Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (22 page)

“Oh!” I said. That was clever.

Within a matter of weeks, I had become unhealthily obsessed with Michael Jackson. The letters I wrote him talked openly of
my admiration for his charity work. I dissected his lyrics and explained what they meant to me—the twelve-year-old boy in
late 1980s Leicestershire. I asked after his chimp, Bubbles, and told him I hoped his hair had stopped hurting after he got
burned doing that Pepsi ad. And I loved the fact that Michael Jackson loved children. I mean, he
really
seemed to love them. There they were in his videos. In his films. Round his house. He was a grown man who seemed to prefer
hanging out with boys my age! That was brilliant!

My mum and dad didn’t seem to share that view, but what did they know? They didn’t even know his favorite color, or all the
words to “Liberian Girl”! How was I supposed to take
them
seriously? Losers!

But me and Cameron knew
all
that stuff. We were Loughborough’s number one Michael Jackson obsessives. And we’d always said that one day, when we were
old enough and able to, we’d go and see the man, for real. It seemed an impossible dream. And, like most impossible dreams,
it never, ever stood a chance of happening.

I sipped nervously at my pint. The Peepy Cheeks was filling up with the post-office crowd. By which I mean a crowd that had
just been in the office, not a room full of postmen.

Around me were men with shiny hair and tailored suits, talking loudly and laughing at the slightest thing. One of them banged
the table every time he spoke, apparently on a one-man mission to turn the word “banker” into rhyming slang.

I had a seat near the entrance, so I could look out for Cameron and prepare myself for his arrival. I honestly didn’t know
how he’d react to me just turning up and asking if he could come out to play. Maybe he had things to do tonight. Maybe he
had a family, or had to pick someone up from school. Maybe he was allergic to pubs, or had a history of violently assaulting
people who surprised him. I just didn’t know what Cameron would be like now. I only knew what he
used
to be like.

Twenty minutes passed, and there was still no sign of him.

Then thirty.

Hope seemed to be fading. But then, maybe Cameron was still running on Fiji Time. Cameron had
always
said he ran on that. This meant that he could be as late as he wanted for anything he chose and simply blame it on the people
of Fiji. I had a feeling this only worked if you were actually Fijian yourself. It would be difficult for me to be late to
a job interview and then blame it on the Swedes. But Cameron embraced his excuse on a near-daily basis. When I’d made him
promise and swear to meet me at two o’clock outside the Curzon to watch
Who Framed Roger Rabbit,
he’d finally wandered in at around four, and caught the last five minutes.

“At least I got to see who framed him,” he’d said. “That’s the important thing.”

And I suppose he was right.

And then, with no warning whatsoever, in he walked.

He saw me and pointed.

“You!”
he said.

Cameron was unmistakably Cameron.

He was taller, and broader, and wider… but he was Cameron.

“I had no idea you were trying to track me down!” he said, settling into his seat. “I only found out from that fax! They forwarded
it to me in London, and I said, oh my gosh, I
remember
this guy!, and I told my wife, I said, I was at this guy’s house practically every day when I was a kid! So I thought I’d
give it a shot and reply.”

“Did you ever try and look
me
up as the years went by?” I said, with a little hope in my eyes.

“No,” said Cameron.

Oh.

“But every so often I wondered where you were in the world, if that counts. I think we all wonder where our friends are now.
It did cross my mind that perhaps these days you were a psychopath, leaving dodgy notes for me around the world. But life’s
about risks. I figured it was worth the risk.”

I took that as a compliment. It was official: meeting me was worth risking murder. It’s not something I get a lot.

“So where do you live now?” I asked.

“In Essex,” he said. “I get the train here every day, quite early, and then—”

Hang on…

“That goes through Bow! I think that goes past my old flat!”

So Cameron had been closer than we’d ever thought. The trains which run past my old flat run within two meters of it. That
meant that for the past few years, Cameron and I had been within spitting distance, every day, twice a day. Yeah, so only
for a split second each time—but that’s a
lot
of split seconds. And that’s a
lot
of spit, over not much distance. The tracks must’ve been
soaked.

A strange thought occurred… I wished I had a map. I wished I could somehow trace the lines of people’s movements through the
years… not just the movements of their daily routine, but the times they ventured out of it. The times we might just have
bumped into each other. The times that coincidences are made of. Cameron’s daily routine had brought him closer to me than
I’d ever thought could be likely—but who knew how many times I’d walked past him as he sat in a café, or a pub? What if that
was true of the others? What if I’d walked past Akira Matsui, or Peter Gibson, or Lauren Medcalfe on my way to meet another,
newer friend? What if I’d been on holiday at the same time and in the same place as Ben Ives? Or at a gig? Or in the same
cinema? What if tonight I would walk past Christopher Guirrean without even realizing it—without even looking up to check?
It suddenly struck me that every day a million coincidences
nearly
happen.

“It’s a small world,” said Cameron. “But it feels pretty big when you’re a kid. Hey—are you still into MJ?”

“Michael Jackson?” I said. “No. That sort of faded away. You?”

“No. Michael Jordan took over. When we went back to Fiji I got kind of obsessed with basketball. I had to go to a Chinese
school at first, and they didn’t really have a natural talent for rugby, so all we did was play basketball, and I loved it.
I ended up playing for Fiji.”

“You played
basketball
for
Fiji?
” I said, amazed. “Seriously?”

It made my North Leicestershire Under-Tens Boys Swimming Championship seem almost like some kind of regional sporting award
for children.

“Yeah… we played against America, against Australia, against New Zealand… I wound up scoring nine three-pointers in the game
before the world final, but then sprained my ankle so couldn’t go through… I was pretty annoyed.”

“But still! You played for a national team! You played for your
country!
”

Cameron looked proud.

“I suppose.”

And then he looked even prouder.

“I was also in a Coke ad.”

“You what?”

He nodded.

“I was in an advert for Coca-Cola.”

This seemed to me to be the whole point of something like Friends Reunited. Why write “I enjoy peanuts and am unmarried” when
you can write “I played basketball for Fiji and advertised Coca-Cola”?

“It was when they had their new plastic bottles out, and they didn’t want to frighten everyone with them by just putting them
in the shops.”

“That would have been
very
frightening.”

“So they did this advertising campaign. I happened to be walking by the studio, when someone I knew ran out and said, ‘Hey—what
are you doing for the next hour or so? How would you like fifty bucks and some free Coke?’”

That seemed to pretty much sum up the advertising industry.

“I had to run along a beach with a girl and then stop and drink some Coke. They expected you to hold the bottle in the air
miles away from your mouth and then pour it in for thirty seconds, non-stop. I kept getting it down my top, or my mouth would
fill up and it would go down my chin. I got it in my eyes at one point and then coughed and sprayed the girl with Coke. It
wasn’t the look they were going for.”

“Did you manage it?”

“I went through nine bottles. I was getting shaky from all the caffeine and my tummy was full of liquid. In the end they made
the girl do it instead. She did it first time.”

“Oh.”

“When I saw the ad I noticed that all the foundation they’d made me wear had mixed with the Coke and made me look all lumpy.
I looked like one of the zombies from ‘Thriller.’”

“Still. Another ambition realized.”

“It was as close to being Michael Jackson as I ever came. I remember we always said that one day we’d get to see him.”

“Yeah. But then you grow up.”

“Yeah. But then you grow up.”

Cameron was now married, to a Fijian girl called Nadine, who he’d met at school. Nothing had happened at first—she was concentrating
on her band, 4Jams, he was playing basketball with a load of Chinese blokes. And then, while working in a factory, they’d
finally fallen in love. Cameron found work as a piano tuner, Nadine found part-time work here and there, and one day they’d
upped and moved to London. It was a happy story. But then Cameron said…

“You know my mum passed away?”

I was shocked, and hit by a wave of sadness. When you leave people for so many years—when there’s no contact, no updates—you
somehow assume that everything is okay. That no tragedy can possibly happen because
you’re
not there to see it. That because your world revolves around you, surely nothing happens without you. But that’s not how
life works.

“God… Cameron, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But Dad’s doing good. He’s remarried now. Living in a small village in Yorkshire. There’s not really much
of a Fijian community up there, so he’s a bit of a celebrity…”

Which reminded me of something. Something incredible. Something about Cameron.

Because when we were growing up, Cameron Dewa was hiding a
secret
…

I hadn’t known about Cameron Dewa’s secret until a month or two after our final, tearful goodbye. It had been a horrible goodbye.
In our minds we were going to be friends forever, and probably live side by side in a caravan park until we were 80. It was
a goodbye so traumatic that in the end the only way I could find to cope with it was through the medium of poetry. I had written
a poem entitled “Cameron Is My Best Friend,” through which I was able to exorcise the pain and trauma.

But now that I think about it, all the clues to the secret were there. Clues pointing towards something I really should have
known, given the hushed whispers and quiet mutters as we’d cycled around Loughborough, or kicked footballs, or swapped fascinating
Michael Jackson trivia.

There was the fact that I knew that his dad, Fred, was someone important back in Fiji. But then,
everyone’s
dad was someone important back then. Then there was the fact that it seemed like returning to Fiji was almost some kind of
duty
for the Dewas, rather than a choice. But ultimately, and most importantly, there was the Friday after school, just before
Cameron left Loughborough for good.

That Friday was the Friday of the school play. I wasn’t in this one—despite the fact that my accent now met with all accepted
East Midlands guidelines. Cameron, however,
was
—playing a key, tree-based role in a forest scene. School was over and the sun was shining. Cameron and I cycled away on our
BMXs, through the playground, past the magic tree and on, towards home. At the news-agent’s near Anil’s house, we stopped
for some snacks and a drink. We knew our time was running out, but neither wanted to say anything, in case somehow that made
the end come faster. And so we rode wordlessly up the hill towards Spinney Hill Drive, turning the corner into the cul-de-sac
until we saw something astonishing. Well—something that astonished
me.

A long, black limousine parked right outside my little house.

With a smart, suited driver in it.

A small Fijian flag above the grille.

And a license plate with FIJI 1 written on it.

I skidded to a halt. Cameron stopped beside me.

“I think that must be my dad’s friend,” he said, as simply as that.

We edged our way past the limo, pushing our bikes and keeping our heads low as a sign of deference to the man within. I couldn’t
quite believe it. A limousine in Loughborough. You don’t get limousines in Loughborough. Even when Barbara Windsor, the most
famous person Loughborough had ever seen, had arrived to open that Kwik Save on the market, it had been in a metallic green
Austin Princess. That meant whoever was in my house was even more important than that woman who’d been in
Carry On Camping.

We opened the front door, took our shoes off and walked into the front room. And there they were… Cameron’s dad. My dad. The
Fijian Minister of Defense. The Ambassador to Fiji. And my mum serving finger sandwiches.

What were these people doing in my living room? Who
was
Cameron’s dad? What was that man doing in the limo outside?

“Yes,” said my mum. “The driver. Apparently he has to stay outside and keep a lookout.”

A lookout? For what? What was going on?

“I tried to offer him a cheese sandwich,” she said. “But he said he couldn’t take one on the grounds that I might be trying
to assassinate him.”

She said this as if people were constantly turning her sandwiches down for fear of political assassination.

It turned out that the Minister of Defense and the Ambassador had come all the way to Loughborough to congratulate Cameron’s
dad on finishing his doctorate at the university. The completed doctorate which meant he would now return to Fiji as soon
as possible. Cameron’s dad had wound up stuck for things to show them in Loughborough—I believe they’d already had a Wimpy
and
seen the Woolworths pick ’n’ mix—and so decided to bring them round to our house for a cup of tea.

Cameron and I had a sandwich and discussed it.

“How come these guys are in Loughborough?” I asked.