said Ian, shoving some bacon into his mouth.

  We were at a small café off Poland Street and Ian had gone for the full En glish.

  “I know she wasn’t mugged,” I said. “But how do you tell a man his daughter hasn’t been mugged?”

  “You could ask if you can meet the mugger.”

  “Why would I ask to meet someone’s mugger?”

  “Just say you’re interested.”

  “I am not interested in meeting someone’s fictional mugger.”

  “So why have you asked me here, taking me so far away from the beauty of Chislehurst, if you’ve already decided not to meet someone’s fictional mugger? I’m not dressing up as a bear again—I don’t care how much Kung Po chicken you’re offering…”

  “I think I’ve done something stupid,” I said, and Ian looked thrilled.

  “Brilliant!” he said, his mouth full of sausage.

  Just hours after Paul had left, I’d been attempting to rack up some more MPs. The excitement of finding the names of those people not in the Book had died down somewhat, and their replies and hellos had stopped trickling in. I’d popped out to buy more filler as well as an electric screw driver, which I thought might get me more excited about the prospect of screws and their driving. I’d decided to tidy up the shed, too, but it had started raining by the time I got home so I made a cup of tea and wandered around the house, working out what my priorities should be, and how many MPs I could expect to earn from each one. The problem, as I saw it, was that as far as MPs were concerned, I was flying blind. There was no system in place. What made one bit of DIY more valuable than another? And how much was an MP worth, anyway? A phone call? An email? A trip?

  And then I’d heard the familiar bing-bong of New Mail…

  There were two emails waiting for me.

  The first was from—joy!—Akira’s dad…

  Dear Daniel,

  Thank you for your mail.

  I remember clearly you and your family.

  I often remember our life at Loughborough.

  My son Akira became a medical doctor and works at the Yamanashi University Hospital now.

  Yours sincerely
r />   Isamu Matsui

  I sat back and smiled. So Akira had done it! He’d achieved his childhood dream—the dream he’d told me about on his postcard. He was a medical doctor.

  I patted myself on the back, and then realized that was quite an odd thing to do.

  The second email was from Ben Ives.

  A rather nervous Ben Ives.

  ManGriff (what’s your real name, by the way?), Sorry, but I’m now guessing this is actually some kind of joke after all…

  Shit! He knew!

  … in retribution for the article perhaps?

  Ha! He still thought it was them! Even if it was a joke, he thought it was ManGriff the Beast Warrior’s joke—not mine!

  I smiled, with relief. The trick was still on. But then… an ultimatum.

  I also think that if we’re going to meet it should be just the two of us, and not at the office. But next Friday is now the only day I can do. I am very busy at work and this is the only time I will be able to fit you in for the foreseeable. It will have to be very quick, I’m afraid.

  Many thanks

  Ben

  I’d winced when I’d read the final paragraph.

  Because I knew nothing more could now develop. I’d hoped to carry this on, to keep making him worried, perhaps canceling the 21st and arranging more meetings for the future, each one more bizarre and more worrying, before finally phoning him up, and yelling, “It was me all along!” But somehow, with this email, Ben had gained the upper hand. He’d forced me to quit early. He’d firmly told me that there was to be no more messing about—that this one date was the only one he’d be able to do, and the implication that this would be an end to things was clear. There would be no canceling, no rearranging, no making things bigger or better—it was now, definitely, all about the 21st. In fact, I realized with a strange sensation in my tummy, it was all about next Friday.

  “So what’s the problem?” asked Ian. “Have you lost your nerve?”

  No. It wasn’t that. Although I had slowly begun to feel a little unsure about what I’d been doing to Ben. I mean, yes, I owed him. And no, it wasn’t malicious. But perhaps this was the wrong way to get him back. Was this really the best way of getting back in touch? Was this truly better than just turning up and saying hi, it’s me, how are you, like I’d done with the others?