Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (44 page)

“Let’s try it!” I said.

“Eh?”

“Let’s try it right now!”

I got my phone out.

“Who are you ringing?”

I found the number, and pressed Dial. Peter waited while I pressed the phone to my ear. It rang once, twice…

“… hullo?”

They sounded knackered.

“Anil?” I said, and Pete’s face lit up.

“… I think so,” said Anil.

“What time is it over there?”

“It’s… seven in the morning…”

“God—sorry, did I wake you?”

“Yeah…”

“What time do you get up?”

“Ten past seven.”

“Oh. Well. Anyway, guess where I am?”

“The Congo?”

“No! I’m in Australia.”

“Oh… what?
Why?
”

“I just popped over to see Pete!”

I’d never get bored of saying it. There was a pause.

“Peter
Gibson?
What’re you… what’s he…”

“Here!” I said, and handed the phone to Peter.

“Anil! Hello, mate! How you doing? I’m doing well! We’re sitting here having a beer in Melbourne, talking about old times…
yeah, I just quit my job… yeah…”

And I sat back, and I watched Peter reconnect with Anil. Again, this was like a human Facebook. Joining the dots. Connecting
the networks. Updating addresses. And Peter and Anil chatted, and reminisced, and told each other of their lives now… just
like they’d been hanging out for years.

“So you’re an architect? Me too, mate, me too! What you doing? Your part three? Next year? Cool—I did my part three two years
ago, so been in London for a while… hey, if you ever want to come and work in London, mate, send your CV in, we’re looking
for people all the time… about a hundred people, I’m sure there’d be something for you if you ever want to get out of Huddersfield…”

I smiled broadly. Wouldn’t it be great if Anil and Peter, my two architect friends who I’d played keepy-uppy with and cheated
on maths homework with and walked home from school with, ended up working together?

“You’ve got a northern accent now! Ha ha! Hey, I’m trying to remember the last time we met—I can remember going round to your
house and doing some coloring-in… or maybe bowling for someone’s birthday…”

I smiled. We were always going bowling for someone’s birthday. And then I realized that there was something else about what
Peter had just said that had struck a chord… something to do with something Anil had told me that night with Mikey and Simon
in Loughborough… what
was
it?

“You should see the houses round here, mate, the one-off architect-designed ones… land is so cheap, not like in Britain, trying
to get as many units into as small a space as possible… you should come and work in Melbourne! Maybe we can go into business!
Listen, I’ll get your email off Danny and send you an email—let’s definitely
definitely
stay in touch! Cool!”

And he handed the phone back to me.

“Anil!” I said.

He sounded wide-awake now.

“That was so great!” he said. “And weird, too!”

“How so?”

“Remember the last time I saw you… I told you about the day that weird guy came up to me when I was in my car?”

I thought back.

“The one who could read your mind?”

“Yeah! Well, he said that I would meet up with an old friend soon and have a good time. That was you. And remember he also
said that this could help me make a decision about whether to stay in Huddersfield, or do something else. He said it would
lead to new opportunities.”

“Okay…” I said.

“And now Pete’s just said I should send my CV in to his work! I’d
love
to live in London for a bit…”

I didn’t want to get too carried away. Even though I’d just got a bit too carried away.

“But didn’t that bloke also say you’d have some kind of important event with someone with the initials EJ?” I said. “Your
ex-girlfriend?”

“Well, that hasn’t happened. I did get drunk and watch an Elton John special on MTV, though, so
that
could have been it… when are you back in London?”

“In a few days,” I said. “I’ll give you a call then…”

And we said goodbye.

“God, that brought back so many memories,” said Peter. “About Holywell School, for one thing…”

“Ian Holmes taking his cycling proficiency test…”

“On a tricycle!” said Pete. “The stuff of legends. And Mr. Williams banning Wispa bars… do you remember his advice if you
were getting bullied by bigger boys?”

“No.”

“Curl up into a little ball!”

“Sound advice. Remember that kid who’d been given a Casio keyboard for Christmas and then insisted on playing it at the end
of every assembly? He could only play ‘When the Saints Go Marching In…?’”

“Remember Anil singing ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Pants’?”

And we laughed. And we got another Guinness in. And we talked about the old days, while the sun shone through a stained-glass
window, coloring in all the black-and-whites, and making them real again…

“So, who else is left?” asked Peter, over noodles down the road. “From your address book, I mean?”

“Well… you’re number ten,” I said. “There’s just Chris Guirrean from Dundee, and Akira Matsui.”

“Akira! The Japanese kid!”

“Yeah—remember him?”

“He was so cool. I’d never met a real-life Japanese person before. I remember his first day at school.”

“Me too. I think that was the day Michael Amodio kicked him in the head and I counted up to five very loudly in his face.”

“Michael
Amodio!
How’s he?”

“He’s very well. Very well indeed. I’ll put you back in touch with him if you like?”

“I’d love that. And who was the other guy?”

“Chris? My first-ever best friend from Dundee.”

“And where’s he?”

“I have no idea. But I think I’ve got him. I wrote dozens of letters. Sent them all over Britain. And I’ve had a reply…”

“I hope it’s him…”

“It must be him. I said in the letter that if they were my Chris, they should phone.”

But suddenly, Peter had made me feel unsure.

“You could always go up there if it’s not, couldn’t you?” he said. “I mean, if it’s someone phoning you up, and saying, ‘I’m
not
that
Christopher Guirrean.’ You’d be like Columbo. Head for Dundee, ask around. Get a T-shirt done with his face on and say, ‘Have
you seen this man?’”

“I don’t even know what he looks like these days. And I’m not sure walking around with a small boy’s face on my T-shirt is
the done thing for a man who’s nearly thirty. Nah—it’s him. I can feel it in my bones.”

I shoved some more noodles into my face. And then I noticed something. Just behind Peter was a free newspaper. And face up,
on a page somewhere towards the back, was a picture.

“Pass me that, will you?”

I looked at it. On a page marked Upcoming Gigs was a photograph. A photograph of Wag and his band!

“I don’t believe it!” I said. “That’s my mate Wag! He’s on tour at the moment—he’s playing here on…”

“When?”

Oh. Oh yeah.

“On my birthday.”

Part of me had always hoped that Wag would find a way to be home for my thirtieth. It was a stupid hope, really, and one that
was now dashed by a smudgy black-and-white photo.

“He’s on at the Corner Hotel. Is that near here?”

“I’m not sure,” said Peter.

“Do you want to go and see him? Without me, I mean. I’m sure I could get you a couple of tickets…”

“Yeah,” said Pete, quite into the idea. “That’d be cool. You know…
I
might do this. Look up a few people. Get in touch. Maybe even see them again. It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It
is
good,” I said. “It’s very good indeed.”

And then I looked up. And I noticed something else.

“Remember how when we were kids, there was the big birthday treat?”

“Well, if it was
your
mum sorting it, it was
Red Sonja.
I don’t think I slept for a year.”

“I think I can make it up to you…”

I pointed behind him, at a huge sign with an arrow, and the word “MEGA-SUPER-BOWL!” painted on it.

“What do you say?” I said. “I missed your birthday. Let’s have a birthday treat…”

And so Peter and I celebrated his thirtieth in fine style, with a jumbo Coke, some popcorn and a lane of our own.

It was getting on for midnight.

Pete and I were now fully fledged friends again. Seventeen years had passed, but it was like they’d never happened at all.

“So what’s next for you?” I asked, as we walked, happily and full of popcorn, to a taxi rank. “In the next thirty years, I
mean?”

Peter thought about it.

“I really want to design theaters,” he said. “If I can do that, I’ll be happy. But we’ll meet again before we’re sixty, won’t
we?”

“We definitely will,” I said, and I knew that definitely we would.

Then I remembered what I had in my bag.

“God, I almost forgot—I got you something. Something to welcome you to Australia.”

I handed him the package. He opened it.

“Ah!” he said. “
My Illustrated Career
by Shane Warne!”

“It gets better,” I said, which was lucky, because so far it was just a load of pictures of Shane Warne.

He opened it, and read aloud.

“To Peter! WELCOME TO OZ! Shane Warne.”

He smiled.

“It’s like being welcomed to Britain by the Queen,” he said.

“I think he really liked me,” I said. “He was ever so chatty.”

A taxi finally arrived.

“So,” he said. “Is it straight back to London for you? Not by taxi, obviously, unless you’re
really
scared of flying…”

“I’m getting a flight in the morning,” I said.

“Heathrow? Gatwick?”

“No.”

“Oh,” he said. “Where, then?”

And I smiled.

Because I had one more stop to make.

W
hen I woke up, I was in the back of a small cab hurtling down a motorway with a strange blend of reggae-jazz causing the windows
to vibrate and the driver to make involuntary noises.

I didn’t really know what time it was. Darkness looked like it was on its way, and when I’d left Australia it had been light,
but after twelve or thirteen hours on a plane I couldn’t tell if it was night on its way or morning.

The blue neon digits on the dashboard clock said 18:32.

“Good morning!” said the driver when he saw I’d woken up. Which was nice, but only confused me more.

“Hi…” I said, and I looked out of the window.

There it was.

Tokyo.

*   *   *

I was here for one reason and one reason only. You know what that was. But you don’t know how
important
it felt. Yes, I was here to meet Akira Matsui. But I was also here because I wanted to
finish
something.

If Chris
had
left a message for me at home, I was nearly
done.
Yeah, so Tom wouldn’t meet me. So what? I would get Akira, and then I would get Chris, and then Tom would have to live with
the fact that he hadn’t been a part of this. A part of a regrouping of friends. Proof that in a society where everyone moves
away, everyone moves on, where the Internet can facilitate a thousand semi-friendships a second,
proof that real friendships
can
last.
That all it takes is a little effort. Effort that
I
was willing to go to, even if Tom wasn’t.

Akira
had
to meet with me. And to make sure he did, I wasn’t going to give him the option not to. I
had
to achieve this. Finishing a Panini sticker album wasn’t enough.

But the fact that Akira’s first-ever email to me had been… well… quite
formal
meant that I
knew
I had to be careful with this one. If we’d
started
our renewed friendship by talking about the Gastroenterological Society of Japan, it could be
years
before we moved it on to talk of having dinner or a beer. And I wanted that now. Before I was thirty. Because November 16th
was little over a week away.

So this was my plan. Go to Japan. Find him. Force him to meet me. End of plan.

Akira had literally no idea I was on my way. No idea that I was in Japan right this very second for the sole purpose of tracking
him down. I had only one full day in the country to make my impact and achieve my goal. One day to locate him and meet him.
But I had one ace up my sleeve.

When I’d been excitedly tapping new names into the Internet that day—the day I’d emailed Tim Sismey about conkers and found
the karate teacher estate agent Alex—I’d stumbled upon the fact that my friend Bob was now teaching En glish in Osaka. It
stood to reason that he’d have a little Japanese under his belt. I’d emailed him and told him I was coming to Tokyo, and asked
whether he’d like to show me around. He said yes, but warned me his Japanese “needed work.” I told him that didn’t matter,
and that I was delighted he’d agreed to show me around. But little did he know that when he arrived at Shinjuku station at
9 a.m. tomorrow, I would have another task for him altogether…