‘How long do you have it on for?’ asked Amelia

‘Six to eight weeks.’

‘That’s your trekking over and done with this summer then,’ she pointed out matter-of-factly.

One of the best things about Xander is the way he looks on the bright side. ‘At least I got to see the gorillas before it happened,’ he said.

‘Yeah, up pretty close,’ I said.

‘Too close,’ Amelia pointed out.

The three of us dropped our heads at that. It seemed inconceivable that Innocent had lost his life trying to show us the best of his immense country, but it had happened, and though I couldn’t think of a way there and then, I knew I’d have to do something, however small, to make amends.

‘Too close,’ Amelia repeated.

Xander, risking a joke to break the tension, said, ‘Really?’

‘Yes, because …’ Noticing Xander smiling at me, Amelia cottoned on and said, ‘Oh,’ instead of finishing her sentence.

It turned out that Uncle Langdon’s private plane was occupied. Caleb looked crestfallen telling us this. Possibly he’d hoped to claw back some of his man-of-the-world status by spiriting us back to Kinshasa immediately, or maybe he was just disappointed at having failed in an honest attempt to be helpful. I’d charged my phone in the hospital waiting room, and as soon as it registered a signal I tried to contact Mum and Dad to tell them what had happened. Neither picked up. They were probably in meetings. I set the ringer to loud and waited for them to call me back, but neither did that day. It didn’t matter – I’d fill them in soon enough. Whatever painkillers they’d given Xander, combined with the relief of knowing his leg had been properly seen to, gave him the energy to use his French to organise tickets on a commercial flight back to the capital. Amelia went with him to sort this. Later he told me it was a good job she had, since although it was only a domestic flight they’d needed our passport details, and apparently she’d memorised them in a moment of boredom. ‘When I asked if she was sure they were right, she didn’t even answer,’ he explained later. ‘She just started reeling off other random numbers she knew, like the serial number for her laptop, her parents’ TV licence, the ISBN numbers of her favourite books, et cetera. She’s properly weird, you know.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, and I laughed with him, feeling oddly proud at the same time.

Caleb didn’t object to the risk of taking a normal Congo Airways flight this time. He knew it wasn’t as foolhardy as provoking a silverback, I suppose. Still, he got antsy with the flight attendant supervising the boarding when she said it might not be possible to swap Xander into a seat with extra legroom to accommodate his cast.