1.

I was asleep when the airliner hit turbulence. It must have dropped a hundred metres in half a second. The swooping up-rush launched my stomach into my chest and my head grazed the ceiling before my bum slammed back into the seat. I opened my eyes as an electronic warning bell started pinging above us. The ‘fasten seat belts’ light came on.

‘Bit late for that,’ I said to Amelia beside me.

‘I never unbuckle mine,’ she explained, showing me the snug clasp before returning to whatever she was doing on her phone. Reprogramming it, probably.

‘Of course you don’t,’ I said, just as the plane bounced hard again.

Mum craned round from the seat in front. ‘You OK, Jack? Amelia?’

‘Just fine … Why wouldn’t we be?’ we said over the top of one another.

The co-pilot’s voice oozed out of the speaker, full of reassurance: ‘Ladies and gentleman, we seem to have run into some unexpected weather. We’ll do our best to skirt it, but in the meantime, for your comfort and safety, we ask you to remain seated with your seat belt fastened.’

Beyond Amelia was the porthole window. I leaned across her to look out of it. The endless blue sky was dotted with occasional clouds, but it didn’t look particularly stormy. I could make out the lush green rainforest below us without difficulty.

‘Seems a nice day to me,’ I said.

‘The Democratic Republic of Congo has more thunderstorms per year on average than anywhere else on earth,’ Amelia replied.

‘Good to know. Still, not today, eh?’

As if to prove me wrong, at that moment the plane hit another airborne speed bump, hurling me sideways in my seat. I burst out laughing. Up until this point the trip from London to Kinshasa via Brussels had been long and boring. This was fun.

Mum, however, is a nervous passenger at the best of times. Through the seat gap ahead, I glimpsed her neck, rigid with fear. More loudly than she meant to, she said, ‘Will the plane cope, Nicholas?’ to Dad, who was in the seat next to hers.

‘Of course,’ he said, stroking her hand on the armrest.

Unfortunately Amelia heard what Mum said too. Amelia always means well, more or less, but has a knack of saying the wrong thing. Now she leaned forward and said, ‘Mrs Courtney, the wings on an Airbus A330 are tested to more than ***

5.2 metres of displacement. It would take an extraordinarily abrupt pressure differential to rip them off.’

Mum withdrew her hand from under Dad’s, her knuckles white.

‘Where do you get this stuff?’ I asked Amelia.

‘What stuff?’ she replied, genuinely confused.

Amelia’s mother met mine on the maternity ward fourteen years ago; we’ve known each other since we were babies. How her mind works, though, I’ll never understand. It’s not short of processing power, I admit, but she uses that power for the strangest things.

‘Amelia means we’re perfectly safe, Mum,’ I said, as another wedge of turbulence lifted me, grinning, from my seat. ‘The wind’s just giving us a helping hand. We’ll be in Kinshasa in no time.’