5.

‘It was nothing,’ I said eventually, head still down beneath Dad’s gaze and the beating sun.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Amelia. ‘Just because it was lucky doesn’t mean it wasn’t helpful.’

It was a relief to turn and roll my eyes at her.

‘Thank God,’ said Mum. ‘Without passports and cash, we’d really be stuck.’

‘True,’ Dad agreed. He sounded more thoughtful than relieved.

‘So let’s not hang around.’ Mum was in brisk mode now. ‘Forget taxis and hotels. You guys wait back in the cool of the terminal. I’m going to find a pilot with a plane.’

Mum is nothing if not resourceful. Within half an hour she returned to where we were sitting on our luggage; that was one way of protecting it, I thought. She was accompanied by a smart young guy who had one of those freshly clipped lines by way of a parting in his hair. His jeans had a knife-edge crease in them. Who irons their jeans? This guy, it seemed, and he also wore a row of pens in the top pocket of his shirt, alongside a pair of those aviator sunglasses issued to pilots at birth.

He put the aviators on as Mum introduced him. His name was Joseph Kahora. The hand he extended for me to shake was surprisingly cool. He shook Amelia’s too; she held on to it just long enough to make the moment awkward for everyone but herself.

‘Joseph says he can have us back in Kinshasa in two hours,’ said Mum, looking at him.

‘Of course.’ He shrugged. ‘Two hours tops.’ His accent sounded French; it came out ‘tups’.

‘But the weather,’ said Dad. ‘We don’t want you to take a risk.’

‘What weather?’

‘The storm.’

‘No storm today.’

‘There was a storm.’

‘If there was one, it’s gone.’

Dad looked sceptical.

Amelia turned to him. ‘This pilot looks like he cares about himself, with his ironing and neat hair and everything. If he was endangering us, he’d be endangering himself too. That wouldn’t make sense.’ She said this at normal volume, though Joseph was right beside her, listening.

He just nodded and smiled.

Dad generally gets his way. You don’t get to ‘retire’ at forty from investment banking by being a pushover. But as I’ve said, Mum also worked in the City back in the day, and Amelia makes her own special kind of concrete sense. Together they weren’t pushing back; they were a brick wall.

So Joseph flew us to Kinshasa. His plane had six seats, two propellers and incredibly flimsy doors. The cracks around them let in daylight and wind, but this didn’t seem to bother Mum; she was just pleased to have solved the problem of making it to the summit in good time. The run in to N’Djili was clear, not a cloud in the sky, and Joseph was an excellent pilot: the plane didn’t even bounce when it hit the tarmac, just settled gently as if landing on a lake.