Join Me, extract from Chapter 1.

There is a man who lives in Camden, North London, who once made me very happy.

He’d written me a letter.

This is what it said:

To whom it may concern,

As requested, here is my passport photo. I have also troubled myself to include our local Indian restaurant menu, and can recommend the Chicken Dansak if you’re ever in the area and feeling hungry. I look forward to hearing about the next step in our endeavours.

Cheers

Christian Jones

London NW1

I’d opened it immediately and excitedly, and then read it over and over again. I found it one of the most incredible letters I’d ever received. Why? Because it was a reply to my advert. The advert I’d placed on a whim. And it contained a passport photo of Chris, smiling. Smiling at me; the bloke he’d joined.

“Wow,” I’d said to myself. “Someone actually did it ...”

It was such an incredible moment for me. I had my first joinee. A new best friend, of sorts. I mean ... imagine it. From now on, whatever happened, I would always have this; I would always have Christian Jones of London NW1. Even if no one else ever deemed me worthy of joining in the future ... even if no one in the entire world ever wanted to accept my offer ever again ... Chris Jones was mine, and mine alone. My friend. My mate. My cheeky-faced pal.

Granted, we hadn’t actually met yet, and if it came down to it and the whole world treated me with disinterest and scorn, why would he feel any different? But I had a hunch Jonesy wouldn’t desert me. We’d come this far, me and him, and besides, I was already calling him “Jonesy”.

I studied the menu Chris had enclosed with his letter. “The Madras Valley ... 123 Castlehaven Road, northwest London”. It looked great. Maybe I was romanticising it slightly because of the mood I was in, but I don’t think that any restaurant has ever seemed so appealing as the Madras Valley did at that moment.

“We are proud of our chefs and our management,” it read. “We are proud that you the customer choose us to satisfy your appetite”. Well, that was lovely. They hadn’t needed to write that, but they’d done it anyway. What a great world my joinee lived in. A friendly world, where restaurants are proud of themselves, and you get a free bottle of Coke with every takeaway order over £15.

And this sealed it for me: “Our chef has twenty years experience as a chef.” Oh, Jonesy knew his stuff when it came to restaurants, alright. He was a man of taste. A man of quality. A man I knew I should know.

I imagined our shared future. I imagined our summers in the park, drinking cool beers and kicking a battered old football around, laughing like ladies in the afternoon sun. I imagined us marrying twins, and living next door to each other, and going halves on a caravan we’d take to the Lake District twice a year. I imagined growing old with him, maybe by now having to share just the one twin wife, trading in the caravan for a timeshare on the coast ... and you know what? Life would be good. Life would be great. Because Jonesy would be there.

Join Me by Danny Wallace is out now on Edbury Press.

useful link: www.join-me.co.uk