Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (49 page)

And I hung up the phone.

Kyohei stopped the car with a slight skid. He’d gone miles out of his way, driving me and Bob all the way to Kofu to save
time.

“Good luck!” he said, and I shook his hand, warmly and firmly.

“You don’t know what this means to me,” I said, but, actually, I think he did.

“We should make the 7:15 train,” said Bob, studying a schedule Kyohei had found in his glovebox. We ran up the stairs and
tried to find our platform. “It’ll get us there after nine, though…”

“Here it is…” I said.

It was a long and nervy journey.

On the one hand, I was pleased. I’d talked to Akira. We’d made contact. Maybe, if he wasn’t there, waiting for me on the platform,
this might still be the start of something. Maybe it was an ice-breaker. Maybe he’d be more open to the idea of meeting up
in the future. But I knew how busy he was. I knew how unlikely it was he’d ever make his way to London. This was where his
life was. And I knew how unlikely it was I’d make it back to Japan anytime soon.

On the other hand, I was sad. Sad he’d said no to meeting. Sad he hadn’t jumped at the chance. Bob knew how I felt. He kept
quiet on the train, as nervous as I was, but as full of hope as I dared to let myself be. I felt full of warmth for my friend.
Glad that he’d been willing to share in this. Grateful that he’d thrown himself into it, when really what he’d been expecting
was a day of sightseeing and photos. If I didn’t get Akira, getting to know Bob again was a brilliant by-product.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, suddenly. “I’m going to get in touch with a few old friends. You know? See how they’re doing.
It’s weird how we say we ‘used to’ know people. Why ‘used to’? There was never any agreement to stop. It just happened. So
maybe starting again can be just as easy… friendship is kind of what it’s all about, really, isn’t it?”

I smiled.

I’d discovered that very same thing, in a roundabout way. This had started because I’d been uncomfortable with the way my
life was changing. But actually, life changes all the time. It doesn’t change once you hit thirty, or once you start feeling
like a grown-up. It doesn’t change because of any one thing you do. It changes constantly, sometimes in small ways, and sometimes
in seismic shifts. And the way you feel depends entirely on the way you deal with those changes.

Friends are a marker of time. And the friendships you make are a marker of life. We’re proud of our friends. We’re proud of
the unwritten contract—we’ve chosen them, and they’ve chosen us. No one
had
to. We all
wanted
to. Friends define us, and we walk or trip or stumble through life just as they do. When a good friendship ends… maybe it
wasn’t a good friendship. Or maybe it can be started up again just as easily.

I reached into my backpack and pulled out my address book. Whatever was to happen next, I could at least do this. I could
at
least
update it.

“We’re here,” said Bob, and I looked up to see the bright lights of Tokyo, streetlights whizzing by the window, trailing like
shooting stars.

The train slowed to a halt and Bob and I stood up.

“Well, here we go…” I said.

The platform was half empty as we stepped off the train. I glanced nervously around. I couldn’t see Akira. I looked at my
watch. It was nine twenty-eight. It had been more or less twelve full hours and Bob and I were at the same place we’d started
our journey.

“He might be on a different platform,” said Bob. “I’m sure he’d have waited.”

I turned to check what other platforms I could make out. A lone man sat on a bench, reading a newspaper and sipping something.
Closer, a young couple were giggling about something. He was tickling her, playfully, and she was batting him away. In the
distance, a station guard was pointing out the toilets to an elderly lady in a hat.

Our train moved off, signaling, somehow, the end of something.

“He’s not here,” I said, and Bob didn’t know what to say.

We stood in silence for a moment.

“Unless…” said Bob.

“What?”

“Unless we call him?”

“I don’t have his number,” I said. “I didn’t know how to ask the jolly woman for it…
shit,
I should have
asked
for his number…”

“
I’ve
got his number.”

“Eh?”

“Kyohei got it off the woman. He wrote it down and slipped it to me when we were running to the car. Let’s call him…”

He handed me his phone. The number was already in there, ready to go.

Thank God for Bob. Thank
God
for Kyohei.

I hit Dial.

It rang.

A pause. Then…

“Hello?”

“Akira?”

“Daniel! Where are you?”

“I’m at Shinjuku station. I’m on platform four! Where are
you?
”

“I am here too!”

“Where?”

But I didn’t need to ask. I turned round and there, the man who’d been reading his paper and sipping something stood up and
waved.

It was Akira Matsui.

Instantly, all weirdness had vanished.

Akira was
delighted
that I’d been standing outside his house that afternoon.
Delighted
that I’d been wandering around his workplace, seeing his office, bothering his colleagues. He even seemed delighted I was
wearing his face on my T-shirt.

His En glish had lapsed slightly, but Bob and I took him off for a Coke in the nearest hotel bar. There we sat, the three
of us, forty floors up and admiring the view. Tokyo’s urban lightshow and vast towers. The people far down below, each one
of them off on an adventure of their own. Each one off to see a friend, or have some fun, or who knows what. It seemed, suddenly,
like a city in which
anything
could happen.

And we talked. And we caught up. And I told him about how important it was that he’d met me. How I’d been tracking people
down and making sense of life. How to look forward you sometimes have to look back. How friends are the very definition of
your life. How the people who’ve seen you grow up are the people who sometimes know you best. And he nodded, and he understood,
and by the end, we were fine and fixed old friends again. He told me of his ambitions, of his hopes. He told me about turning
thirty, and how it had made him think about life too. He told me things I’d forgotten about growing up. The things we’d done,
the places we’d gone. I apologized on behalf of Michael Amodio for the day he’d done the crane kick from
The Karate Kid
on Akira’s head. Akira laughed, and said he remembered that, and he’d thought everyone in Britain was a karate master. And
Bob made him promise to give Kyohei very good marks in everything he did from now on.

Our meeting only lasted an hour. But it was a great hour. An hour that meant something to me, and, I hope, a little something
to him. We took him back down to the train station, where I waved goodbye to Akira Matsui—friend number eleven.

This was it. Just Chris to get. And I was thankful. Because I was
so
tired.

And then, laughing like high little boys, Bob and I hit Tokyo to celebrate.

Bob and I sang loud and ridiculous karaoke in a small booth in Roppongi Hills. We drank sake in a strange bar in Akasaka.
We high-fived confused strangers as we crossed the road before the Rainbow Bridge. We studied weird Japanese toys and a twenty-foot
Godzilla in a shopping mall. We declined a foot rub by a fourteen-year-old girl dressed as a French maid. We stood at the
foot of the Tokyo Tower, and wondered what it must be like to stand at the top.

But I already felt like I was.

And, when hunger finally set in, and Bob decided we needed to do something about it, I said, “I know just the place.”

“Where?” he said.

“You’ll love it,” I said. “I know a master ninja who gives great advice…”

T
he trip had been an unmitigated success. An
unmitigated
success.

I had
done
it! Peter and Akira. Numbers ten and eleven. Updated. In the book. Friends again.

Now, I thought, again, stepping off the Heathrow Express, there was just number twelve. Chris Guirrean. And he was virtually
in the bag. He’d called. Left a message. I
had
him.

This had been quite a journey. From Loughborough, to Berlin, to LA, to Melbourne, to Tokyo, to London… and all in the name
of friendship. And I’d come a long way in other ways, too. I would meet Christopher by November 16th. I would meet him by
the time I was thirty. And then I would be ready. Ready to accept my fate—no,
not
fate: destiny—as one of the walking thirtysomethings.

At Paddington, I hopped in a taxi and cheerfully headed for home. Lizzie would be at home today. I texted her telling her
to put the kettle on in anticipation.

Oh yeah. Because this was a
celebration.

“How was it?” she said, and I got my digital camera out.

“That’s Peter relaxing with a Guinness!” I said, pointing him out. “We went bowling and ate noodles!”

“Brilliant!” she said. “And Akira?”

“That’s him there! I got trained by ninjas and traipsed around the Japanese countryside! If Bob hadn’t been there I’d
never
have found him…”

“Who’s Bob?” she asked.

“He’s an old friend.”

“Of course he is.”

I hugged her.

“Tea?” she said.

“Yes! But no! First, give me Chris’s message!”

And, like a dutiful wife, off she ran.

“I wrote it down,” she said. “All he’d said on the message was, ‘This is Chris calling for Danny Wallace, can he call me back,’
and then his number.”

“Ace,” I said. “Did he seem pleased to hear from me?”

“Well, it was a very short message, and he—”

“Hang on—what?”

“It was a really short message. I wasn’t—”

“No, before that. What did he say? What did you say he said?”

Something wasn’t right here.

“He said, ‘This is Chris calling, can he…?’”

“No—you missed a bit. Did he say my name?”

“Oh—yeah. ‘This is Chris calling for Danny Wallace…?’”

My heart sank.

“Danny, or Daniel?”

“
Danny,
I think…”

“Is the message still on there?”

“No—I—I don’t know…”

I picked up the phone and checked. No messages. It’d been
deleted.

“What’s going on?” said Lizzie.

“Was it Danny, or was it Daniel?” I asked, frantically. “Did he leave a surname? Did he say it was Chris
Guirrean?
”

“I’m nearly
positive
it was Danny,” she said. “Is that bad?”

It
was
bad. Chris would not have known me as Danny. He’d have known me as Daniel. That’s why I’d been so careful with the letters.
That’s why I’d signed them
all
Daniel.

“Maybe he found you on the Internet,” she said. “Or maybe he knows someone who knows you. Maybe when you’ve been on telly,
or…”

“What’s this number?”

“That’s just what he left on the machine…”

“It’s…
foreign
…”

And it was. But
familiarly
so. Was that good or bad?

“Is it him?” she said.

I picked up the phone and dialed.

One ring.

Two.

A man answered, saying something incomprehensible.

“Hello?” I said, cautiously.

He had an accent. Not a Scottish one. And he didn’t say hello. He said h
a
llo.

“Is that Chris?”

“This is Chris.”

“Chris…
Guirrean?
”

It didn’t
sound
like him.

“Who is this, please?”

“My name is Danny Wallace.
Daniel
Wallace. I’m calling from London. I got this message, saying that I should—”

“Aha! Yes!” said the man. “Here is Christian Zimmerman!”

“Here is Christian Zimmerman?” I said. “Where?”

“I am Christian Zimmerman!”

I didn’t know what any of this meant.

“Sorry—you’re
who?
”

“You had bought from me something from eBay. The World Cup 1986 book. It was just courtesy call to say I had sent the item
and you should expect it. Has it been?”

Oh… oh, no…

I looked towards the stairs. There was a package. My eyes fell to my feet.

“Ja,” I said, and put the phone down.

I looked at Lizzie.

“It wasn’t him, was it?” she said.

“Never mind,” I said.

And she gave me a hug.

I was tired. All my leads had gone. I’d done my absolute best, but I was
tired
and
all my leads had gone.
Chris Guirrean had simply disappeared. It happens. I could only hope that wherever he was, he was okay. And hey—maybe
one
day we’d meet up. I knew I couldn’t do this forever. Eventually, I’d have to move on. Because moving on—growing up—had been
the point of this all along.

“Why don’t you go up to Dundee?” said Lizzie. “Just for the day? See if you can find any leads?”