Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (6 page)

I heard the Bald Assassin laugh through my headset. It was the laugh of the skilled and in control. The Bald Assassin and
I never used our microphones to talk to one another. It had gone beyond that. We’d simply scowl at each other, secretly, and
then mumble our goodbyes at the end of the game.

“Bye,” I mumbled. And I switched the Xbox off. Bloody Bald Assassin. Outside, the sky had darkened, and a dull gray light
had overtaken the city. Small specks of rain had started to fall, forcing London into a hush as workers and tourists and everyone
else stopped hurrying about and just stayed where they were instead. Soon the rain became heavier and the trees outside took
the brunt, whole branches waving at me as the shower became a storm.

I thought about switching the Xbox on again, but the place was a state and there were still all those boxes to unpack. And
so, with a sigh, I walked to the spare room where most of them lay. I found some scissors and opened a box at random. DVDs.
Ah well. That was easy. I’d sort them later. I opened another. Paperwork. Well, that would require filing expertise, and somewhere
to file them all. Later.

And then I saw a third box. Smaller than the others, but still rather large. Especially if you had to carry it home from the
post office, like I’d done.

The box from my parents.

Intrigued—and because I still had a pair of scissors in my hands—I sliced through the parcel tape and flipped back the lid.

And what I saw confused me for a second.

There were letters. And videos. And photographs. And, more than anything…
memories.
It appeared to contain the contents of my childhood. A few schoolbooks, the scrapbook I’d kept when I was ten (when I’d wittily
whited out the “S” to turn it into a crapbook), and letter after letter after letter.

I smiled, and laughed, and started to pick through the stuff. I found badges, first: an
I AM
7 badge. A Tufty Club badge. My Dennis the Menace Fan Club badge. And then certificates: my Silver Cycling Proficiency certificate,
which took me straight back to the playground at Holywell Junior School and the day we took the test. I’d done it on my brand
new off-white Raleigh Renegade, and passed with flying colors… mainly because all you had to be able to do to gain your Silver
was not fall off. Mind you, it can’t have been
that
easy. Ian Holmes failed, and
he’d
arrived on a tricycle.

And here… here was another one. Another something I hadn’t seen in
years
… my FIRST PLACE certificate in the North Leicestershire Schools Swimming Association Under-Tens Boys Breaststroke competition.
First place! I remembered how proud I’d been. You probably remember the day yourself, because it was all
anyone
on my street was talking about, so as you’ll know, that was the day I became the fastest nine-year-old in Leicestershire!
Well, in
north
Leicestershire. At breaststroke.

But they were just
details.
The 18th of March 1986 was the day I became a
winner!
Yeah, so it probably remains the only race I have ever won in my life, on land, sea or air, but I thought back to the magical
day I’d had to stand up in school assembly to accept my certificate, an experience marred only by the fact that someone official
had gotten my name wrong, and when I looked at it, it did not read DANIEL WALLACE, but P. WALLS instead. This offended me
as much as a
speller
as it did as a winner. They hadn’t even given me a new certificate. Just stuck a small white sticker over the front and written
my proper name in black ink. They wouldn’t have done that at the Olympics, so why they should do it at Holywell Junior School
is anyone’s guess.

I dug deep into the box and pulled out more stuff. A sticker with a footballer on it. Some copies of
Fast Forward
magazine. And photos—dozens of old photos. Photos of me as a kid. Photos of me with my friends. Photos of where we lived,
and what we did, and of all the fun we had.

I spread everything out on the floor, and started to pick through it, so much of it firing off memories and triggering thoughts
I hadn’t had in decades. Here was a picture of me dressed as a tiny soldier, in the days where all I’d wanted was to be a
stuntman like Lee Majors and have Howling Mad Murdoch as my best friend. Here was one from my first day at school in Dundee,
complete with blazer and tie, as was the law in Scotland for four-year-olds. That was also the day my mum, in the panic of
new experience, had forgotten to give me my first-ever packed lunch. The teachers, insisting that I eat something, had taken
me to the canteen and bought me a plate of strange, unfamiliar food. I had never seen a boiled carrot before. It had been
in front of me for two, maybe three seconds, staring back at me like a bald orange finger. Nerves took over. I couldn’t eat
that! What was it? Where was my mum? Where was my mum’s
food?
My body did the only sensible thing it could. It vomited on Scott Butcher’s lap. He didn’t seem to mind, and we became great
friends. It is the only time I have made a friend this way. If you try it as a grown-up, on a crowded tube train, say, or
at a wedding, people tend to frown upon you.

From Dundee we’d moved to Loughborough, and here was a picture of Mum and Dad and a seven-year-old me standing in front of
our new house, looking all proud. My arrival in the East Midlands had caused quite a stir. For a start, as Ian would soon
doubtless find with Chislehurst, no one had ever moved
to
Loughborough before. Added to that, the thick Dundonian accent I’d grown up with in Scotland caused worry and concern among
my new neighbors and friends. No one had ever heard anything like it. A few people put forward the theory that perhaps I had
been dropped on my head as a baby. Most horribly, when the school play came around, I was given the part of the amusing weather-man,
mainly due to the fact that the Scottish weatherman Ian McCaskill was at the height of his broadcasting fame. The rehearsal
went well. People laughed in the right places. But on the night, I would recite my lines to a hall packed with silent, horrified,
open-mouthed faces. There was an audible gasp. A woman in the front row made a sympathetic face, as if to tell me how brave
she thought I was, coming out here in public with such a terrible condition. At least one person held my mother by the arm,
and told her how much she admired her for all she must have been through. “I don’t know how you cope,” she’d said, and my
mother, not understanding, just smiled and said yes. The next night I was demoted, and put on as a mute, En glish footballer.
And two or three months later, my accent turned En glish too.

It was strange. The last time I’d seen these places, I’d been
in
them. And now they were just flat, slightly discolored photos. In a box. In my adulthood. Suddenly, my years in Loughborough
had become real again. I remembered the day Dad took me to Woolworths and bought me Way of the Exploding Fist for our brand
new BBC B Microprocessor with dot matrix printing capabilities. I remembered opening up a Griffin Savers account at the Midland
Bank with a deposit of £1.25—and then withdrawing the entire amount the next day to buy “Dancing on the Ceiling” by Lionel
Richie—mainly because I’d seen the video and thought it might
actually
help me dance on the ceiling. And I remembered my friends. I remembered my friends more than anything.

Especially when I picked up a smooth and sleek black book, which I’d somehow overlooked until now… I recognized it instantly.
This had been my address book. But a
special
address book. My grandma had given it to me on one of my visits to Switzerland, and I’d been inordinately proud of it. The
edge of each page was red, and the paper gave a brilliant shine to whatever names I wrote in it. I would take the details
of only the most important people I knew, and painstakingly add them in the best handwriting I could muster… including stickers
and doodles for effect. And now here it was once more.

I opened it, excitedly, and started to flick through…

The names hit me one by one…

ANIL TAILOR!

MICHAEL AMODIO!

Remember them? I did!

CAMERON DEWA!

SIMON GIBSON!

Cameron! The Fijian kid! And Simon! The scruffy one!

PETER GIBSON!

CHRISTOPHER GUIRREAN!

Peter! And
Chris!
My first-ever best friend from my days in Dundee!

And they just kept coming… the names, and the memories. Twelve in total, in an address book I’d intended to update regularly
but only ever really updated every year or two, or when Mum and Dad had decided it was time to up and move on… but these guys
had meant a lot to me. They
must’ve,
to have made it into the Book…

I smiled, and laughed, and flicked through it again.

Twelve names. Twelve great names.

AKIRA MATSUI!

The Japanese kid who’d come to our school! He was brilliant!

LAUREN MEDCALFE!

Wow—a name I hadn’t thought of in
forever.

Where were these guys now? What were they up to? Were they happy? A thought suddenly struck me.
They’d
all be about to turn thirty too. How were
they
dealing with it? Did they feel like me? Like they… weren’t quite
ready?

I closed the Book and looked out of the window. The storm had stopped some time earlier, but the day had given up the fight
and evening was knocking on the door. I looked at my watch. Lizzie wouldn’t be home for hours. But I was in such a good mood,
now… I wanted to go out.
Call
someone.
Do
something. Tell them about finding the Book. Ask them about
their
childhood friends.

But who?

Things didn’t
used
to be like this. The Book proved that much. The Book was from the days when everything was exciting and new and friends were
pretty much all anyone cared about. I used to have a wealth of them, people I could call on a whim and see in a
moment.
Who’d populate the parks, playgrounds, streets and benches of this fine country. What had happened? Where had we all gone?
We used to be able to spend
days
together, not just
minutes.
We never had to
arrange
anything, just
turn up.
Never fix a date, or shift a meeting, or consult the diary. Never “make time” or “reschedule,” or “no-can-do” or “raincheck.”
Friends came first—or
used
to come first—so what had happened? Why wasn’t I with a friend right
now?

Yeah, we all grow up. We all get busy. But we
all
need friends.

I
would
meet with a friend today. I had
plenty
of friends. I
knew
I did. They were right here, inside my poncey little BlackBerry. I clicked on “Address Book.” I started at the
A
’s.

Adam.

Yes! Adam! I could call Adam! Adam would do just fine! I called Adam. I waited for the ring tone. His number had been disconnected.

Okay. Not Adam.

I scrolled down. The
B
’s. Ben. No, he moved to Spain. Another Ben. Didn’t he move, too? On I scrolled.

C.

Carl. CARL! I hit Call.

Call Carl, I thought. That was quite funny. I laughed to myself. A second passed.

“Hello?”

“Carl! I thought I’d call Carl!”

I laughed.

Carl didn’t.

I continued.

“So where are you?”

“I’m in Manchester. Where I live.”

“Okay!”

I hung up and scrolled down faster, furiously trying to find someone—
anyone
—who might want to see a Wallace…

H, I, J, K…

Kyle! Kyle! Yes!
Kyle!

Wait a second. I met him in Uganda.

L! M! N!

Neil! What about Neil! Or Noel! Neil or Noel? The choice was too difficult. I went on instinct. I dialed Neil.

It rang. No answer.

I scrolled on…

O!

I know
no one
whose name begins with O.

P!

I know
too many
people whose names begin with P.

Q!

I know
one person
whose name begins with Q, and he’s a nincompoop.

R!

Yes! Rob! What about Rob? ROB! I hit Call and leaned against the wall.

“Yo yo yo! Rob here. I’m not around at the minute. Why not leave a message and I’ll get right back to you?”

The beep did its beep and I couldn’t help myself.

“ROB IT’S DANNY HOW ABOUT WE HANG OUT DANNY WALLACE I MEAN GIVE ME A CALL LET’S GO FOR A DRINK I’M FREE RIGHT NOW CALL ME
I AM WAITING!”

I paused for a second, couldn’t think what else to say, and hung up.

A moment passed.

I reflected on whether I might have seemed a little over-keen.

I put the phone in my pocket.

Who the fuck was Rob again?

Lizzie got home at around half past nine that night. She looked tired.

“How was work?” I said.

“Busy,” she said. “Really very busy indeed.”

My BlackBerry was on the floor. I looked at it. It was still on Address Book. There was no tiny yellow envelope. No little
red light. I had no messages.

Lizzie looked to her left and clocked something.

“There appears to be a large ladder in the hallway,” she said.

“She’s retractable,” I said.

“‘She’?”

“It’s what we say.”

“‘We’?”

“Us in the trade. We tend to refer to things as women. I think it makes us feel more manly.”

Lizzie smiled.

“How was your day?”

“Oh… you know. Pretty full on. I looked at the toilet for a while and on
Street Crime UK
there was this kid on a wall.”

Lizzie looked impressed.

“But also… I opened that box. The one Mum sent.”

“The one full of handy things?”

“Yeah… turns out none of them were all that handy. But they were…
interesting.
Stuff from my childhood. Photos and stuff.”