Uncle Victor. His face loomed large in my nightmares, twisted with anger. The last time I had seen him, more than a year ago, he’d beaten Em bloody. He had sent us away like lambs amongst wolves.

Now, here he was again. He formed a dark silhouette, the sun blocked out behind him. I turned to run. He could do me no good, I thought. But his arm snaked, his hand gripped my wrist, the same hand that had once tried to strangle me.

He was trying to talk to me, but the blood careering through my veins, pounding in my ears, dulled any sound he made. I cried out, but no one gave us a second glance. A child throwing a tantrum is probably what they saw, not a boy abandoned to fear.

Eventually, a word rang through the pulse of blood. ‘Father,’ my uncle said urgently. I stopped pulling away, stood and looked down. I couldn’t look in his face yet. ‘Your father, Céléstin. Prince, he’s here. Your father’s here.’

Now I looked up, not to the monster of my daydreams, but to my uncle.

‘You are here to get him, Prince,’ Victor said.

I frowned at him. How had he known this?

‘I spoke to your brother, Prince, on the telephone. He told me that you were coming but I thought I would miss you. I am so pleased that I did not.’

I wasn’t sure if I agreed yet. Finally I spoke, my pulse slowing. ‘The plane was delayed.’

My uncle nodded but asked no questions. ‘Come, Prince, we must go,’ he said.

He pulled at my arm. I didn’t budge.

Victor turned and looked at me, his eyes filled, not with anger but with anguish. ‘He is very ill, Prince,’ he said in the quietest voice I’d ever heard my uncle use. ‘We must go. I should not leave him long.’

I was lost. This was all too much to take in. I allowed my uncle to drag me along, my mind a blur.

Soon we were speeding away from the airport in a rattling car. Beads hung from the rear-view mirror and the doorless glove-box was stuffed with newspapers. The passing sights, the heat, the dust, the one-storey buildings stirred up long-forgotten memories of Africa.

I turned to my uncle from the passenger seat. ‘My father is ill?’ I asked.

Victor didn’t take his eyes off the road. Other motorists, in cars, on motor-bikes, in vans and buses, swerved in and out of the traffic, seemingly fearless.

‘He’s very ill, Prince,’ he said.

A bicycle cut in front of us and Victor touched the brakes as he sounded the horn. The cyclist paid him no heed. I barely noticed, I was gathering courage to ask my next question.

‘Is he dying?’ I said, my voice cracking through the vital word.

‘We will not let him die, my nephew. What I think he has, what he surely has, they can treat. In Britain they can treat it very easily. You must do what you came for, you must take him back with you.’

I was expecting my uncle to take us to a hospital but I was wrong. His flat was sparsely furnished, but clean. The first room we entered had a few chairs, a small kitchen area and a high slit of window that cast only a little light. It was cool compared to the blistering heat outside, and the sweat that clung to my back began to chill me. A doorway was set in the far wall, a thin curtain hanging in front of it.

From the second room, a hacking cough could be heard, an uncontrolled bark, its low pitch muffled by a cloth or a hand.

Then a voice rose, deep, as I remembered it, measured like my brother, tugging at me.

‘Are you back, Victor?’ my father called.