6.

The hotel was flashier than I expected. For starters, it had a pool. Also an armed guard on the door, with his gun slung super-casually over his shoulder. The big surprise though was that Xander had already arrived from Nigeria. To sweeten the offer of bringing me on the trip – mostly she just didn’t want to leave me at home to ride my bike, watch YouTube and stare at the ceiling, though after a long first year at boarding school that’s all I wanted to do – Mum had suggested back at Easter that I could bring a friend. She thought I’d pick Amelia, and of course I wanted her to come, but when I mentioned the trip to Xander at school he took it as an invitation too. Xander’s dad is Nigerian and they live there. I’d told him about the safari and he was really up for that. So keen, in fact, that he had got his dad to put him on a plane from Lagos a day early. He was on a lounger by the pool, baggy shirt undone, hat on backwards, drinking Coke with an umbrella in it, when we turned up.

I introduced Xander to Amelia. It’s always weird when two people you know in entirely different ways meet, with you in the middle, and Xander, who’s normally completely unrufflable at school (he slept through a fire alarm in our first week) seemed instantly twitchy in front of Amelia. She’d changed out of her travelling clothes into a swimsuit as soon as she clocked the pool, and chucked her towel onto the lounger next to Xander’s now, eager to get in the water.

‘Nice to meet you, Amelia,’ Xander said so stiffly I laughed out loud. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’ He immediately started doing up his shirt buttons with jittery fingers.

‘How many of those have you drunk?’ asked Amelia, twisting her long black hair into a bun to fit beneath her swimming cap.

‘It’s Coke.’

‘Yes, fully caffeinated and rammed with sugar,’ she replied. ‘You look wired.’

‘Three,’ he admitted, his face set to Who-are-you-anyway?

‘That’ll be why. Who’s coming for a swim?’

Without waiting for a reply, she dived straight in, did four lengths of butterfly very quickly indeed – she’s on the county swim squad – and stood up in the shallows to announce, ‘It’s approaching blood temperature in here, at least thirty-five degrees.’

‘You’ll get used to her,’ I told Xander. ‘Did you see the guy with the rifle out front?’

‘I didn’t notice him,’ he said. ‘But … you’ll get used to it. I told you: Africa’s different.’

‘Yeah. We’ve already been robbed, sort of.’

‘Don’t stereotype.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Well, that’s either astonishingly bad luck or you were asking for it.’

I fought the urge to tell him how I’d hit the motorcyclist with the golf ball. I’m not ten any more and I’ve learned that a person’s achievements sound more impressive if retold by someone else. It’d come out in time.

‘Just bad luck, I suppose,’ I said instead.

Mum and Dad came through the lobby. He was wearing a light blue suit, open-necked shirt and brown brogues. She also looked smart; I noticed she’d put on lipstick.

They knew Xander already because he’d come to stay with us for the February and May half-terms. Mum and Dad like him, mostly because he has this way of making everyone – adults included – think he’s interested in them; it has something to do with asking questions and actually listening to the answers. Anyway, back home in England he’d done a job of showing an interest in the whole conservation thing and now he asked them how they thought the land lay, ‘Looking ahead to the vote.’

Mum beamed at him when he said that. ‘Well, we’re off out lobbying this afternoon. The vote’s still weeks away, but we need to get a groundswell of opinion among people in the right camp, and that means meeting with as many influencers as possible, right away.’ That explained the lipstick.

‘Yes,’ said Dad. ‘It’ll be tricky: there are lots of people with a vested interest in exploiting the DRC’s natural resources. Between now and the summit, we have to get as many of the good guys as possible onside.’

I nodded, but couldn’t help yawning.

‘And this evening your uncle’s arriving to have dinner with us,’ Mum said to me.

Dad pursed his lips. He and his brother don’t exactly get on.

‘Make yourselves comfortable here until then. Use the pool, feel free to order snacks on the room number, possibly catch up on some sleep,’ she went on hopefully.

‘Just keep out of trouble,’ said Dad. Perhaps surprised by the harshness in his own voice, he added, ‘Wish I could spend the day swimming instead of beating my head against a closed door.’ It sounded like he meant it.

They set off. I realised I was hungry, and ordered a club sandwich and chips. For a joke I got Xander another Coke. Amelia ate salad with something local called makemba. ‘It’s a kind of plantain dish,’ she explained. I must have looked what I felt: none the wiser. ‘Cross between a potato and banana, idiot.’

‘Sounds great.’

‘It is,’ she insisted. But she’s a terrible liar, and couldn’t stop herself adding, ‘in small quantities.’

At this point a movement caught my eye and I looked up at the hotel roofline to see another armed security guard taking a stroll. I went to check the rear entrance of the hotel, and sure enough that was guarded too. These guys were obviously supposed to make the guests feel safe, but the idea that we needed protecting in the hotel at all was a bit unnerving.

On my way back to the pool I found a stray tennis ball. It seemed there was a court here as well. Xander and I played catch in the pool while Amelia did laps. Xander’s also pretty good at roofs. It got a bit competitive, with each of us chucking the ball harder and harder at the other, until finally I let rip properly, glancing it off the surface just in front him at maximum speed. He missed the catch and the ball took out a tray of drinks on a poolside table, very loudly indeed.

Immediately the security guard on the roof had his gun trained on the pool area, and another one I hadn’t seen before sprang through a nearby gate, his drawn pistol aimed right at me. For a nanosecond I feared he might pull the trigger. As luck would have it, Dad, who’d only been gone fifteen minutes, strolled back through reception just in time to hear the crash. He had his hands on his hips and a thunderous look on his face. Here we go, I thought, and sank beneath the surface of the water again.