Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (17 page)

“When are you thinking?”

“Your thirtieth.”

My thirtieth. November 16th. It was perfect. It was absolutely
perfect.
The house would be done, and my twenties along with it. I would get to grips with saying goodbye to being a boy with a group
of people doing exactly the same—and a group of people with whom I’d
always
been a boy. Plus, the DIY I’d undertaken and completed in the name of Man Points would help me feel like a… well… like a
man. Prepare
me. Lizzie had covered all the angles. The case for the prosecution rested. I’d avoided forty years of immediate manhood,
and been offered several months of community service instead.

“So…” she said. “Deal or No Deal?”

I smiled.

“Deal.”

And a high-five in Desperados sealed it.

I wanted to show her how much I appreciated this. I wanted to say something that demonstrated just how cool I was with our
new way of life. I suddenly really appreciated all the things that Ian had made me so worried about. I could be ready for
them—I
would
be ready for them—especially after this. I wanted to tell her that I was pleased she understood the old me, and that the
new me was coming along. That once this was out of the way, I’d be so much more able to deal with ciabattas and mohair. But
all I could manage was:

“We should go home and look at our cushions!”

“You don’t get any Man Points for that,” said Lizzie.

Bollocks.

“But in return,” she said, “to show you how supportive I am of this new endeavor—because I
am
supportive of it—I am now going to give you a gift.”

I crossed my fingers and hoped it was a kitten.

Lizzie held up the letter from Cameron and pointed to the top right-hand corner.

“What does UPS mean?” she said, knowingly.

“United Parcel Service,” I said.

“Yes. But this… this isn’t UPS. This is USP.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Psychic ability?”

“No,” she said, patiently. “
U
SP.”

I looked at the letter. I reread the address. She was
right.

USP PO BOX 978

“But… what’s
USP?
” I asked.

“I have absolutely no idea. But I doubt it’s the United Service Parcel.”

And then, suddenly, and with no warning whatsoever, I
remembered
something… or
thought
I remembered something… and my eyes must have lit up like fireflies because no sooner had I said…

“Can I just…?”

… than Lizzie had said…

“Let’s
go.
”

Lizzie sat on the arm of my chair as I fired up the computer.

“For someone who claims to be an excellent speller, I find it interesting that you struggled to spell USP.”

“I saw the letters and I
assumed
…” I said. “But I
know
I’ve seen USP somewhere before. And I
know
that it had something to do with Cameron…”

“Maybe he’s psychic,” she said, and I laughed.

I found the Internet and jumped in, tapping USP into Google as I did so.

United States Pharmacopeial…

Unique Selling Point…

United Security Products…

Universal Storage Platform…

“There are too many USPs!”

“But you definitely saw it?” said Lizzie. “You definitely saw USP?”

“I’m pretty sure…”

“Click on History…”

I did.

And there I saw it…

usp.ac.fj

At first glance, entirely unremarkable…

But when you
clicked
it…

University of the South Pacific

That must be it! That must be the university Cameron’s dad moved to!

There was a search bar…

But
would there be a Dewa?
I typed it in, and pressed Search.

And up came an article…

Microcomputers in Fiji Education/1984 by Fereti S. Dewa, Suva, Fiji.

“That’s Cameron’s dad!” I yelled, and Lizzie clapped her hands together. “It
must
be! Fred was what he’d always called himself in Loughborough to make things easier for people… Fereti must be his
real
name!”

I was now on to something…
we
were now on to something…

I typed Fereti S. Dewa into Google, and found, to my intense joy and surprise, a photograph of a man I recognized as Cameron’s
dad. A big, bold, silver-haired giant of a man. Distinguished and elegant, in a suit, making a speech of some kind. And what’s
more—it had been a speech made in
London,
just two years before!

THE KEYNOTE SPEECH

at the 22nd ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

NEW ZEALAND HOUSE, LONDON

DR. FERETI S. DEWA

I started to read it, but it was a complicated speech, which sounded incredibly important, to do with land rights, and forefathers,
and rebellions, and Parliamentary Constitutional Review Committees. I couldn’t take much of it in, because I was reading on,
scanning through, desperately searching for clues as to where he might live now… where
Cameron
might live now…

And then I noticed this…

The Chairman of the Society, Mr. Michael Walsh, introduced Dr. Fereti Seru Dewa, who had been one of the two hundred and twelve
young Fijian men and women who had joined the British army in 1961. Dr. Dewa was elected as an MP to the Fijian Parliament
in 1994, a position which he held until the coup in 1999…

It was all amazing to me… I’d had no idea his dad was in the army! I’d had no idea he was a Fijian Member of Parliament, but
had been ousted by military coup! But among all that excitement, and danger, and power, there was just one thing that stood
out to me. One thing in particular which made my heart jolt…

Seru.

Dr.
Seru
Dewa.

I had seen that name
that very day.
And more importantly, I had seen that name that very day, and it had been
next to a phone number
…

“I think I’ve got him!” I said.

“Good,” said Lizzie, standing up and smiling. “In which case, I’ll fetch your screw driver…”

Within ten minutes I had a Man Point score of One.

The Desperados Pact had begun.

I
t was the next morning and I was up early and already at work, in the garden, with a special brush I’d bought and a tin of
teak varnish which I was attempting to open with a small pen.

Paul had promised to come round today, but had phoned and said, “You’ll never guess what—my van’s broken down!” I had laughed
and said, “You couldn’t make it up!,” but a few minutes later, as I thought about it, I realized you could.

Ian hadn’t been too happy when I’d told him, over the phone, about the concept of Man Points.

“Man Points?” he said, and I could tell from his voice he was cradling his head in his hands. “Oh my God, Dan, you’ve fallen
for it. This is how they get you.”

“How do you mean? This means I can find my mates! This is freedom! This is brilliant!”

“No. This is the
opposite
of freedom, and this is the
opposite
of brilliant. This is a
system.
Do you think this system will ever disappear now that it’s established?”

“You’re talking about it like you know what it is,” I said, churlishly.

“It is one of the oldest systems of human oppression in existence,” said Ian. “Now you have to
earn
your fun.”

“No, it’s not like that—it just stops me feeling guilty about running around…”

“And why do you feel guilty?”

“Because I’m married, and I’m nearly thirty, and I should be…”

“I guarantee you your dad had to earn MPs.”

“MPs?”

“Man Points! 2MP for tidying the garage. 1MP for changing that lightbulb. 4MP for—”

“Shut up, no he didn’t, he never had to—”

“YOUR DAD HAD TO EARN MAN POINTS!” shouted Ian, shocking me slightly. “Think back!”

I thought back, confused.

Dad
had
always been tinkering with things. Painting doors. Varnishing tables. Mending broken sockets. And hadn’t I once noticed that
he always seemed to be mowing the lawn, or up on the roof…
just before a Carlisle United game?

Oh my God. My dad had had to earn
Man Points
for his fun!

Oh my God.
I was a subject of human oppression!

I considered this for a moment.

Was my need to see those twelve friends again—to reconnect with my past—really enough to warrant an entire life of servitude…
of earning points to be able to do anything, go anywhere? Was it enough to warrant becoming just another faceless drone heading
towards middle age? Wasn’t that what Ian had been warning me about all along? Was I destined to become one of the men you
saw at IKEA? A Micky Thomas in a Volvo wearing driving gloves and buying Turtle Wax?

I weighed everything up in my head.

I decided that, suddenly, I didn’t really mind.

Getting the go-ahead from Lizzie had galvanized me into action. And getting a deadline, too—that helped to no end. Now there
was a point to all this. Now I knew I had to move fast and think quick. If I was going to meet the old gang again, it had
to be by November 16th. For on the 17th, I would become a man, with no time for such childish folly. That would be the day
I bought a silver Ford Fusion people carrier like Simon, and stopped cutting my hair with electric razors, like Mikey.

That would also be the day I stopped trying to open tins of varnish with small plastic pens.

I looked at the varnish. I looked at the table. This was
clearly
worth 2MP. And what would that be worth, in real terms? I started to stir the tin, thinking about the night before.

I’d discovered to my dismay that the number I had for Cameron was in fact a fax number… but realized, with no small degree
of delight, that I could send faxes on my computer. No one had been this delighted about discovering a fax machine since 1985.
Or at least no one outside of Poland. And so I’d sent a fax off into the distant gloom of the London night, through wires
and across oceans and towards Fiji… hoping that the words “Fax Sent” were true, and that the number was still current. I hadn’t
known what to write, so had kept it brief…

Hello! This is Daniel Wallace! I’m trying to find Cameron Dewa!

We were best friends at school! I’m updating my address book!

My missus says it’s fine! Get in touch? My email address is…

It had felt hopeful but also slightly hopeless. A message in a bottle, cast out towards who-knows-where… but it was better
than nothing. And now here I was, making up for it, finally opening the tin and getting only two or three splashes of varnish
on my shoes and jeans. Result!

As well as the fax of the night before, I’d also raided the Box again, looking for clues as to where anyone might be. Getting
closer to Cameron made me feel everyone
else
was achievable, too. But everything was so out of date, so of its time. Snapshots of the past and, as such, not particularly
useful to the present. I’d tried to find Akira Matsui on the Internet, but, rather annoyingly, discovered it to be one of
Japan’s most common names. I found an old address I hadn’t tried for Tarek, when I lived in Berlin. I knew that Lauren’s grandma
lived in Dublin, and that she’d often go there to stay for the summer holidays. I’d printed off a list of all the Christopher
Guirreans currently living in the UK, and tried to work out which one might be mine.