The Imaginary friend problem

I remember the day clearly. I was seven years old, Alun a year older. We were playing a game of ‘insult mainlanders’, one of our favourite games, which involved inventing new insults about inhabitants of the mainland.

 

Alun had just come up with the line ‘they’ve too many heads to think’ and I was struggling to come up with anything more original than ‘they’re all stinky poo-bums’.

 

Our game was interrupted by Alun’s dad calling him home.

 

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Alun said as he was leaving. “I’ve got an imaginary friend.”

 

“An imaginary friend. Why?”

 

“Because I get bored when you’re not there. Dad’s always busy with his religious work (Alun’s father was the island’s Priest of All Faiths) and I’m not allowed to see you after supper because of that time you made me late for bed.”

 

“I made you late for bed?” I said. “It was your idea to spend the night in the mysterious cave to see if a mad hermit was secretly living there.”

 

“Anyway, I have nobody to play with at home so I decided I’d invent an imaginary friend. His name’s Jed.”

 

“That’s my name,” I said. “Isn’t that confusing?”

 

“Not really,” he said. “He’s completely different to you. He’s much more inventive. It was his idea to reverse the images in the mirrors.”

 

“Reverse the images in the mirrors?”

 

“It’s a wonderful prank. You should come round and try our mirror out. If you wave at it with your right hand your reflection waves back with its left. Dad hasn’t noticed yet, I expect he’ll be furious.”

 

“That’s a brilliant trick. Wish I’d thought of it. I suppose imaginary friends have much better imaginations than real ones.”

 

“Exactly Jed, that’s where they come from. Imagineria.”

 

That night I decided to get an imaginary friend from Imagineria as well. His name was Alun. “I want you to do what I tell you,” I said. “Keep out of trouble for the rest of the evening and don’t disturb me.” Without saying so much as a word, the imaginary Alun sat in the corner reading a book.

 

The next day I told Alun all about the imaginary Alun, he was dead jealous.

 

“And what did you and Jed get up to?” I asked.

 

“Oh we had a great evening Jed. Jed’s a bit of science whizz and while I was out with you he’d created brussel sprouts out of antimatter.”

 

“That’s a silly idea,” I said. “You couldn’t eat anti-matter sprouts, they’d react with the matter you’re made from and you’d explode.”

 

“We weren’t going to eat them Jed. That’s the whole point. We put them on top of the real sprouts we had for tea, and they cancelled each other out. It’s the perfect way of getting out of having to eat sprouts.”

 

“I thought you like sprouts. You told me they were your favourite food.”

 

“They are Jed. It was merely to show it could be done. Scientists don’t change the world for their own benefit. There are millions of boys all over the mainland who will welcome the technology.”

 

“Are you going to sell the idea for millions?”

 

“Unfortunately the only antimatter sprouts we had have been destroyed now, so we’ll have to come up with something else tonight.”

 

That day we played a game of ‘reasons we don’t like mainlanders’. Alun dissed their inability to appreciate the simple pleasures of life, such as staring out to sea and wondering. I said that there were just too many of them.  

 

I couldn’t help but notice that Alun was keener than usual to get away when playtime finished. I too was pleased to be returning home to Alun. That night he invented a new game of patience, the best game of patience ever, the most fun it’s possible to have without another person. Unfortunately it’s a game for one, so I wasn’t able to learn the rules as Alun was playing himself. It seemed to involve taking the seven of hearts from a pack of playing cards and shouting “I hate Neville Sugdon.”  I never did find out who Neville Sugdon was.

 

“We got up to all sorts of mischief last night,” Alun said the next day. “Jed taught the cat to open the fridge, and it stole all the jelly.”

 

“The cat stole the jelly?”

 

“Or Jed did. One of the two. That’s what I like about Jed, he’s crazily unpredictable.”

 

That summer a high proportion of our days were spent comparing the fun we had with our imaginary friends. Alun didn’t introduce me to Jed, and I didn’t introduce him to Alun. I knew that the non-imaginary Alun would be critical of his quiet, shy, imaginary alternative.

 

Then one day, in early September, I was woken by a hammering on my back door at an astonishingly early hour of the morning. I recognised Alun’s knock and rushed downstairs before he disturbed mum.

 

“What is it?” I said, “why are you waking us at this hour?”

 

“It’s Jed, Jed.”

 

“Jed?”

 

“Yes, Jed, my imaginary friend Jed. He’s gone.”

 

“Gone?”

 

“Yes Jed. I looked for him when I woke up and he wasn’t there.”

 

“But where would he go? You’re his only friend.”

 

“I was wondering about that,” Alun said. Have you seen Alun?”

 

“Alun?”

 

“Your imaginary friend.”

 

“Well he was here last night. We played hide and seek.”

 

“Look for him now.”

 

I searched all over the house. My imaginary friend was nowhere to be seen.

 

“I knew it”, Alun said. “They’ve run away together.”

 

“But where would they go?”

 

“To the mainland, Jed. Jed was always saying how much fun there was to be had on the mainland.”

 

“But how would they get there? The morning boat hasn’t been yet.”

 

“They must have an imaginary boat, Jed. If we climb the mountain we’ll be able to see them.”

 

It seemed like a crazy idea, but I let Alun lead me to the hill we call a mountain in the centre of the island. At the top of the hill Alun took out his father’s binoculars and scanned the horizon.

 

“There,” he said passing me the glasses and pointing in a mainlandy direction. I looked where he was pointing, and sure enough there were our imaginary friends in an imaginary boat, sailing off to a life of fun and adventure on the mainland, and leaving us alone, with just each other for company.

 

Alun said nothing as we climbed down the hill, in fact he was quiet for a long time afterwards he was in a maudlin mood I didn’t recognise in him.