‘He’s late if he’s coming this way at all,’ I muttered, turning to Amelia.

Her face was screwed up in concentration. ‘If I wasn’t here,’ she said, ‘you’d have given up and missed him.’

I snapped back to look at the next approaching car, and sure enough, behind the driver, was an enormous figure crowned with that distinctive shock of white hair. It had to be him. The car, a huge silver limo, with at least three rows of seats, was rolling along quite slowly. It just kept coming. I approached its side, waving at the driver to stop. In response the car eased forward faster. In desperation, I dashed to the front of the limo and slid across the bonnet: I had to put myself between it and the gate. To avoid running me over, the car had to jerk to a stop. Immediately the front passenger door flung open and a guy with a gun, screaming in French, took a step towards me with the barrel aimed straight at my face.

‘Non, arrêtez, non!’ shouted Amelia.

Her words had no effect; the man just kept coming. He had a crooked nose. Flattened, almost. He wouldn’t shoot me there and then, would he? That was a gamble I had to take. I moved towards him – and his open door – yelling, ‘Cloudburst, Cloudburst!’ at the top of my voice. The bodyguard got hold of me, tried to haul me away. I felt my T-shirt ripping as I struggled, still hollering, ‘Cloudburst!’ for everything I was worth, which, in that moment, felt like nothing at all. I had hold of the door frame somehow and wasn’t about to let go of it: the guy could rip my T-shirt clean off for all I cared.

Lazily, the rear window of the limo lowered, revealing a concerned broad face beneath a white cloud.

‘Qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?’ he said gently, and in accented English, ‘What did you say?’

Amelia stepped in. With a showstopping smile and her perfect French she held the big man’s attention. I heard my parents’ names, the word enfants repeated, and a load of other stuff whose gist I could follow without understanding all the words. The bodyguard melted away. The chairman climbed out of the limo, towering above us both, six foot eight at least.

Offering us his hand the big man said, ‘Martin Mukwege,’ his voice velvet. We shook it and did what he said, which was simply, ‘Walk with me.’

In English and French, speaking one after the other, fighting to get everything out, we told our story. Our words poured into Mukwege as if into a vault: here was somebody we both had complete trust in, instantly. I pulled out my camera and thrust screen showing the photos I’d taken up at him. He waved it away, saying, ‘I received the email, don’t worry. Its contents are in circulation as we speak.’