Read Online 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 - Free Book Online Page A

had been. Maybe right now, Christopher was
     on a computer, somewhere, too…
    Or maybe he was eating chips.
    God, I was hungry.
    Quickly, I entered a new profile onto Friends Reunited.
    Hi. It’s Daniel here. Daniel Wallace. I’m just updating my address book. Get in touch!
    I didn’t quite know what else to type. Just updating my address book seemed a good enough excuse. I logged out, and typed
     a few names into Google. But nothing really startling came up. A Chris Guirrean who was about forty years too old to be mine.
     An Akira Matsui who was about twenty years too young. I sighed. Ah well. It couldn’t have been
that
easy. But at least now I’d made an effort to be found. I’d put my fingerprint out there and invited people to get in touch.
     I’d
done
something.
    And anyway, I thought, what was I so worried about? I was just in a weird place, was all, during a time of change. I wandered
     into the kitchen and noticed that Lizzie had indeed left me a plate. It was covered in tinfoil, and I filled a glass with
     water, grabbed a knife and fork and took it all to the living room.
    Thing is, I thought, I’d been right last time. I should just be more accepting of the way my life was going. Embrace the sockets
     that needed mending. Buy
more
brushed aluminum frames, not less.
Display
my display cushions. Light a scented candle and put
extra
cumin and basil and coriander on my sun-dried tomato focaccia.
    I sat down on the sofa, feeling marginally better about the whole experience, took a sip of my water and took the tinfoil
     off my plate.
    And then I just stared at it.
    It was a lamb, mint and apricot sausage. A sausage of the week. I had been
bought
a
sausage of the week!
There was mash, too, though, and I suppose mash is a bit like chips, so maybe I could just pretend this was sausage and chips…
     but the mash was a bed of
minted
mash with a
hint
of rosemary and port
jus
…
    It was the most grown-up post-pub meal possible.
    I looked at my tap water, half expecting it to be
sparkling.
    What would
Ian
say?
    And then I
remembered
what Ian had said…
    “They have an Internet café in Chislehurst now.”
    No, not that. The thing about being at peace…
    “Sometimes, to be at peace with what’s coming up, you have to be in touch with what’s already happened.”
    He was right!
    He was
so
right!
    Yeah, so he’d been talking about Chislehurst at the time, but the point remained. That was why Neil and his mates were so
     laid-back. That was why turning thirty for him was a night of joy, and friendship, and memories. I suddenly thought about
my
thirtieth. What would
I
do? Where would
my
mates be? Wag would probably still be on tour. Ian would probably be in that Internet café. It’d just be me, with four display
     cushions and a sausage of the week.
    Maybe I needed to do what Ian had inadvertently suggested… maybe I needed to be in touch with what had already happened. Subconsciously,
     I’d already started tonight… I thought back to what I’d written on the Web…
    Hi. It’s Daniel here. Daniel Wallace. I’m just updating my address book. Get in touch!
    I put the plate down and bounded to the corner of the room, where the contents of the box that Lizzie and I had been going
     through still lay… and there, on the top of the pile…
    … was my old address book.
    Just updating my address book,
I thought.
That’s all. Just updating it.
    I flicked it open to page one.
    A.
    Anil.
    Wild West Day at school.
    His mum’s curries.
    That night in Yorkshire, which we’d always said we’d do again, but never ever did…
    Friends Forever.
    I picked up my phone. Did I still have his number? It’d been years. I’d changed phones at least twice since then.
    I checked.
    No luck.
    But wait.
    I ran downstairs, rifled through my desk, until I found it—an old SIM card from an old phone…
    I unfastened the back of my BlackBerry, and jammed the SIM card in…
    I turned it back